Jesse Q. Sutanto

This is perhaps the most fun mystery I've read in a long time. Vera Wong, proprietor of "Vera Wang's World Famous Teahouse" in Chinatown, only has one regular customer these days. The place is run-down and a bit grimy. She's lonley, and her son doesn't seem to spend much time with her. She's surprised when she goes down one morning and finds a corpse in her tea room. Before the police arrive, she very helpful outlines the corpse's body in Sharpie and takes the only piece of evidence that might make the police think it is murder. She has watched this on TV. How hard can it be? The perpetrator is likely to revisit the scene of the crime. She immediately comes up with suspects--a man saying he is a reporter, a woman saying she has a true crime podcast, the man's brother, and the man's widow who was accompanied by their small daughter. She begins her process of elimination. Readers (and listeners) will be amused by the story as it unfolds. As Vera gets to know her suspects, she doesn't really want it to be any of them. I figured it out early on even though I knew the solution might be a bit of a stretch. Turns out that was exactly what happened. I even figured out she broke into her own teashop when that happened. Even though the mystery itself may fall a little shorter than the rating I'm giving, the enjoyment pushed it up. It's one I'm unlikely to forget in the future.… (más)

fiction - part 3 of trilogy (best to read them in order) featuring an over-the-top Chinese-Indonesian family that experiences frequent, comically disastrous mishaps.

I read the first two via audiobook, which I really appreciated because it recreated the 'Aduh!'s and other words in the proper accent (whereas my unknowing brain would have read them all wrong), but now that I can approximate pronunciations in my head, reading this book in print is great too--and I can also see the humor in all the misspelled names (I think these are also pointed out in the audio versions but usually only the first time each name is encountered, and maybe not for all the names).

a funny book and a great conclusion to this series. Thank you!… (más)