Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady–ah, lady of a certain age–who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.
Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing–a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.
What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?
- Title: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
- Author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
- Publisher: Berkley
- Publication Date: March 14, 2023
- Genre: Cozy Mystery
- Source: Print book gifted via Publisher
- Targeted Age Range: Adult
- Content Warnings: murder, death, toxic relationship, stealing, robbery, manipulation, estranged relationship
- Rating: ★★★★
I’ve been venturing into the cozy mystery genre a bit more lately, and after loving Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A for Aunties, I’ve been eagerly awaiting Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers follows Vera Wong, an older lady that lives above her tea shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Vera Wong is nothing but meticulous and timely — every single day starts the same way: She wakes up at 4:30, goes on her morning patrol walk of Chinatown, texts her son Tilly, and spends her day sitting in the tea shop waiting for customers to come in. She’s definitely not lonely, though — and far from needy either. But when her perfect routine is disrupted by a dead body in the middle of her tea shop, Vera decides to take matters into her own hands — especially after the police rule it out as an accident. There’s no way his death is an accident, not when he was clutching a flash drive in his hands when he died: a flash drive that Vera might’ve hidden. Vera knows one thing’s for sure: the killer will come back to the tea shop for the flash drive, and she’ll be able to figure out who the killer is from that. There’s Julie and Emma, the murder victim (Marshall)’s widow and daughter, Oliver, Marshall’s twin brother, Sana, a podcaster, and Riki, a journalist. As she gets to know her new customers better, she can’t help but get attached to them, and it’s getting harder and harder to figure out just who is responsible for the murder.
As our protagonist, I found Vera Wong to be endearing, albeit a little overbearing at times. She was eerily reminiscent of several of my aunts, and my grandmother, in the best way, and I couldn’t help but love her. That being said, I do feel like Sutanto’s older characters — in Dial A for Aunties, Four Aunties and a Wedding, and in Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers — occasionally falls into the stereotype of “overbearing Asian mother”, and makes me feel a bit uneasy. Perhaps, I’d feel a little less uneasy if not all of her older Asian female characters were written this way.
I’m a sucker for the found family trope, and the found family in Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers was no different. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers shines in its ensemble cast. I loved Emma and Julie, most of all, but I did have a soft spot for Oliver, Sana and Riki too. So much of Julie’s personality and sense of self was minimized while she was married to Marshall, and I particularly loved Julie’s storyline, of her finding herself and following her dreams after putting them on hold to raise Emma. Similarly, the way sweet little Emma broke out of her shell and clung to grandmother Vera made my heart grow two sizes bigger.
I’ve never been particularly good at following clues that are laid out for the reader, especially in cozy mysteries, and Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers was no different. In hindsight, I totally see the trail of breadcrumbs, but while I was reading it, I didn’t have any idea where the story was going.
Overall, if you’re looking for a fast-paced, lighthearted, heartwarming read, I’d definitely recommend Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers.
Links for Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers:
Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop.org | IndieBound
Jesse Q. Sutanto is the award-winning, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Well, That Was Unexpected, The Obsession, and Theo Tan and the Fox Spirit. The film rights to her women’s fiction, Dial A for Aunties, was bought by Netflix in a competitive bidding war. She has a master’s degree in creative writing from Oxford University, though she hasn’t found a way of saying that without sounding obnoxious. Jesse lives in Indonesia with her husband, her two daughters, and her ridiculously large extended family, many of whom live just down the road and provide her with endless inspiration for her books.
