Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
by Jess Q. Sutanto
I was perusing our library’s cart of returned
mysteries when I came across Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers.
It looked good, and the book recommendation on the cover from Elle Cosimano,
another favorite humorous mystery author, clinched the deal.
Vera Wong runs ‘Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse’ in
San Francisco. Unfortunately, the teahouse has gone out of fashion and she only
has one customer left. Vera is a lonely widower whose only son is too busy to
spend time with her. She texts him frequently, though he doesn’t often respond,
and thrives on her routine of walking daily and searching the internet.
Surprisingly, it isn’t an online scam that brings trouble to her door.
One morning she gets up and goes downstairs to find a
man named Marshall has broken into her teahouse and died on the floor. Vera
isn’t too happy with how the police handle the situation and decides to
investigate on her own. She starts by placing an obituary for Marshall in the
paper to draw the guilty party back to the scene of the crime.
Her plan works and four people show up— Rikki, Sana,
Oliver, and Julia, carrying her daughter Emma. Rikki says he is a reporter for
Buzzfeed and Sana says she runs a true crime podcast. Oliver is most clearly
Marshall’s twin brother. Julia is Marshall’s wife, though he left her the day
before.
It is less of a mystery to the reader about why these
people are here than it is to Vera, because we hear the story from their
perspectives as well. (It also makes it seem unlikely that one of them is the
killer, in my opinion.)
As I read further in this book, there were a few
things that required a suspension of disbelief. Primary is that Vera makes
these amazing teas, seeming to know exactly what you need, but she only has one
customer. Not one other tea lover has found her and become a fan, telling other
tea lovers they know about it? That seems a bit odd. Tea drinkers make up a
hefty percentage of the population.
That being said, I still loved this novel. The writing
just drew me in and allowed me to suspend disbelief.
And you can’t help intensely disliking the person who
was murdered. The mystery of who murdered him plays a lean second fiddle to the
master machinations of Vera as she maneuvers people into talking about
themselves and the relationships she helps bring to life.
I recently came across a post in a book forum asking
for books that feel like a big hug. As strange as it may seem to put a murder
mystery in this category, I think it applies to this one.
I began to wonder if this was even a mystery? About
two thirds of the way through, though I knew Marshall was a jerk, I wasn’t sure
he was murdered. He certainly could have been, but it might have been an
accident, and I had real trouble believing that any of the people Vera considered
a suspect, could actually have killed Marshall.
Well, I definitely didn’t see the truth that came out
in the end. I highly recommend this book.
