Berkley
Published April 1, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
She’s back, the headstrong, opinionated, sixty-year-old Chinese tea shop owner, ready to investigate another mystery after 2023’s Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers. In this case, she meets a trouble young woman who shows her the photo of her missing friend Thomas, but who can’t bring herself to report it to the police. While cat sitting for her son and his police-detective girlfriend, she does a bit of snooping and finds a file about a dead man. He looks exactly like the photo of the missing person, though his name isn’t Thomas. Instead he’s Xander Lin, a wildly popular influencer who, according to his online profile, was immensely wealthy and well-connected.
Was it a suicide, as the police suspect? Vera decides to take the case, and soon discovers everyone has heard of him – but nobody really knew him. As she digs, we learn more about the troubled young woman, Millie, who has a fearful relationship with her mother and father. We meet Xander’s online girlfriend who is disgusted by the way her sunny online persona is a lie, and we visit a lonely dumpling seller who treasured his relationship with the dead man. We also get to know Xander’s agent, a single father with a failing business who worries about his young daughter. All of them know something about Xander they’re reluctant to share – and each harbors a deep regret.
This is undeniably a cozy mystery, with an amateur sleuth who cooks and makes healing cups of tea while interrogating suspects and uncovering secrets. Her non-standard English and misunderstanding of popular culture, coupled with her indefatigable sense of confidence in herself, infuses the narrative with humor, and the friends she collects along the way benefit from her wise advice.
But there’s a surprising amount of darkness in this tale. Throughout the story we get hints that Tilly is trapped in an abusive situation. Her mother and father have trained her to present a particular face to the world, not unlike the false glitter of influencers who hide behind a facade to monetize attention. Sutanto’s story is inspired by a real-world criminal enterprise, introducing a level of grittiness in the denouement that, while followed by the requisite happy ending, gives the book a jolt of seriousness. But with hints building up to the final twist, it’s not completely jarring.
Even with this dose of darkness, fans of the sixty-year-old Chinese American amateur sleuth are likely to enjoy every minute of Vera’s second adventure.