Vera Wong Juju is a Pig, but she should have been born a Rooster.
Vera Wong is an elderly Chinese woman who has run her teashop alone since the death of her husband. When she comes in one morning to find a dead body on the floor, she of course immediately calls the police. But they are so unreliable—they won't even accept the tea she made for them!—that she decides she needs to solve this mystery herself. She puts out an obituary to attract the killer back to her shop, and takes note of everyone who comes by. After all, she knows something the police don't: The corpse was holding a flash drive, and the killer will surely come back for it.
Among the suspects are Riki (a programmer in the country on an immigrant work visa who introduces himself as a reporter), Sana (an artist who introduces herself as a True Crime podcaster), Oliver (Marshall's identical twin brother), and Julie (Marshall's wife, who he had decided to leave the night before he died).
As it turns out, everyone had reason to want Marshall dead, and before the autopsy is complete, most of them even have reason to suspect they were responsible. But Vera is not going to let the fact that the victim was a terrible person stop her from finding the killer. This is the most fun she's had in years!
Really, the only fly in the ointment is that the police keep trying to get her to stop interfering. Also, she doesn't actually want any of her new friends to be the killer.
Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice For Murderers is a 2023 Black Comedy Cozy Mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto (The Obsession, I'm Not Done With You Yet).
Tropes
- Almost Famous Name: Vera Wong is one letter away from designer Vera Wang, a fact that she exploits with the name of her teashop. Her son Tilly pointed out even as a child that this is illegal, and she could get sued if anyone actually cared about her teashop.
- Always Identical Twins: Discussed; Oliver and Marshall are (or were) identical twins. However, they weren't actually identical; even putting aside their vastly different personalities, Oliver was slightly shorter, slightly dumpier, and had worse skin. No one who knew them both ever had any trouble telling them apart.
- Character Name Alias: Vera exploits her name's closeness to Vera Wang by naming her teashop after her.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Alex, Vera's only customer, is mentioned just often enough throughout the story to remind us that he still exists. Of course, he becomes very important at the climax.
- Chekhov M.I.A.: Oliver and Marshall's father is mentioned once or twice, but is conspicuously absent from the story. As it turns out, he is Vera's loyal customer, Alex. He stopped showing up because he was the one who killed Marshall, and the guilt was killing him. Vera didn't make the connection because Oliver said his mother was dead, but Alex told Vera his wife had Alzheimer's. Alex had been lying about it for years so that he could have a place where he could act as though his wife was still alive.
- Domestic Abuse: Marshall is clearly emotionally abusive to Julia, whittling away at her confidence and isolating her from all her friends and family. Pretty much everyone figures this out within five minutes of hearing Julia talk about him, which is why she's at the top of every suspect list despite having no obvious means or opportunity. Everyone agrees that yes, if they were in Julia's situation and realized how much Marshall had been gaslighting her, killing him would make perfect sense.
- Dragon Lady: Vera is an older Chinese woman, and every single character agrees how fierce she is, with almost everyone folding on her straightaway because it's not worth the effort of arguing.
- Hollywood Autism: Emma has a number of classic autism traits, being violently opposed to stepping out of her comfort zone, often acting even younger than she actually is, and having a great deal of trouble with new people. Julie calls her "cripplingly shy," and Marshall called her "a little freak." Though the fact that all her symptoms disappear practically overnight implies that she wasn't autistic, and just that she was terrified of her own father.
- Honor Thy Parent: Being a novel about Chinese parents, this should be expected. Vera constantly bothers her son with unsolicited advice, and is very huffy that he rarely bothers to even respond to her texts. She praises Alex for his dutiful son who is very successful and yet still takes the time to bring him groceries, but avoids talking about Alex's other son, a useless layabout who never does anything. As it turns out, Alex's sons are actually Marshall and Oliver. When Alex discovers that Marshall is actually a Con Artist who is about to abandon his wife and daughter after making it rich, he poisons him with Vera's tea. Alex is also heartbroken to realize that the weekly groceries came from Oliver, the son who he had always called useless, secretly supporting his father with no expectation of reward.
- I Want Grandkids: Vera does, which is troubled by the fact that Tilly has never introduced her to a single partner of his. She finds a surrogate granddaughter in Emma, who starts calling her grandma within an hour of meeting her.
- Loophole Abuse: Riki was hired by Marshall (and then short-changed) to write a scraper bot to manipulate the NFT market. Once everything comes out, Tilly manages to get him off without even a slap on the wrist, because that's not actually illegal yet. The technology is so new that no one's written many laws on it.
- MacGuffin: The flash drive, and Oliver's novel. Neither have anything to do with the mystery, but both are objects that the characters are looking for throughout the book and represent several clues.
- Parental Abandonment: Marshall didn't think twice about abandoning his daughter Emma, calling her "the little freak" and saying he'd "make a better one with someone else." This was the last straw that made Alex kill him.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Alex's wife Lily has severe Alzheimer's, which is why she can't come visit Vera's with him. Actually, Lily died long ago, but Alex told Vera she was still alive so that there was one place in the world where he could pretend. Then he had to come up with an excuse for why she still wasn't coming around, so he went with Alzheimer's.
- Shadow Archetype: Vera has one in Alex Chen. Both are elderly Chinese widow/widowers (and close friends) whose spouses died and whose sons haven't spent as much time with them as they want, and who are protective of Emma. However, while Vera is disappointed in her beloved son, Tilly, he's decent enough, and Emma is her surrogate granddaughter, while she is Alex's literal granddaughter. Marshall, on the other hand, is a bully, an abusive spouse, and a Con Artist who plans to rob his own daughter. Alex murdered Marshall, left the body in Vera's tea shop by mistake, and is not able to come over as a result, while Vera finds Marshall's body and forms a new group of friends in trying to solve Marshall's murder.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Marshall slowly, subtly forced Julia into being nothing but a stay-at-home mom. He convinced her to drop out of photography school because obviously you don't actually need a degree to get a photography job, it's just a waste of money (never mind that she had already spent the money). Then, he convinced her to just treat it as a hobby. Then, he convinced her that her hobby was too expensive. Vera realizes almost immediately upon meeting her that while of course Julia loves her daughter, she didn't actually choose to be a stay-at-home mom.
- Supreme Chef: Vera is a brilliant cook and tea-maker, always knowing the exact dish or tea mix needed in the moment.
- Wham Line:Vera: Oliver, what's your father's name?
Oliver: Huh? It's Alex. Alex Chen. - Who Murdered the Asshole: Marshall Chen is an extremely horrible person: a Con Artist, a bully, and a domestic abuser. Characters openly admit that they're not surprised somebody wanted Marshall dead. As it turns out, he was killed by his own father. When Alex finally realized what a horrible excuse for a human being his son was (specifically the part where he was abandoning his wife and daughter the second he made it big), he exploited Marshall's allergy to kill him. Alex has been wracked by guilt ever since—less for killing his son and more for having left Julia, Emma, and Oliver to suffer under him for so long.
