James Nicoll Reviews

2023’s The Yellow Rambutan Tree Mystery is the seventh volume in Ovidia Yu’s Crown Colony mystery series.

Imperial Japan has been crushed. Singapore has been liberated from the rapacious Japanese. Those who survived occupation begin to rebuild their lives. Su Lin’s friend Parshanti plans marriage despite qualms¹. Su Lin’s Chen clan adapts to new business realities. As for Su Lin, the future is less clear.

Japan’s defeat only changed the identity of Singapore’s colonial masters, not the fact of colonial rule. The British have returned.

The British rulers are determined to improve on the mistakes of the past. Only the very best British second and third raters will staff the colonial bureaucracy. The locals will be kept well away from power.

Before the occupation, Su Lin assisted Inspector Le Froy in the Detective Shack. During the occupation, Su Lin reluctantly worked for the Japanese, skirting the frequent purges. There does not seem to be a role for her under restored British rule. In fact, her association with the Chen clan makes her an object of suspicion to some Brits.

The sticking point is that the Chen clan does not allow minor formalities like the law to interfere with their business. The British are forever banning or taxing goods and services. No reasonable person could be expected to comply with every petty regulation².

In theory Su Lin’s uncle Small Boss Chen runs the clan businesses. In reality, the family prosperity is thanks to the keen insight of Su Lin’s grandmother, family matriarch Ah Ma. Recently, Ah Ma decided that the risks inherent in facilitating prostitution and opium sales outweigh the benefits, to the distress of the procurers and drug pushers previously affiliated with the Chens.

Botak Beng asks to meet Small Boss Chen. Poor Botak has chosen his moment poorly. Not only are the New Year’s holidays ongoing (precluding business) but the entire Chen household seems to have food poisoning. Su Lin has no choice but to turn ​“Uncle” Botak away. No doubt whatever Botak needed to discuss can wait for another time.

There will be no another time.

At first, it seems as if poor Botak might tripped and hit his head or perhaps suffered a sudden heart-attack. In fact, someone stabbed him in the heart, leaving Botak to die at the side of the road. Who killed Chen and why? And what, if anything, did the murder have to do with the Chen family?

All excellent questions. So is the matter of what, precisely, motivated the now-retired Thomas Le Froy to return to Singapore. Su Lin’s friends are convinced he returned for Su Lin. But is Le Froy as retired as he claims to be?

~oOo~

These novels are based on colonial Singapore, but I don’t think they map onto it one to one. I noticed, for example, Su Lin kicks off the book with 

May you live in interesting times’: that is an ancient Chinese curse. 

It’s by no means clear that that is actually an ancient Chinese curse so much as a saying attributed to the Chinese.

The British appear to have taken as their credo for restored rule the Chevalier de Panat’s lamentation ​“Nobody has been corrected; no one has forgotten anything, nor learned anything.” Those who, like Le Froy, warned about the impending war with Japan were punished for premature correctness. Every counter-productive policy has been restored and redoubled; the colonial rulers are somehow even less competent than they were before the war. One might wonder if this were an exaggeration, but… the British got pushed out for a reason.

Although Su Lin has starred in six mysteries before this one, she doesn’t seem to have absorbed one of the prominent rules of cozy mysteries, which is that deferring a conversation with someone who has a subject they desperately want to discuss signs that person’s death warrant. Poor Botak was dead the moment he was turned away. If he had not been murdered, he would have been run down by a tuk-tuk, eaten by a shark, or killed by a falling cannonball tree fruit. That’s just science.

Without going into too much detail³, the author did manage to subvert my expectations for this mystery. As well, the portrait of post-War Singapore was intriguing. I am curious how the author will handle the transition from British Malaya to the Malayan Union to the Federation of Malaya to Malasia and Singapore. Enough material there for many, many books.

The Yellow Rambutan Tree Mystery is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: The sticking point for Parshanti is that a relationship that worked fine when she and her beau were dodging Japanese death squads might not be suited for the stresses of civilian domesticity. Perfectly reasonable qualm. I wonder how that will work out in the future for her? At least the author seems pro-romance.

I am reminded of a short story I read years ago, about what happened after the teen hero and teen heroine of a monster film marry in the giddy aftermath of winning, only to discover they don’t really have anything in common.

2: Rather conveniently, Su Lin has nothing to do personally with the more unsavoury Chen clan-affiliated businesses — the drug trade, loan sharking, human trafficking — so she can embrace the most charitable interpretation possible of the source of the family money.

3: Because when I went into detail in my first draft, it was too clear who the killer was.