James Nicoll Reviews

2022’s The Mushroom Tree Mystery is the sixth volume in Ovidia Yu’s Crown Colony Mysteries.

August 1945: the Japanese occupiers of Singapore are certain that the Japanese Empire is an invincible, indomitable power that is assured of endless triumphs. A recent series of defeats notwithstanding.

For Su Lin and the other inhabitants of Occupied Singapore, the signs are clear. Soon, Japan will fall. Singapore will be liberated. This is certain. Whether any Singaporeans will survive until liberation is less certain.

Just as she worked for the colonial British, Su Lin works for the occupying Japanese. This is a calculated risk. Being useful to the Japanese confers a certain level of protection against random Japanese violence. At the same time, being underfoot risks hostile attention directed specifically at Su Lin.

Half-Japanese Su Lin is currently housekeeper at Moss House for her Japanese aunt, Mrs. Maki. Also resident at Moss House: elderly and blind Professor Kutsuki, a researcher on whom Japan has lavished funds in hopes that the old man will produce a superweapon. While her official duties do not involve Kutsuki, Su Lin’s assortment of uncommon skills will, over the course of the novel, make her useful to the cranky old man.

To Su Lin’s considerable alarm, eyewitness reports place her, or at least someone answering her description, at the site of a break-in at senior functionary Hideki Tagawa’s office. Su Lin may be half Japanese and Hideki’s cousin to boot, but she is also half-Chinese. The occupiers may well shoot her out of hand.

Su Lin is saved when Kutsuki’s assistant Morio Goda lies to provide Su Lin with an alibi. Why Goda did this is unclear. He will never have the chance to explain himself. His corpse is discovered on the Moss House grounds. The death is dismissed as an accident. Or perhaps just another suicide.

On August 6^th, 1945, Hiroshima suddenly falls silent. Investigation returns frankly unbelievable reports of a city erased. The Americans make ludicrous claims that Hiroshima’s destruction was accomplished by a single bomb of novel design. Furthermore, the Americans implausibly claim to have more such weapons available to rain down on Japan if it does not surrender.

While fanatics are loath to admit the obvious, Japanese defeat seems inevitable. The problem facing Su Lin is surviving the interval between the occupying Japanese realizing they are doomed and Allied forces liberating the city. If the fanatics can murder the entire city to make a rhetorical point, they will.

Kutsuki’s research may provide the fanatics with the weapon they need to do to Singapore what they did to Hiroshima.

~oOo~

Mushroom raises an important question. Is someone who wants to be distracted from the then impending US election best served by reading about the brutal occupation of Singapore by bigoted Japanese ethnic supremacists? As it turned out, no.

There are some odd bits in this novel. For one, someone refers to the Japanese population as one hundred million people, which I don’t think it was. For another, I don’t think a Japanese superweapon, even if non-nuclear, would have been plausible. However, Imperial Japan being keener on inspirational lies than factchecking, it’s possible one or more people believed these claims.

Not all of the Japanese people are murderous fanatics. Many are patriots dragged along by extremists, while others are just trying to stay alive. Su Lin’s Japanese cousin Hideki, for example, is a loyal imperial subject, but he has his sympathetic aspects. Readers who remember that Hideki, Mrs. Maki (and Su Lin) have relatives in Hiroshima may be concerned for their well-being. Not to worry! It is established in passing they relocated to Nagasaki.

The Crown Colony series is ostensibly a mystery series and there are some mysterious deaths in this book. However, the authorities don’t really care whodunnit and working out what happened isn’t all that useful to Su Lin. Readers here for the mystery may find that element somewhat lacking.

As a portrait of what it is like to try to survive under a merciless regime, particularly as defeat’s inevitability sinks in, the novel is exemplary. Singapore is filled with many potential victims on whom the occupiers can wreak their displeasure. Even absent a functioning superweapon, it would be well within Japanese ability to recapitulate the Nanjing Massacre. Modern readers will know how Singaporean history played out, but Su Lin cannot.

The Mushroom 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).