James Nicoll Reviews

The Betel Nut Tree Mystery is the second volume in Ovidia Yu’s Crown Colony cozy¹ mystery series.

Su Lin has settled in at the Detective Shack as an employee of Singapore’s Detective and Intelligence Unit. The detectives have been directed to take a close interest in the impending Glossop-Covington wedding. It would look bad for Singapore if anything were to disrupt the marriage of a wealthy British man to a wealthy American widow.

Victor Glossop comes from the UK upper crust. His family is an old one, his father is titled, and Victor himself is friends with the Mitfords. Like the Mitfords, he has been known to pal around with German’s best Nazis. Bride-to-be Nicole Covington is American and definitely not upper crust. Her history is unsavory: she has left a trail of dead husbands and boyfriends. Nevertheless, Nicole is rich, which is for Americans the equivalent of aristocratic.

The parallels between Glossop-Covington and Edward and Mrs. Simpson titillate the press. Otherwise, there seems to be no particular reason to expect problems with the wedding, save for wacky hijinks from wealthy people who know they will never face any repercussions for their escapades. It’s rather inconsiderate of Victor to turn up horribly dead.

The condition of the body is such that immediate identification is difficult. Since the grotesquely swollen corpse is in Victor’s room, it seems likely it is Victor and indeed this is the case. The cause of death is unclear, although the condition of the body suggests something along the lines of an allergic reaction. The erotic patterns drawn on him in lipstick add a macabre element to the scene.

Su Lin’s friend and mentor Le Froy might well have connected the dots in the mystery had he not been distracted by other, larger, problems. Unlike his masters back in Blighty, Le Froy shares with the Chinese population of Singapore profound concerns about Japanese ambitions. Despite being told to drop the matter, the detective persists in investigating possible Japanese espionage in Singapore, much to the mounting displeasure of his masters.

At Victor’s father’s suggestion, Su Lin is installed in the Covington household as a maid/nanny. Ostensibly it is Nicole’s son Junior who needs a nanny, but even brief exposure to flighty Nicole suggests it is the volatile American woman who needs tending. Being embedded in the household will permit Su Lin to better know the cast of players and their histories and thus to help figure out who killed Victor. The cast is large and many people had good reason to hate Victor.

As is her wont, Su Lin accomplishes her task all too effectively. The first rule of murder mystery solving may be never let the killer know you are on to them. The second might be that one should not be face to face with the murderer when the penny drops.

~oOo~

While author Yu is not exactly subtle, she does trust her readers to be historically aware enough to understand the significance of the Mitfords and to know who the Nazis were. Probably people who don’t wouldn’t read these novels.

I wondered if the Nazi-curious Glossop was a reference to a P. G. Wodehouse character. On investigation, it was Wodehouse character Roderick Spode who was the thinly disguised Nazi, not any member of the Glossop clan, save to the extent that any British aristocrat of the era can be assumed to be a Nazi to one degree or another, absent evidence to the contrary.

Generally speaking, the series takes a dim view of Singapore’s colonial rulers. Le Froy is the exception, but his sympathies perpetually keep him at odds with his masters. This volume highlights the talent that the Colonial Office brought to the task of reducing the Empire from a quarter of the world to a disused Wesh gravel quarry. To the extent that officials deign to note world affairs, it is to interpret them incorrectly.

While the above would seem to undermine dramatic tension — odds are the killer will turn out to one of society’s best — the author populates her novel with enough imperialists that spotting the killer isn’t as easy as it would be in an American film with a single overtly British character.

The interval between the first Su Lin novel I read (paradoxically the third in the series) and the second (which was the first in the series) was long enough that I failed to note a common element. Having read my third Su Lin (the second in the series), I now see that Su Lin’s method is highly dependent on getting trapped with a killer eager to eliminate inconvenient Chinese investigators. On the plus side, once a suspect starts strangling Su Lin, one can be reasonably certain that something untoward may be up. Nevertheless, there’s a lot to be said for presenting one’s conclusion to the detectives so that they can organize a brute squad to pick up the killer.

The series is still cozy, although the timer is swiftly ticking down to February 1942. Yu’s characters are vividly drawn and her view of colonial rule satisfyingly acerbic. Readers looking for an evening’s entertainment should enjoy this novel.

The Betel Nut Tree Mystery is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), and here (Chapters-Indigo).

1: Note that the series will almost certainly become less cozy once Japan invades and starts massacring people.