James Nicoll Reviews

2017’s The Frangipani Tree Mystery is the first volume¹ in Ovidia Yu’s Crown Colony mystery series.

1936: Singapore still languishes under the boot of the British Empire. Were imperial domination alone not bad enough, the Depression lingers.

Su Lin is considered unlucky, possibly cursed, by her family. Not only is she an orphan, but polio left her with a noticeable limp. Her uncle Chen has a solution: arranged marriage to a man Chen will make sure has suitable prospects (if the uncle has to provide them himself). Vanessa ​“Miss Nessa” Palin, the spinster sister of Sir Henry Palin, acting governor of Singapore, has a different solution: Su Lin will become Chief Inspector Le Froy’s housekeeper.

Fate provides a third alternative.

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The Paper Bark Tree Mystery is the third volume in Ovidia Yu’s Crown Colony mystery series. 

Singapore in 1937 is very much a British colony. When officious, interfering, profoundly ignorant operations adviser Bernard ​‘Bald Bernie’ Hemsworth descends on Singapore’s Detective Unit, there is little the senior staff can do to resist his counter-productive directives. Su Lin, until then the team’s main paper-pusher, is summarily fired and replaced by Dolly Darling, late of India. 

Dolly is incompetent and not very bright but she’s pretty and white, qualities that Bald Bernie values highly. Unable to do her job, Dolly turns to Su Lin to do the job for her. A covert meeting in the Unit’s records facility turns up something neither woman expected: Bald Bernie’s dead body.

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