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.

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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.

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2021’s The Cannonball Tree Mystery is the fifth installment in Ovidia Yu’s Crown Colony mystery series.

1944: The triumphant Japanese Empire has crushed all opposition. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere will surely be eternal. Alarming military setbacks are impossible.

Or so Singapore’s Japanese occupiers would assert. Despite best efforts to censor news, rumors persist that the Pacific War is not going well for Japan. The occupiers focus on local affairs and ignore wider developments.

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2020’s The Mimosa Tree Mystery is the fourth volume in Ovidia Yu’s Crown Colony series.

1943: having survived the Fall of Singapore and the brutal massacres that followed, Su Lin and her family keep a low profile. The Sook Ching may be over, but the Japanese are still committing atrocities against anyone foolish enough to catch their attention.

Events transpire to focus the occupiers’ attention on Su Lin’s neighborhood and on her family.

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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.

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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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