Title: Aunty Lee's Delights: A Singaporean Mystery
Author: Ovidia Yu
Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: September 17, 2013
Acquired Via: TLC Book Tours
This delectable and witty mystery introduces Rosie "Aunty" Lee, feisty widow, amateur sleuth and proprietor of Singapore's best-loved home cooking restaurant.
After losing her husband, Rosie Lee could easily have become one of Singapore's "tai tai," an idle rich lady devoted to mah-jongg and luxury shopping. Instead she threw herself into building a culinary empire from her restaurant, Aunty Lee's Delights, where spicy Singaporean home cooking is graciously served to locals and tourists alike. But when a body is found in one of Singapore's beautiful tourist havens, and when one of her wealthy guests fails to show at a dinner party, Aunty Lee knows that the two are likely connected.
The murder and disappearance throws together Aunty Lee's henpecked stepson Mark, his social-climbing wife Selina, a gay couple whose love is still illegal in Singapore, and an elderly Australian tourist couple whose visit-billed at first as a pleasure cruise-may mask a deeper purpose. Investigating the murder is rookie Police Commissioner Raja, who quickly discovers that the savvy and well-connected Aunty Lee can track down clues even better than local law enforcement.
Wise, witty and unusually charming, Aunty Lee's Delights is a spicy mystery about love, friendship and home cooking in Singapore, where money flows freely and people of many religions and ethnicities co-exist peacefully, but where tensions lurk just below the surface, sometimes with deadly results.
My Review
Aunty Lee's Delights is a murder mystery by Ovidia Yu that is centered around Rosie "Aunty" Lee's food shop. Though murder is the main ingredient for the story, there is also a large portion of food, a dollop of Singaporean culture, a dash of familial relationships, a pinch of race relations in Singapore, and just a bit of moral questions about homosexuality stirred into the pot. The end result was delicious.