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AUNTY LEE'S DEADLY SPECIALS
by Ovidia Yu
William Morrow, September 2014
360 pages
$14.99
ISBN: 0062338323


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Dramatis personae: Rosie Lee, caterer, neighborhood noseybody, ethnic Peranakan (part-Chinese); Zhao Liang, a missing young man from the People's Republic of China (PRC) who had come to Singapore to donate a kidney for some spending money; Nina, Aunty's stern Filipina maid; Cherril Lim-Peters, Aunty Lee's assistant; Mark, Aunty Lee's cheapskate stepson; GraceFaith Ang, the scheming administrative assistant at Sung Law; Mabel Sung, founder of Sung Law; her daughter Sharon, on whom the law office would devolve upon her mother's retirement; Leonard, Mabel's mean-spirited, bullying, bedridden son; Henry, Mabel's husband who despises their son; Edmond Yong, an incompetent-seeming doctor; Salim Mawar, inspector at the neighborhood police post; his new partner Neha Panchal.

Location: the Sung mansion during a celebration catered by our heroes, Aunty Lee and Cherril. Guests arrive, Aunty Lee dishes up a big plate for poor Leonard, upstairs in bed, taking especial care to include her famous dish, chicken buah keluak. It is only a short while later that both Mabel and Leonard are dead, right in the midst of their meal. The plot unwinds as nosey Aunty Lee smiles and gossips her way into a Never Say Die, a prayer group where members seem to have had rather a lot of medical enhancements. The police, following procedure, shut down Aunty's catering business. She visits a gay man whose partner has gone missing, asks around about a doctor's office that burned down, and harasses the police until her business has been cleared.

AUNTY LEE'S DEADLY SPECIALS is a charming read for a non-Singaporean. Through Salim Mawar (Muslim), Neha Panchal (Hindu), Nina (Spanish Filipina), Aunty herself (Peranakan), and others, readers are treated to all the layers and ethnicities of Singaporean society, their prejudices, habits of mind, and loyalties; it is this factor of Ovidia Yu's new novel, as much as the unravelling of the mysterious deaths, that gives the work its charm and readability.

If I were to speak with the book's publishers, I would say, Remember when we had editors? They often checked things like spelling, as well as removed events that had already been reported in the previous chapter.

§ Cathy Downs, Professor of English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, teaches American literature and appreciates the well-turned whodunit.

Reviewed by Cathy Downs, November 2014

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