Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

I picked up this book on a week when I wanted something light. My reading pile had gotten heavy with long literary novels where everyone is sad in a tasteful house, and I wanted a mystery that would move and make me laugh. A friend said this one was about a sixty year old Chinese widow who solves a murder out of her teashop and adopts all her suspects along the way. That sounded exactly right.

The setup is simple. Vera lives above her shop, Vera Wangs World Famous Teahouse, in San Francisco Chinatown. Business is slow. Her son Tilly rarely answers her texts. She fills her days with tea, neighborhood gossip, internet snooping on Tilly, and strong opinions about everyone. Then one morning she comes downstairs and finds a man dead on the floor in the middle of the shop.

That dead man turns out to be Marshall Chen. The police think he broke in during the night and died after taking something he should not have taken. Vera thinks otherwise. She pockets the flash drive she finds clutched in his hand, calls the police as a good citizen should, and then starts her own hunt. Her logic is pure Vera. Killers return to the scene of the crime, so she just needs to watch who shows up at the shop and figure out which one of them did it.

It works, partly because Vera is clever and partly because people underestimate her. Before long four strangers are circling her shop, each with a shaky story. There is Julia, Marshall's anxious wife and mother to a small girl named Emma. There is Oliver, Marshall's twin brother, quieter and sadder and carrying his own guilt. There is Riki, a young Indonesian programmer on a work visa who says he is a journalist. There is Sana, a young artist who says she hosts a true crime podcast. All of them want that flash drive. All of them are lying about something.

I will say upfront that if you come to this book for a tight puzzle with clues and red herrings laid out fair and square, you may feel a little cheated. The mystery matters, but it is not really the point. The point is Vera feeding people until they tell her the truth, and what happens when five lonely people start showing up every day for tea they did not know they needed.

The Widow Above The Teashop

Vera is sixty, widowed, and living in the flat above the shop she ran with her late husband. Sutanto gives her a very specific daily rhythm. She wakes early. She airs the shop. She judges the neighborhood. She makes tea with strong views about which tea fixes which problem. Wulong for focus. Chrysanthemum to cool down. A dark brick tea when someone needs grounding. She texts Tilly articles about health and jobs and suitable partners, and then she gets annoyed when he replies with one word or not at all.

I loved how physical Vera feels on the page. She is short. She moves fast. She wears an apron with pockets full of useful things. She cooks huge amounts of food without asking if you are hungry, because in her world hunger is assumed and refusal is a minor insult to be ignored. Her English swings between blunt commands and sudden softness, especially with children. She watches a lot of cop shows and believes she has picked up real skills, which is both funny and a little true. She notices when someone has not slept. She notices who eats and who only pushes food around.

What gives the opening weight is how lonely Vera is without quite saying so. She tells herself she is fine alone. She is busy. She has standards. But she keeps Tillys childhood room ready. She saves leftovers nobody will eat. She talks to herself while cleaning. Sutanto does not push this. She just lets you see the extra dumpling Vera makes, the second cup she pours out of habit, the way Vera lingers by the window when school lets out. It made me root for her before the body even shows up.

A Dead Man Found Before Opening

The morning Vera finds Marshall is written as shock mixed with practicality. She thinks at first that someone has dumped junk in her shop. Then she sees it is a man. Then she sees he is not breathing. She does what she thinks a sensible person should do. She checks for signs of life, she calls the police, and then, in a decision that sets the whole plot in motion, she slides the flash drive out of his hand and puts it in her apron.

I laughed at that moment and also groaned, because it is so wrong and so Vera. Her reasoning is that the police will bungle it. They will file it away. They will not look closely. She, on the other hand, has time, eyes, and a shop the killer will have to revisit. She is not entirely wrong about being overlooked. The responding officers treat it as a sad but simple case. A man broke in, perhaps to sleep or steal, and took drugs that killed him. No forced entry worth chasing. No reason to dig. Case closed enough.

Sutanto uses that police shrug to open up space for Vera. If the authorities cared more, Vera would be a nuisance to be removed. Because they care less, she becomes the only person paying attention. That is both satisfying and, if I am being fair, a little convenient. Real police would not leave a dead body in a shop with so little follow up, and real evidence tampering would bring bigger trouble than Vera gets. But cozy mysteries run on this kind of permission. You accept that the professionals step back so the amateur can step forward. Once I accepted it, I stopped fighting it.

Suspects Gathered Over Tea

Julia arrives first in emotional terms, even if the order of visits blurs. She is young, tired, and trying to hold herself together for her daughter Emma. Her marriage to Marshall had curdled. He belittled her cooking and her art and her friends until she felt small in her own house. The night before he died, he told her he was leaving. Then he turned up dead in a teashop. Julia does not know whether to grieve or feel relief, and that confusion makes her look guilty to anyone watching coldly. Vera watches her warmly instead, which changes everything.

Oliver is harder to read at first. As Marshalls identical twin, he shares the face but not the swagger. He writes, or wants to write, and he carries the particular ache of loving someone you also resent. He shows up at the shop asking questions that sound like a brother trying to understand, and Vera clocks him immediately as family. Twins notice things, she figures, and so does she. Oliver eats when Vera tells him to, which is Veras shorthand for a good heart. He also lies about why he is really there, which Vera files away.

Riki was my favorite of the four when the book started. He is Indonesian, smart, polite to a fault, and living with the low hum fear of someone whose visa depends on staying out of trouble. Marshall hired him to build a tool that could scrape and game attention around digital tokens, then paid him less than promised and left him exposed. Riki tells Vera he is a reporter because reporter sounds safer than broke programmer who did gray area work for a dead man. He is anxious in a way I recognized. He rehearses conversations. He apologizes too much. Vera sees through him in about a minute and decides to fatten him up.

Sana is pricklier. She introduces herself as a podcaster chasing a story, which is partly cover and partly true in the way young creative people hustle. She is an artist with a sharp tongue and a bruised history with men who take up too much room. She does not want mothering. She gets it anyway. Her pages have more snap than the others, and her suspicion of Vera feels earned. Why is this old lady asking so many questions. Why does she keep feeding me. What does she want from me. The answer, of course, is company, though Vera would never put it that plainly.

A Meddling Investigation With Snacks

Veras method is not detection so much as absorption. She brings people close until they leak. She cooks the food of her childhood and theirs, or what she imagines theirs might be, and she watches what loosens. A pork belly stew. Turnip cakes. Congee with century egg for the brave. She pairs teas with moods whether the drinker wants it or not. If you are jumpy, you get something calming. If you are sullen, you get something bracing. She is not above eavesdropping, following, searching bags when backs are turned, or inviting herself along to places she was not asked to go.

I found these chapters very funny, and also a little uncomfortable in a productive way. Vera tampers with evidence more than once. She withholds the flash drive. She tells suspects they are suspects to their faces, which no sensible investigator would do. She tries to set two of them up romantically because she has decided they suit each other, with zero regard for timing or consent. It is easy to laugh because Sutanto writes it with such bounce. It is also worth pausing on, because in real life this behavior would be intrusive and possibly harmful. The book knows it. Other characters push back, especially Sana, and Vera sometimes hears them and sometimes steamrolls on.

What The Teashop Confessions Reveal

As the flash drive mystery sharpens, so does the picture of Marshalls business. He was far from an unlucky stranger who wandered into the wrong shop. He spent his days hustling in a world of online hype, flipping stories and tokens and connections, promising people more than he delivered. Rikis bot was part of that machine. So were deals Oliver half understood and Sana had reason to hate. Julia knew the least and paid the most, because she lived with the version of Marshall who came home and needed someone small to feel big against.

The confessions land because they are tied to food and work, not to speeches. Julia relaxes while folding dumplings and says more than she meant to. Riki talks while fixing Veras ancient router and feeling useful for the first time in weeks. Sana opens up while sketching Emma at the back table, distracted enough to be honest. Oliver talks on a walk to buy groceries, side by side instead of face to face, which is often easier for men raised not to cry in kitchens. I believed these moments. People tell the truth with their hands busy.

Emma deserves a paragraph of her own. She is small, observant, and drawn to Vera with the instant trust kids sometimes give strong grandparents. Vera, who aches for grandchildren Tilly has not provided, latches onto Emma hard. Some readers may find this a touch sentimental. I did, a little. There are scenes where Emma calls Vera grandma very quickly and Vera melts, and you can feel Sutanto reaching for your heart. It worked on me anyway, partly because Emma is written as a real child who spills and interrupts and asks blunt questions, not as a prop. She changes the temperature of every scene she enters.

Without spoiling the exact mechanics, I will say the final reveal reframes Marshalls death as less of a lone act and more of a tangle. Several people took steps that night that could have harmed him or hidden harm. Only one chain of choices actually ended him, and it comes from family history rather than stranger danger. The motive reaches back to parents and favoritism and money, and to a father who decided he had watched enough. When Vera learns the full truth, she has to choose between the law as written and the loyalty she feels to her new flock. The book lets her sit in that discomfort instead of rushing past it.

Found Family, Sharp Edges Included

By the last third, the teashop group has become something none of them planned. They have inside jokes. They have assigned seats. They argue about music and tea strength and who ate the last egg tart. Vera fusses over Julia like a daughter, scolds Riki and Oliver like sons, spars with Sana like a worthy opponent who might become a friend, and worships Emma like the grandchild she has been waiting for. It is sweet. It is also, to the books credit, not smooth.

Vera remains Vera. She gives advice nobody asked for about sleep and posture and dating and cholesterol. She assumes she knows what Riki should do about his visa stress, what Sana should do about her art, what Julia should do about work, what Oliver should do about his book. Sometimes she is right. Sometimes she steamrolls. Sutanto lets the younger characters name that. Sana especially calls out when care tips into control. Julia learns to say no as well as thank you. Those small boundaries keep the found family from turning cloying. Love here includes friction.

If there is a weak edge to the warmth, it is that Marshall himself never quite becomes human. We hear he was abusive and flashy and careless, but mostly through summary. That makes it easier to rally around the survivors, which is the books goal, yet it also softens the moral question at the end. It is easier to forgive bending the rules when the victim is drawn as someone few will miss. I wished for one scene that showed his charm intact, so the loss felt more mixed and Veras choice felt heavier. As written, the ending leans toward comfort, which suits the genre but takes a little weight off.

Still, I closed the book feeling fed in the way Vera would want. I cared who got seconds. I cared who would watch Emma when Julia needed a night off. I cared whether Oliver would finish his draft and whether Riki would find steadier work and whether Sana would keep coming back even after she stopped needing an excuse. The murder gets solved. The family, for lack of a better word, gets chosen. For a 2023 Berkley cozy of 368 pages that launches a series, that is exactly the promise. First in a series needs to solve its case and leave doors open, and this one does both without cheating either job.

Would I hand it to a friend. Yes, with a note. If you want a ruthless puzzle, look elsewhere. If you want to spend time with a fierce older woman who will feed you, scold you, snoop through your bag, and then stand between you and trouble, pull up a chair. Bring an appetite. Expect to laugh. Expect to feel a sting when Vera checks her phone and Tilly has not replied. Expect to argue a little with what she does at the end, and to love her anyway. I did. I will be back for the second visit.