This is the second novel in Ovidia Yu's mystery series featuring Su Lin. This novel is set in 1930's Singapore and is filled with the diverse ethnic groups in Singapore at that time. Su Lin is a young woman just starting with her first job working as an assistant in the Detective Shack who gets involved in solving some of the local murders.

The character of Su Lin is wonderful since she can wittily reflect on the personalities of the various groups in Singapore. This reader even began to feel protective of her when she is exposed to some of the cruel racisms of many of the Americans and British she encounters. The enitre series is hisghly recommended. ( )

I’m not sure what to say about this book; it both is and isn’t the type of mystery I normally read. The plotting and setting is totally in my wheelhouse, but I don’t really connect with the characters, and it’s always easier to really get into books where you connect with the characters. The secondary characters are, for me, the most lively and fleshed out of the lot, and I enjoyed their short time on the pages.

The setting of pre-WWII Singapore is a rich setting about which I know nothing, so I find that part of the reading compellingly interesting. Yu does a spectacular job bringing the monsoon season to life, as well as the city itself.

There are two reveals in the plot of The Betel Nut Tree Mystery, and unfortunately, both were transparent. I knew the identity of the columnist after the first few chapters, and I guessed who the murderer was soon thereafter. This unfortunate transparency wasn’t enough to stop me reading the book, obviously, but it did ding my rating.

In spite of this post making it sound like I only found the book to be ‘meh’, I’m looking forward to reading the next book; even if the mysteries themselves aren’t perfect, their setting and time are, and I want to see what happens next.

I read this book off my TBR as part of Halloween Bingo 2020, for the International Women of Mystery square.

The Betel Nut Tree Mystery is the second book in Ovidia Yu's highly enjoyable Crown Colony historical mystery series set in 1930s Singapore. Written as a memoir, Chen Su Lin recounts her adventures as a young woman who begins as a governess to the governor's children and now is the secretarial assistant in the newly formed detective unit of the police. I'm glad this is a memoir because one of the menacing elements in the book is the growing power of Japan in the area, a very real and present danger that the government of Singapore is ignoring, so it's very good to know that Su Lin survives that.

The books are told in Su Lin's voice, and she draws me right into the story with her observations and wry humor. This young woman had polio as a child and as a result has one leg that's shorter than the other-- something that marks her as very bad luck to traditional Chinese. Fortunately, Ah Ma, Su Lin's grandmother, pays no attention to this and has made sure that Su Lin has gotten a good education. Su Lin originally thought her indomitable grandmother saved her just to be perverse, but she's slowly learning the truth as the series progresses. The Chen family in Singapore has many fingers in many pies, most of them illegal, and that not only adds spice to the story, but it also gives readers the Chinese viewpoint of what's happening in Singapore. It doesn't hurt that Su Lin can get help from them in an investigation from time to time either.

The author's portrait of rich, entitled Americans is brilliant and reminds me of some things that are happening today. What's even better, Ovidia Yu can take stereotypical portraits like that of Nicole Covington, spoiled brat extraordinaire, and Su Lin's best friend starstruck and romance hungry Parshanti, and give them depth, make them real.

The mystery is a good one, although if you have a finely tuned slime meter like mine, you'll be able to deduce the killer's identity. That doesn't matter much, however. What does matter is that Ovidia Yu's Crown Colony historical series is equal parts fun and informative, with a main character who's so very easy to care about. Bring on book three! ( )

The story begins with a murder in the Farquhar Hotel, which seems to be a reference to the famous Raffles Hotel. There was a colonial administrator named Farquhar, but I’m not sure he had a hotel named after him. Regardless, the Farquhar Hotel is the best hotel in Singapore, and not the place one would expect to find a guest murdered, but Victor Glossop is most assuredly dead.
Suspicion falls on his fiancee Nichole Covington, but Chen Su Lin disagrees and identifies other possibilities. A well written, fun read. ( )