The Feng Shui Detective

An Australian 17 year old from Sydney, looking for somewhere to spend her summer holidays is not really Mr Wong's idea of an ideal assistant, particularly when he doesn't really need one. Not only is she female, loud, not Chinese, but she speaks a language he doesn't understand. C.F. Wong is persuaded to take Jo McQuinnie on as a favour to her father, who is by way of being a client.

Mr Wong is a geomancer, a feng shui expert, whose Singapore operation is very small, just two rooms, and just himself and his secretary Winnie Lim. Jo McQuinnie wants to shadow Mr Wong, to spend her summer observing him, and learning about the practice of feng shui.

THE FENG SHUI DETECTIVE is actually a collection of 9 short stories drawn together by their show more common thread of Mr Wong and his new assistant. They range various locations in South East Asia, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Delhi, and Ho Chi Minh City, providing expert feng shui advice, at the same time solving mysteries from murders to real estate scams.

The reader is introduced to Nury Vittachi's quirky sense of humour early on:

The neighbourhood was temporarily woken at seven o'clock by a minor emergency: a small fire in the building opposite, apparently caused by a joss stick falling out of a shrine dedicated to the God of Safety, according to the watchman. Sirens shook the buildings until a fireman arrived to find an elderly Buddhist nun had stamped out the fire with her bare feet - hard calloused hooves which were quite undamaged by the harsh usage.

Jo and Mr Wong are an unlikely team, she a lively foil to his more sedate approach to life, and the combination works. Very different style of books I know, but I couldn't help thinking of Colin Cotterill's Dr Siri Paiboun in THIRTY THREE TEETH and other titles.

The structure of the book is interesting too. Each short story is preceded by an old Chinese tale, often related to the practice of feng shui. On the following page is Mr Wong's modern distillation of the old tale. The short story that follows is related somehow to this distillation.

If you know nothing about feng shui are you going to enjoy THE FENG SHUI DETECTIVE? Well, having read the book, my knowledge of feng shui is still at best rudimentary. But I found each story posed an intriguing puzzle. Vittachi pokes fun at a variety of things: Mr Wong's attempts to understand his young assistant's language, the food presented to Jo, the ways in which the practice of feng shui is used, while still giving the reader glimpses of local culture. show less

Though I was tempted to ditch this book for its flat characters and hyperbolic plot, I read it to the last page because I'm a sucker for cross-cultural themes and understated humor. Though I wouldn't recommend this book to my friends, it hits the middle-aged-woman-on-vacation demographic very close to center.

Mr. Wong is a feng shui consultant in Hong Kong who occasionally uses his skills for more than just interior decoration. In this particular book, he finds himself looking into multiple odd cases, including an apparent kidnapping, a ghost at a dentist's office, and a young lady who various psychic readings indicate that she will soon die.

The publisher's description makes it sound like that last case is Wong's primary focus throughout the book, but it actually takes quite a while before he becomes directly involved (unless I zoned out and missed something, which is honestly possible). One of the biggest issues I had with this book was the way it meandered, despite several supposedly time-sensitive issues.

Wong was "assisted" by his utterly show more useless office administrator, Winnie Lim, and his young intern, Joyce McQuinnie. A few pages after I wondered why Wong put up with Winnie, the author provided an answer (she'd made herself indispensable with an office filing system only she understood), but after her third or fourth refusal to answer the office phone, I decided replacing Winnie would probably be worth reorganizing all the files.

Joyce was better, once the author allowed readers to learn more about her from her own POV rather than Wong's very "Westernized young people are incomprehensible" POV. She was adrift and didn't really feel like she belonged anywhere. Although her father supported her financially (which she later realized was a good deal better than nothing), he was otherwise pretty absent from her life. Wong inadvertently gave Joyce an emotional boost when he gave her his kidnapping case (mostly because he didn't think it was a real kidnapping and he just wanted it out of his hair) since she knew several of the people involved. I could see Wong and Joyce's relationship being a big part of this series' draw later on - their difficulty communicating with each other was occasionally amusing and could be even more appealing if it was combined with Wong purposely becoming a supportive figure in Joyce's life.

For the most part, the mysteries didn't really interest me, even as the connections between some of them were revealed. I did, however, enjoy the way Wong's feng shui knowledge was worked into things (although I don't know enough about feng shui to know if it was accurate) - he tended to pay close attention to architectural plans and other information that might indicate the location of water pipes and other features important to his work. Some of those parts were so practical that it was somewhat of a shock how badly Wong reacted to the Sydney Opera House and its supposedly terrible feng shui later on in the book. (And now I have questions, because some googling indicates that feng shui principles inspired the building's architecture, but the things I've seen mentioned only slightly overlap with what Vittachi brings up in this book.)

I don't see myself going out of my way to read more of this series, but if I happen to come across another one of its books, I might try it just to see if Wong and Joyce learn to mesh better.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Mr Wong is a breath of fresh air to the mystery genre. He is a feng shui master who just happens to solve mysteries while giving his clients interior decorating advice as a geomancer; its all about noticing negative chi energy accompanied by simple observations. All Mr Wong wants to do is quietly write a book on oriental wisdom, snippets of which can be found preceding each chapter. Unfortunately his quiet life is shattered when he is forced to take on an assistant, Jo McQuinnie, the daughter of a friend of his boss and a typical western teenager – loud, bubbly and speaking incomprehensible colloquial English.

THE FENG SHUI DETECTIVE is the first in a series of books starring Wong and Jo. Rather than one single plot line through the show more book there is a progression of different cases, each with its accompanying starter of Feng Shui history. It is a perfect blend of fun and philosophy, a blend of east meets west and each becomes the richer for it. Based in Singapore, the two unlikely partners travel to Malaysia, India, Hong Kong and finish up in a monastery in Vietnam as they take on the different cases. Wong tries to come to grips with with mastery of the English language through Jo, but his attempts to understand Jo’s lingo or mimic it are comical. His initial scepticism of how a young, loud woman could be of any use to him is understandable. But his opinion slowly changes from apprehension to approval as they work through each successive case, each contributing to solving the mystery.

This is a wonderful, intelligent and very funny mystery which will appeal to a broad range of readers who will learn many helpful feng shui tips along the way. show less

A most enjoyable collection of amusing, entertaining and intruiging little mysteries. The culture clash aspect is well-exploited, although I found teenage assistant Joyce a little messy as a character -- I was sure she was from the US at the start due to the variety of English she spoke but it was later revealed she is English. Her voice just missed the mark of ringing true to me. That is a very small nitpick, however, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend these short stories as a pleasing, well-written, light-hearted diversion.

A marvelous mix of Asian themes and detective fiction, with a marvelous overlay of droll humour. When you hire the Feng Shui detective he will solve the crime and reorganise your house. For a fee of course.

Based in Singapore, with a cast of interesting characters from different cultures – Chinese, Malaysian, British, and Australian - the humour is delightful in this novel. Much of the humour comes from language and different interpretations of cultures and words. (It is very similar to the communication between IT developers that happen every day, as the IT world becomes more and more international.) The mysteries being solved – yes, more than one - are also well thought-out and plotted. A delightful novel.