From the book jacket: After losing her husband, Rosie Lee could have become one of Singapore’s “tai tai,” an idle rich lady. Instead, she is building a culinary empire from her restaurant, Aunty Lee’s Delights, where spicy Singaporean meals are graciously served to locals and tourists alike. But when a body is found in one of Singapore’s tourist havens and one of her guests fails to show at a dinner party, Aunty Lee knows that the two events are likely connected.

My reactions:
I had hopes for this first in a new cozy mystery series. I’ve visited Singapore and love the cuisine. And I love cozy mysteries with fun amateur sleuths. But this one just fell flat for me.

I though Yu was trying too hard to craft a complicated mystery and NOT doing enough to endear Aunty Lee and her trusty sidekick/maid, Nina, to the reader. Senior Staff Sergeant Salim seems way too inexperienced and easily cowed by Aunty, but he is a good foil for her efforts to solve the crime on her own.

The other characters were just ridiculous … though I did love how Aunty thought of her stepdaughter-in-law; “Silly-na” perfectly describes Selina!

And there was something off-putting for me about the lesbian characters and theme. Perhaps I don’t have sufficient understanding of the Singaporean culture to appreciate what Yu was doing by introducing these characters and their storyline. ( )

Overall, it was an interesting read which reminded me a lot of Miss Marple. I wonder if Ovidia Yu had been inspired by Agatha Christie in this instance.

Here's my full review:
http://www.sholee.net/2019/01/mpov-aunty-lees-delights-singaporean.html ( )

cozy murder mystery set in Singapore. I only read to page 24, but aside from a hastily explained italicized term every once in a while, I wasn't getting that much local flavor, not even from the (too brief) descriptions of the food. This is also one of those "cozy" mysteries, which seems to mean that characters putter about for a while and I get bored. Not to say that there needs to be more butchering of bodies a la the Scandinavian fictional psychopaths, but the style of writing doesn't pique my interest. ( )

This was my second venture into the Aunty Lee series, an enjoyable, not overly complex cosy. It gives good background for the later novel that I had already read. Apart from the murder mystery there is interesting commentary on life in Singapore. In style it reminded me just a little of Alexander McCall Smith's No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

My book group have suggested I also try the Crown Colony series.

Listings from Fantastic Fiction

Singaporean Mystery
1. Aunty Lee's Delights (2013)
2. Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (2014)
3. Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge (2016)
4. Meddling and Murder (2017)

Crown Colony
1. The Frangipani Tree Mystery (2017)
2. The Betel Nut Tree Mystery (2018)
3. The Paper Bark Tree Mystery (2019)
4. The Mimosa Tree Mystery (2020)
5. The Cannonball Tree Mystery (2021) ( )

I have been reading more cozy mysteries lately and am particularly intrigued by those set in less familiar environs or peopled with less common characters. Ovidia Yu's Aunty Lee's Delights, set in Singapore, populated with characters from many different nationalities, and with an older, female, amateur sleuth fits that bill all the way around.

Rosie "Aunty" Lee is a wealthy widow. She keeps busy by running a cafe serving delicious homemade food during the day. On occasion, she will open the cafe for a wine dinner, cooking her "delights" and leaving the wine portion of the evening to be run by her stepson Mark and his wife Selina, called Silly-Nah by Aunty. As the story opens, newly weds discover an unidentified woman's body on the beach on Sentosa Island. Aunty Lee is intrigued by the murder and very curious about the identity of the woman. What she doesn't know, is just how close to home the investigation will hit. At the wine dinner that night, two women are missing: a friend of Selina's who had promised to help out with the evening and a young woman who is a family friend's daughter. Another young woman interrupts the evening looking for Selina's friend and desperately afraid that the unidentified body is that of the woman she's come to Singapore to see, the Lee's family friend's daughter. Aunty is determined to find out the fate of the two missing women and to uncover the secrets her wine dinner guests are clearly hiding. She doesn't obstruct the police but rather assists them when she can, using her own instincts and the connections her Filipino maid Nina has.

The mystery is culinarily rich and the glimpses into Singapore food and culture that Yu offers the reader are enticing. Her Aunty Lee is nosy but smart, a busybody with heart. She is both loyal and astute. Perhaps because this is the first in a series, there are a lot of characters introduced, most of whom have the potential to be returning characters. They, the secondary characters, are less fully fleshed out though, perhaps with the exception of Nina, and lean a little to the stereotypical side. The mystery here is not so much in who the woman is but more in the motivation for killing her (and who the killer is, of course). The plot overall is a bit choppy and the coincidence in the end is a bit much but the book is generally appealing so it's forgivable. What is a bit harder to forgive is the uneven pacing, with the story being drawn out only to find a quick and easy wrap-up with a somewhat muddled denouement in the end. Pleasing enough as a way to spend a couple of hours, this won't set the world on fire but for anyone searching, like I was, for a different culture and different characters this might fit the bill. ( )