by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Read by Eunice Wong
WHAT IT’S ABOUT
A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.
Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady—ah, lady of a certain age—who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.
Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.
What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?
| Length | 10 hours and 41 minutes |
|---|---|
| Author | Jesse Q. Sutanto |
| Narrator | Eunice Wong |
| Release Date | March 14, 2023 |
| Publisher | Penguin Audio |
What Others Are Saying
“Vera Wong is my new favorite sleuth! This book is comfort food for the soul. Every chapter is bursting with wisdom and heart.”—Elle Cosimano, USA Today bestselling author of Finlay Donovan Is Killing It
“Following the success of Dial A for Aunties, Sutanto is back with another charmer, this time following the exploits of orthopedic-sneaker-wearing Vera Wong Zhuzhu, who finds a dead body in her Chinatown tea shop. When the police investigation isn’t thorough enough for her liking, she concocts a plan to find the murderer, aided by a locked flash drive she found on the body and stashed away for safekeeping. Sutanto excels at skewering with affection, and an earnest hilarity shines through in this entertaining whodunit.”—The Washington Post
“I’ll promise you this: you’ve never met a character quite like Vera Wong, and once she gets under your skin, you’ll never forget her, nor will you want to. Vera is a force, and so is author Jesse Q. Sutanto, spinning a compulsively readable story with intrigue, humor, and above all, heart. Get ready for this cast of loveable characters to feel like family, pulling you into their beautifully interwoven lives and the mystery linking them together. Smart, wholly original, and brimming with emotion, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice For Murderers feels like the warmest hug that you’ll never want to end.”—Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, author of The Girls Are All So Nice Here
“Step aside, Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes! Vera Wong is on the case! A murder mystery with a found-family story at its heart, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers is delightful, compelling, and laugh-out-loud funny. I couldn’t put this book down!”—Jenny L. Howe, author of The Make-Up Test
Ninety-nine percent of the time I go into a book cold, meaning I never read the synopsis, I only know the title and the genre. As I started listening to this story about Vera Wong, a little Asian lady who owns a tea shop, the only thing I imagined was that I was about to listen to a cozy mystery, which I don’t often read or listen to. And, I have to admit, I have a bit of a preconceived notion that cozy mysteries aren’t my thing.
But it only took minutes of listening to the narrator, Eunice Wong, for me to be reeled into this story full of unique characters. Vera Wong Zhuzhu is a 60-year-old with set habits. One of which is starting her day at 4:30 a.m. with a walk and a text to her son.
But one morning Vera enters her teahouse from her upstairs home to find a dead body on the floor. She calls the police, of course, however, they don’t see things the way she does. She sees a homicide while the police see him as someone who broke in and overdosed.
So, what’s a little old lady to do but solve this mystery, especially since her tea house isn’t busy and in actuality, it’s slowly passing away too. And so the story begins . . .
I can’t express to you enough how the narrator brought this touching story to life. Would it be good as a book, sure, but the audiobook was all about bringing life to it.
While the mystery was interesting, the longer I listened the more I cared about each character, and the mystery was taking a back seat. Sutanto fully developed each character into someone I could imagine and care for. Even the teas Vera put together and the food she made had me (seriously) whipping up some Oolong tea to sip as I listened.
You may have noticed that I’ve left out the section titled “My Concerns.” That’s because there weren’t any.
Final Thoughts
This is a definite must-lISTEN to if you like clean, feel-good stories with fully developed characters.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jesse Q. Sutanto is the award-winning, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Well, That Was Unexpected, The Obsession, and Theo Tan and the Fox Spirit. The film rights to her women’s fiction, Dial A for Aunties, was bought by Netflix in a competitive bidding war, and the TV rights to Vera Wong was bought by Warner Bros, with Oprah and Mindy Kaling attached to produce. She has a master’s degree in creative writing from Oxford University, though she hasn’t found a way of saying that without sounding obnoxious. Jesse lives in Indonesia with her husband, her two daughters, and her ridiculously large extended family.
ABOUT THE NARRATOR
Eunice Wong | actor+narrator
“The job is not to read the words. The job is to transport the listener.”
My parents are from Hong Kong and I was born in Toronto, so I’m “audiobook-fluent” in Cantonese, French, & Mandarin, with a smattering of Russian, picked up when I lived in Kyrgyzstan with nomads, a dash of Italian from a teen obsession with Puccini, and a splash of Lakota (long story). My Canadian accent was poonded oot of me at Juilliard, but it’s still available on request, eh.
Having lived in Manhattan for years as an actor, home is now Princeton NJ with my family, which includes two retired racing greyhounds living their best peanut-buttery lives.
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