{"id":1902,"date":"2022-10-24T01:26:29","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T01:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=1902"},"modified":"2023-04-02T22:56:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T22:56:04","slug":"vera-wongs-unsolicited-advice-for-murderers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=1902","title":{"rendered":"Vera Wong\u2019s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A wonderful, moving stand-alone in which Sutanto, author of the Aunties series, is at the absolute top of her game. Sixty-year-old Vera Wong is lonely, although she\u2019d never admit it. A widower, she\u2019s the mother of a lawyer consumed by work\u2014he rarely returns her texts, even though she offers such good advice!\u2014 and her days consist of a 6 am brisk walk through San Francisco\u2019s Chinatown\u2014she needs to get her steps in!\u2014then opening her tea shop which, on the best of days, has only one customer. Extraordinarily opinionated, quite a bit eccentric, yet utterly charming, Vera\u2019s voice is captivating. But readers will be completely beguiled after she comes downstairs one morning (she lives above the shop) and discovers a young man lying on the floor. She does call the cops, and tries her very, very best not to disturb the crime scene, but not before prying a flash drive out of the man\u2019s very dead hands. Then the novel takes off as Vera\u2014believing the cops are incapable of solving the crime\u2014assumes the role of detective. In the process, she befriends several young people, including both the victim\u2019s wife and his brother, and while Vera still considers them all to be prime suspects, she can\u2019t help but care for them. Initially this protagonist may seem like the clich\u00e9 of the dominating Chinese mom. But Vera, it turns out, is pretty damaged herself, much like her new, thirty-something friends. <strong>Come for the mystery, but stay for the healing. One of the best cozies I\u2019ve read this year<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A wonderful, moving stand-alone in which Sutanto, author of the Aunties series, is at the absolute top of her game. Sixty-year-old Vera Wong is lonely, although she\u2019d never admit it.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[71,55,164,53,56],"class_list":["post-1902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-asian-american","tag-mystery-detective","tag-star","tag-women","tag-women-sleuths"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Vera-Wongs...-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Vera-Wongs...-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}