Ovidia Yu’s The Frangipani Tree Mystery
I was in the mood for a cozy mystery now that it feels like fall, and wanted to start this series about a young woman working for the police in Singapore in the 1930s, but this first volume is just the meandering road that gets her the job. She’s mission educated and on the verge of being assigned to work as an assistant/housekeeper to the local (British) police inspector, but ends up working as the nanny to the acting governor’s mentally impaired daughter after her previous nanny dies a mysterious death. The characters here are pretty underdeveloped, partially to try and throw in some red herrings, but the plot is pretty obvious. The writing itself is weirdly inconsistent and repetitive. The setting is interesting and I was interested in the protagonist and her friends and family (who are barely in this) but this book was not a satisfying mystery at all. B/B-.
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