San Francisco

Jesse Sutanto: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

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This charming, hilarious, sweet and beautiful book is a real breath of fresh air.  Vera Wong owns a tiny and underappreciated tea store in San Francisco.  She’s a widow, and her son is a busy professional, but that does not stop Vera from texting him instructions about sleep, food, and anything else she feels is important.  The tea shop is dusty and lonely and most days Vera just has one customer, an older man who leaves after 10 minutes to get back to his wife with Alzheimer’s.

Then one morning (very very early, as Vera likes to get up at 4:30), Vera comes downstairs – she lives above the shop – to start out on her morning walk when she discovers a dead man in the middle of her floor.  She calls the police, but as she waits she decides to make tea for them and to trace the outline of the body with a sharpie.  The police really don’t want her help and don’t seem to take the dead man too seriously.  As Vera is sure it’s murder, she decides to investigate on her own. read more

Susan Cox: The Man in the Microwave Oven

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This book will be published November 3.

My husband hates the word “plopped.”  I feel the same about “quirky” a ubiquitous word used in describing many, many cozies.  But sometimes “quirky” (just like “plopped”) actually applies.  In the case of Susan Cox’s Theo Bogart mysteries, I was surprised at almost every turn, and delightfully so, by the array of characters and situations presented by this obviously talented new writer. Quirky does apply.   

This is book two in this series, the first one winning the Minotaur/Mystery Writers of America First Crime novel award, and it’s been a long time coming. The first novel, The Man on the Washing Machine, was published in 2015. Theophania Bogart is a poor little rich girl.  She’s fled a terrible family tragedy back home in England and landed in San Francisco, where she’s established a comfortable new life for herself.  read more