Morning Star
The second novel in Ovidia Yu’s delightfully charming crime series set in 1930s Singapore, featuring amateur sleuth Su Lin.
What we came to think of as the betel nut affair began in the middle of a tropical thunderstorm in December 1937 . . .
Singapore is agog with the news of King Edward VIII’s abdication to marry American heiress Wallis Simpson. Chen Su Lin, now Chief Inspector Le Froy’s secretarial assistant in Singapore’s newly formed detective unit, still dreams of becoming a journalist and hopes to cover the story when the Hon Victor Glossop announces he is marrying an American widow of his own, Mrs Nicole Covington, in the Colony. But things go horribly wrong when Victor Glossop is found dead, his body covered in bizarre symbols and soaked in betel nut juice.