Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers Review

Another hilarious literary success for Jesse Q. Sutanto. The charm of Dial A for Aunties continues in Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers with an appropriate puzzling and silly death.

Vera is living my dream life living above her tea shop with amazing tea and small bits of social interaction, only with close friends and family. She cannot admit it to herself yet, but she is bored with her life as it is. She jumps at the chance to investigate like SCI when a man dies mysteriously in her shop overnight. Convinced he’s a bad man who has been murdered, she gathers her suspects to interrogate and matchmake them — of course! Vera creates a found family — one of my favorite tropes! — with the deceased’s wife, daughter, brother, and assorted enemies. Their interactions are heartwarming and unhinged and I was dangerously close to cry-laughing at work.

I appreciate Sutanto’s keeping her works relevant to current politics and discourse. Vera Wong grapples with the fallouts from NFT scams against artists and gig-economy exploitations of immigrant labor, even in “office jobs” that are not usually conceived of as gig work. I would not consider myself an expert on art economics or the intricacies of NFTs and digital art ownership. I love learning new things while laughing.

I am already a big Sutanto fan and luckily she has quite a few books out for me to dive into, hopefully soon.