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Transcript

Welcome to Mystery Books Podcast where you’ll discover new mystery books and authors. I’m USA Today bestselling mystery author Sara Rosett. I’m also a bookworm who specialties in the mystery genre. I love sharing my favorite mystery discoveries  from classic golden age novels to contemporary cozies. This is Season two, Episode five, and it’s all about The Mimosa Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu.

The Mimosa Tree Mystery was published in 2020, and it’s book four of six in the Crown Colony series. I’m going to give you a few details before I read the blurb because since it’s book four the blurb is a little confusing, actually on the book. So it’s set in 1930, Singapore. Su Lin Chen was raised by her grandmother. She was educated at the Mission School, and she’s worked for the acting British governor and then later as a secretarial assistant to Chief Inspector Le Froy, the head of the British Detective Unit in Singapore.

Book Blurb

Here’s the Blurb: A secretive neighbour of the Chens in Japanese Occupied Singapore, is a known collaborator and blackmailer. When he’s murdered in his garden, Su Lin’s uncle is among those rounded up by the Japanese as reprisal. Su Lin is given the opportunity to save her uncle’s life in exchange for using her fluency in languages and knowledge of locals to find the real killer.

So that is a very factual blurb about the book. It doesn’t really capture the tone or Su Lin’s character at all. The tone is… There’s a lot going on and it’s… Very there’s a lot going on that’s dark. Yet Su Lin is a very optimistic character, and she has an inner core of strength, and she’s also very witty. So the book is not depressing. It does show how it would be to live in an occupied country. But yeah, I don’t think the blurb captures that. So I just want to give you a little more than the blurb.

Here’s the first lines, “Do you see the Mirzas?”“Mind you own business!” my grandmother hissed at me. It opens in a dramatic scene.

Story Behind The Story

Okay, the story behind the story and the fun facts about this book. The author Ovidia Yu (I believe that’s how you say her name) is one of Singapore’s best known and most acclaimed writers. She’s had more than 30 plays produced and is also the author of a number of mysteries that have been published in Singapore and India. So that’s from her bio. And I thought that was interesting that she’s from there. A lot of the books that I read, the historical mysteries are written by people who have researched and they don’t have a personal experience of living in these countries that we write about sometimes. She’s from there. I know from the afterward or the introduction of some of her other books that her family members and their stories inspired the series.

Themes and Tropes

Okay, let’s talk about themes. There’s a conflicted feeling of being Torn Between Two Worlds. So Su Lin wants to save her uncle, but she must work for the occupying Japanese force to do that. And she’s also worked for the British. But helping the Japanese kind of stirs up some really difficult feelings for her and questions for her. Is she being disloyal to Singapore in working to save her uncle? And this is also tied to a theme of identity. So Su Lin feels conflicted about this situation she’s put in, but she’s conflicted about a lot of things. She’s multilingual and she’s caught between these two cultures. So this is like a theme of identity. Who is she? Where is she going to find her identity and what path is she going to go down? She’s also the odd one out in her family because she’s thought to be unlucky or cursed because of her limp. She’s had polio, and she’s shunned and looked down on for that, for her physical difficulties. And then also because she’s learned English and worked for the British. People, even in her own family are very suspicious of her and very leery of even being around her because they’re worried that she’s cursed, and that if she’s around their children or around their family, their children will also have the same issues that she had because she’s had polio. So she doesn’t fit in with her family in Singapore, and she doesn’t fit in with the British either because she’s not British. So she’s kind of caught between these two worlds. And that’s a theme not only in this book, but in the whole series.

Okay, let’s talk about some tropes. The trope that first comes to mind for me when I think about this book and this series is that Su Lin is a Brainy Young Woman. She’s clever, and because of her intelligence, or at least partly because of that, she doesn’t fit in. And her intelligence makes her difficult because she doesn’t go along with the accepted view of what she should do or what she should believe or how she should act. She’s also smart enough to be very leery when the Japanese are interested in her and she doesn’t really want them to know about her and how much she can understand, but they pick up on it.

I’m going to read you a quick little snippet here to show you this is the person in charge asking her questions. “You understand Japanese?” “Forgive me, sir. I don’t know anything,” I said in my most respectful, formal Japanese.

And then another person who’s there says, “Ms Chen, is also fluent in Chinese dialects, English and Malay. She knows the local ways and has studied codes and ciphers. Also, her family has connections with the local triads. Her grandfather was a very powerful man. Even the British considered him a threat.”

So that shows you Su Lin’s intelligence. And just the fact that she’s able to pick up these languages, that she’s worked with a British and that her family is very prominent is one of the reasons that they’re very interested in basically using her to solve one of their problems. In many ways, she reminds me of Flavia de Luce from the books by Alan Bradley.

Su Lin is young and no one really understands her, and she’s smart and she’s a loner. And those are also things that apply to Flavia de Luce. So I believe that Su Lin is supposed to be a little bit older than Flavia, but those two characters are very similar.

Another trope in this book is Codes and Ciphers. There’s something that Su Lin has to decode and figure out, some kind of obscure clues that are left that she can figure out because she knows about codes and ciphers.

Let’s see. Another trope is the Who Can You Trust trope. And the answer, of course, in an occupied country during wartime is no one. Anyone can be a spy or a trader. So Singapore is, the way it’s described, is sort of a cultural melting pot. And there’s many cultures, many ethnicities in the story. And there’s all these alliance and rivalries that were because of all these different things that are coming into contact with each other, all these different cultures. It could have been really confusing. But a Ovidia Yu writes the story in a way that I was able to keep the characters and their motivations and the possible double crosses straight. So that was a good thing. I enjoyed, that’s one of the things I enjoy about this series, is it is they look at a different culture and what it would be like to live in Singapore in the 1930s.

Another trope that we have in here is The Odd Fact. It’s this thing that doesn’t quite fit. And we’ve seen this a couple of times in other books. There’s some branches that were found near the body, and Su Lin is the one that realizes that there’s something strange about these. It’s odd that they’re there, and the way that they’re arranged. She has to figure out what they mean.

So who would I recommend The Mimosa Tree Mystery to? The most obvious one would be if you like World War II books, this would fit right in there. There’s lots of World War II books out, and if you enjoy ones that are set in a different location besides England, a lot of them are set in England and France. If you’re looking for something a bit different, then I think this would appeal to you.

If you like a plucky young heroin in a coming of age story, then definitely pick up this book. The whole series shows how Su Lin is growing and changing and learning and becoming a woman.

And also, if you like a more meaty story, there’s some serious themes. It still has a lot of humor, and Su Lin has kind of a dry wit. So if you like that more depth in your story, then this would be a good book for you.

Also, if you like to look other cultures, then this is certainly fascinating. I had no idea about the mindset that a lot of people had about injury and illness and sickness, that it was a curse. And it’s just very different from anything I’ve been exposed to, so it was very interesting and eye opening.

Quotes

Let’s do a quote to end with. So this is when Su Lin has agreed to help solve the murder to help gain her uncle’s freedom. An official has asked if she wants to see the crime scene like the former British Detective Le Froy that she worked with.

He says, “Wouldn’t Le Froy want to see the crime scene if he was investigating a murder?” Of course he would. But I wasn’t Le Froy; I didn’t like murder scenes. And I was tired of being compared to Le Froy, who didn’t have to contend with being Chinese, female, and walking with a polio limp.”

So that gives you a little taste of Su Lin’s humor and her honest assessment of the challenges she’s dealing with.

So my question for you is, what have you learned about other cultures through reading books? I would love to know you can find me on Instagram @SaraRosett, which is no H on Sara and no E on Rosett. Or you can leave a comment in the show notes for this episode, which will be at SaraRosett.Com/mimosa.

I hope this podcast has let you revisit a favorite book or perhaps helped you discover a new author to try.  If you’ve enjoyed this podcast,  I hope you’ll tell a fellow mystery reader. Thanks for listening and see you next time!