Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien (A Noodle Shop Mystery, #1) * * *
This is the first book in the Noodle Shop Mystery series, set in Asia Village in Cleveland, a small shopping plaza filled with Asian owned businesses. Herbal shops, restaurants, gift stores. It is, without question, the strongest element of the novel. You can see it clearly. Fluorescent lit corridors. Steam rising from bamboo baskets. Aunties standing in doorways, commenting on everything and everyone. The community feels lived in. Close. Slightly claustrophobic. Especially because they keep wanting the protagonist to get a boyfriend, while she’s busy trying to solve a murder.
The murder itself is straightforward. The plaza’s landlord dies after eating dumplings. Our heroine, Lana Lee, delivered the food from her family’s restaurant. She becomes a suspect, is quickly cleared, and then begins her own amateur investigation. The cook who prepared the dumplings is the obvious scapegoat, which of course suggests he did not do it.
There is a large cast of characters. Shop owners, relatives, friends, regulars. On paper, that should create a rich tapestry. In practice, they blurred together in my head. Faces without sharp outlines. Personalities without distinct edges. When the killer was revealed, my reaction was not shock. It was confusion. Who was that? Which shop were they connected to? Frankly, I still don’t recall, I should look it up, but I don’t feel I care all that much.
That is not ideal for a mystery.
The investigation meanders. Lana moves from conversation to conversation, but people refuse to talk. Suspicions are raised and then dropped. For most of the book there are very few concrete clues to follow. Then in the final stretch, roughly the last fifth, everything accelerates. Explanations arrive. The culprit is exposed. Curtain.
The pacing feels uneven because of that structure. Long stretches of gentle wandering. Then a sudden rush.
Lana herself is likeable enough. She eats far too many doughnuts. She bickers with her family. She is investigating, but there’s also important shopping to be done. There is a hint of romantic tension, the sort that exists mainly as potential. It reminded me of those Hallmark mystery series where it takes ten installments before anyone admits they have feelings. It is present, but lightly sketched.
I listened to this on audio, and unfortunately the narration did not help. The reader had a habit of lifting her tone at the end of sentences instead of settling it. Everything felt slightly unfinished. Occasionally she paused mid sentence, as if she had reached the end of a line and needed to find the next one. I ended up increasing the speed to 1.25, which is about as fast as my brain will comfortably go. It still felt oddly brisk and oddly slow at the same time, a strange combination.
All of that led me to a solid three stars.
This is not a bad book. The setting is charming. The cultural backdrop adds texture. The sense of community is vivid. But in a mystery, I want the mystery to be the driving force. I want to follow along with the investigator, gather clues, examine evidence. Not for all of it to lead nowhere until suddenly, there’s a break in the case and the mystery is solved. It felt very unsatisfying.
If you read cosy mysteries for atmosphere, food, and community dynamics, this may well work for you. If you read them primarily to solve a puzzle, you might find yourself, as I did, still thinking about dumplings long after you have forgotten the killer. I want dumplings now.
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