The Feng Shui Detective Goes West

Vittachi smoothly mixes humor and crime in his second whodunit to be made available in the U.S. featuring Singapore feng shui specialist C.F. Wong (after 2004’s The Feng Shui Detective). Wong’s plan to make a packet—by serving as middleman on a deal for small fruit-shaped highlighter pens involving the only Indian member of the Chinese mafia—goes awry after the supplier fills the implements with black ink, leaving Wong on the hook for a huge amount of money. Wong’s luck changes with a lucrative commission—to insure the spiritual balance of a giant plane redesigned to serve as a flying conference center and to apply his geomancy to Buckingham Palace itself. But an oil company executive’s murder threatens to scuttle the job, forcing Wong to again turn sleuth. What appears to be an open-and-shut case leads to an especially ingenious solution. The quirky supporting cast provides abundant comic relief. (Nov.)