Prolific author Ovidia Yu puts a teen sleuth front-and-centre in the Frangipani Tree Mystery.
Singapore-based author Ovidia Yu is back with her ninth novel, The Frangipani Tree Mystery. The new work from the award-winning author and prolific playwright is the start of a new series and is set in 1930s Singapore.
Q: When you decided to set the book in 1930s Singapore what was the first focus of your research? Where did you start? While I was growing up, the British years and Syonan years were not talked about by those who lived through them. But now that generation is passing on, I don’t think they should be forgotten.A: How practical and pragmatic the people here are. And how much history is here. I think we are all transients and immigrants, so those of us who stay choose to stay. It’s not perfect. It’s over-strict in some ways.
Canada’s Florence MacLeod Harper wrote about the Russian Revolution. Even more, American Dorothy Thompson, who believed it her responsibility and social obligation, because she was educated, to fight for the rights of all women to get an education. Su Lin would have read about her, thanks to the Mission School ladies.
Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce books for Flavia and her poisons. I would have sworn he was an Englishman who grew up with the Mitford sisters, but recently learned he’s Canadian and hadn’t been to England when he wrote the first Flavia book, so now I’m even more impressed by him as a writer — he is the opposite of Lee Child who writes the Jack Reacher books. These writers remind me that just as you can read from wherever you are, you can write from wherever you are.
Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Poirot series , though my favourite Christie is The Hollow, which isn’t a series book, and my favourite characters of hers are Henrietta Savernake and Lucy Eyelesbarrow. They were my earliest role models! Along with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, these are my go-to-comfort reading, along with Rex Stout ’s Nero Wolfe books. I love them as much for the wonderful routine , food and the orchids as the problem-solving.
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