Hot Pot Murder (L.A. Night Market, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 2: L.A. Night Market

Chow, Jennifer J.

 
9780593336557: Hot Pot Murder (L.A. Night Market, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593336550 ISBN 13: 9780593336557
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Trouble is brewing for cousins Yale and Celine Yee after a hot pot dinner gets overheated and ends in murder in this second novel of the L.A. Night Market series by Jennifer J. Chow.

Yale and Celine Yee’s food stall business is going so well that they’ve been invited to join an exclusive dinner with the local restaurant owners association. The members gather together for a relaxing hot pot feast…until Jeffery Vue, president of the group, receives a literal shock to his system and dies. 

Everyone at the meal is a suspect, but the authorities are homing in on family friend Ai Ho, owner of the restaurant where Jeffery was killed—and Yale’s dad is a close second on their list. Yale and Celine step up to the plate and investigate the dinner attendees: the association’s ambitious VP, a familiar frenemy, a ramen king, a snacks shopkeeper, and a second-generation restaurateur. It’s up to the detecting duo to figure out what really happened before their friends and family have to close their businesses for good.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jennifer J. Chow is the Lefty Award-nominated author of the Sassy Cat Mysteries and the L.A. Night Market Mysteries. The first in the Sassy Cat series, Mimi Lee Gets A Clue, was selected as an Overdrive Recommended Read; a PopSugar Best Summer Beach Read; and one of BuzzFeed’s Top 5 Books by AAPI authors. She currently serves as vice president on the national board of Sisters in Crime and is an active member of Crime Writers of Color and Mystery Writers of America.

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ONE

All happy hot pot gatherings are alike; each unhappy hot pot event is disastrous in its own way. It started off early with the invitation from Nikola Ho. Continuing his trend of irritating me ever since we were middle school academic rivals, Nik had now single-handedly ruined my plans for a quiet Thanksgiving dinner with my nearest and dearest beside me. The holiday was one of the few times that Ba actually shut down his dim sum restaurant, Wing Fat, and focused on family. Even though it'd been quieter in recent years with just the two of us sharing slices of turkey, I'd still appreciated the time spent with my dad. This year, it'd be even livelier with the presence of my cousin, Celine, who'd flown in from Hong Kong last month. Although she and I had two decades of silence between us, we'd mended our ways recently, especially while clearing our shared Yee name from police suspicion when someone had died at the night market where we run our food booth. The murder and its subsequent resolution had placed the inaugural Eastwood Village Night Market on the L.A. dining map. It also ended up creating an exciting food event every weekend in the planned community of Eastwood Village.

I loved living in the local area. Everything had its place and order. All essential services were within walking distance of my apartment-and Celine's current residence while living in the States-at Fountain Vista. I could stroll to my two favorite spots, the Eastwood Village Public Library and The Literary Narnia, my beloved bookstore (and previous place of employment, until I'd rediscovered my passion for cooking).

Nik hadn't bothered to officially invite me to his Thanksgiving banquet. He didn't send me a card or call me on my landline (Celine was still trying to convince me to get a cell phone). To be honest, I wasn't even sure I'd made it on the list of exclusive attendees. He'd actually asked Ba to come, but added a plus-one option, which Ba had changed to plus-two. I bet Nik's mother, Ai Ho, wanted my cousin to show up as the extra guest. She had rosy-hued dreams of Celine staying in the States and settling down with Nik.

The Thanksgiving gathering had been billed as a meeting of minds for the local Asian restaurant business community. They even had an official title for their group: Asian American Restaurant Owners Association, or AAROA.

Nik had called together a group meet-up because of the dwindling membership of the association. To be fair, there weren't that many Asian restaurants in West Los Angeles-many of them stayed in distinct geographic locations like Chinatown and Thai Town. Others had branched off to the San Gabriel Valley or even Westminster, down in Orange County. The ones that stayed in business in the region either didn't have time to join AAROA or maybe felt like the restaurant-owner connection wasn't necessary. Nik's mother thought the tie was essential and wanted to promote cooperation among the younger generations of restaurateurs. I half wondered if she'd thought up the original idea of a Thanksgiving meal to promote unity among the business owners.

At the onset of the idea, though, Nik and I had clashed. Once I'd known about the revised Thanksgiving, I offered up Wing Fat as the logical place to gather. We had plenty of space for guests, even though I knew that the group currently numbered only six people. Wing Fat had a whole banquet room, a partitioned space, to fill up with people and food.

Nik declined our offer and said everybody should meet up at his mother's restaurant, Ho's, and he won the argument. I was surprised the Thanksgiving meal wouldn't be at Jeffery Vue's eatery, actually. I figured as the president of AAROA, he'd be ready to jump in with the meeting location. Then again, maybe he didn't want to deal with the cleanup on his day off. Plus, I'd heard from Ba that he was rearranging his priorities and currently focusing on his dating life.

Despite the contentious venue, Celine's ambitious social media influencer inclination to "put a shine" on the event meant that my cousin and I had arrived early on Thanksgiving to decorate the restaurant in advance of the dinner. She stood in front of Ho's, carrying a large cardboard box, while I tapped on the glass door.

Nik came and greeted us with a half-hearted wave. Although it appeared like he'd just woken up, I knew his signature bedhead look took meticulous styling. He'd mastered the effort in high school and then added bleached strands and a goatee to the hair mix post-college.

He pushed the door open to let us in. "If it isn't the deadly Yee duo."

"Very funny," I said, although I hadn't seen any humor in the situation when I'd literally run into a dead body with my food cart during the night market event around Halloween. "Can't believe you wrote that I made 'brutal boba.'" Nik had run a column in his Eastwood Village Connection blog about how the night market had turned deadly, perhaps due to my fatal recipe.

"Who are you to complain?" he said. "People were lining up at Canai and Chai last weekend for your signature drink."

I stopped a sigh from escaping my lips. Who knew what would catch people's fancy? Night market-goers did like ordering my grapefruit green tea with boba, those chewy tapioca balls, for the fun of it. Maybe they felt like they were daring death, even though the police had cleared my drink of any suspicion after they'd arrested the real killer.

"Ho's Small Eats didn't do so badly either," I said, referring to the food stand Nik and his mother ran, a neighboring stall to our own. I'd seen a line snaking before them, people eager to eat spiced popcorn chicken and enjoy freezing-cold shaved ice.

Celine dropped her box on the long counter of Ho's, and it landed with a heavy thump. "Less talking, more work," she said. "It might take a miracle to transform this place in only one hour."

I studied the restaurant, again reflecting on the fact that a 1950s diner had previously been in this location. Ho's still retained red vinyl booths and checkerboard flooring. They'd even kept the swivel barstools lined up along the counter. "This place has never really screamed 'Taiwanese' to me."

"It's the authentic food cooked in here that draws in our customers," Nik said in an irritated tone. I wasn't sure which hurt him more: that I'd put down his family's restaurant or that I knew the dishes he referred to didn't come from his own hands. Mrs. Ho still didn't trust her son to do more than serve and wipe down the tables.

I leaned toward the kitchen door. In fact, I could hear some banging around in there. Maybe she'd already started preparing. Dad should also be there, and maybe Roy Yamada. All members of AAROA, they'd bonded over their stories about immigrating to America and also the fact that they'd lost their spouses within the past ten years. Mr. Yamada had been widowed the least amount of time. His wife had died last year after a bout with aggressive cancer.

Celine clapped her hands together twice to get Nik's and my attention. "Here's what I'm envisioning," she said. My cousin was a foodstagrammer, and while she loved her food shots on Instagram the most, I could see her creative brain working as she laid out her Thanksgiving design plan. She wanted to decorate the tabletops with scented spice candles, arrange a line of painted pumpkins along the counter, and pin a garland of colorful walnuts against a wall.

"How do you know so much about Thanksgiving anyway?" I said. "Isn't it an American holiday?"

"I live in Hong Kong," she said, "not Antarctica."

"We're not even having turkey per tradition," I said as I shook my head at Nik.

"News flash," he said. "Nobody likes turkey. Usually it comes out too dry."

"I like turkey," I said, grabbing a few orange candles and bunching them together on a table. "I'm not sure...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593336550
ISBN 13 
9780593336557
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

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