a killer cocktail party

When Lana Lee has the chance to trade in her slushy Cleveland winter for a week in sunny California, she jumps at it. There is a convention for restaurant owners and managers, and her mother signs Lana up, now that she is officially the manager of the family’s Ho-Lee Noodle Shop. And her sister Anna May tags along for a week of sunshine and lazy days by the pool as well.

They are spending the week at their aunt’s rental on Balboa Island, a luxurious place where Lana and Anna May can be more than comfortable. It’s an amazing place to stay, but Lana has to leave it the next morning to head to her convention. She takes in all eh booths, the products, the demonstrations, and finds herself in an area with Asian specialties. Lana takes in a booth for Fortune Cookies, thinking to herself how much she hates how fortune cookies have become more philosophy than fortune telling, and she considers saying something to the woman at the booth about it.

Before she has a chance to say anything, the woman looks up and angrily says, “What are you doing here?” Lana doesn’t know what to say—she’d never seen the woman before—but then she realized the vendor was talking to someone standing behind her. Lana turns to see another woman there, who clearly knew what the vendor was talking about. Lana finds out that the woman behind her was a journalist named Nora Blackwell, and she had written an unflattering article about the woman’s fortune cookies.

Lana walks away, wondering if drama really does follow her wherever she goes, like her sister likes to tell her. But the rest of her day at the convention was uneventful, so maybe it was just a fluke. That night, their aunt was taking them to a cocktail party. She’d had dresses made specifically for them, and the three of them were going to meet Aunt Grace’s friends and colleagues. As soon as they walk in, there is champagne, and Aunt Grace proceeds to introduce the sisters to her coworkers. However, the party gets cut short when there is a loud scream.

Lana and Anna May go to see what happened, and they find that a woman had jumped from the roof. But when Lana looks up, she thinks she sees someone else still up there. Aunt Grace sees who the woman is and realizes that it was her friend that she was wanting to introduce to her nieces. Lana recognizes her as the journalist who had been yelled at by the fortune cookie vendor earlier that day. She tells that to the local detective, of course, but they seem to think it was just a tragic accident.

But Lana can’t figure out why the woman had been on the roof instead of at the party. And despite have a few drinks, she truly believed that she had seen someone on that roof. And when the police find a note in the dead woman’s pocket, asking her to meet them on the rood, Aunt Grace is certain that her friend had been killed. She begs Lana to help find the person responsible. Lana wants to say no, as she had made promises about not getting involved as much in murder investigations. But this is a friend of Aunt Grace, and Lana finds herself wanting to find the answers as much as Grace wants her to. But will saying yes to helping Aunt Grace put Lana in danger? Or worse, will it put Grace in danger as Lana gets closer to the truth?

Misfortune Cookie is book number 9 in Vivien Chien’s Noodle Shop Mystery series. This series follows Lana and her close friends in Cleveland’s Asian community, and focuses on her relationships with her family, roommate, and boyfriend as she runs the family restaurant and solves a mystery or two on the side.

I have been a fan of Vivien Chien and her mysteries for many years now. And while I love how she uses Cleveland to create a real sense of place in her stories, having this one set in California made for a nice change, especially since it’s winter, and Cleveland in winter is just not as inviting. And while the mystery is well plotted and interesting, I especially liked the parts of the story where Lana got a different perspective on her relationship with her sister, as her sister is like their mother and Lana is like her Aunt Grace, their mother’s younger sister. Seeing those dynamics being echoed through generations is one of the reasons I like these books so much. There is a depth to Lana’s family relationships that really draws me in and makes me care about these characters. I loved Misfortune Cookie, and while it can be read as a stand-alone, seeing Lana with her sister and aunt means more if you’ve spent some time with Lana and her family already.

Egalleys for Misfortune Cookie were provided by St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.