The Feng Shui Detective

The Feng Shui Detective is a series of "comedy-crime" novels by Asian author Nury Vittachi.

The books started to appear in Hong Kong in 2000, but since have been printed around the world in multiple languages.

Characters and plot

They tell the story of CF Wong, a feng shui master, who is forced to take on an assistant named Joyce McQuinnie. Expecting to be moving furniture, she discovers that Wong specializes in crime scenes. Communication between the two is fraught - Wong speaks a mixture of pidgin English, augmented by phrases learned from a text book, while Joyce communicates in impenetrable youth argot. Wong tends to be sexist, racist, money-oriented and likes to eat small animals, alive if possible. Joyce is politically correct and a vegetarian.

There are five books in the series, with the most recent entrant, "Mr. Wong Goes West", appearing in March, 2008. They have also been numerous "mini-mysteries" - short tales about the same characters - which have appeared in magazines in China.

The stories are widely seen as allegories of East and West ideologies and practices. Although the main players are suspicious of each other and find it almost impossible to communicate, resolution is only possible when they work together.

Published novels

* The Feng Shui Detective
* The Feng Shui Detective Goes South
* The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook
* The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics
* Mr. Wong Goes West

External links

* [http://mrjam.typepad.com Nury Vittachi's blog]