Mr Wong Goes West (A Feng Shui Detective Novel) by Nury Vittachi

Taken from the blurb:  Feng shui master and sleuth CF Wong is experiencing some seriously bad fortune.  After an ill-advised stationery deal puts him in debt to the Chinese mafia and the job that should have saved his bacon ends in murder on the world's biggest and most expensive plane, Wong finds himself heading for his least favourite place - the West - and a most regal assignment.
With his ever exuberant sidekick Joyce in tow, Wong heads off to do a feng shui reading of Buckingham Palace in an attempt to end the Windsors' anni horribiles.  But a bomb on his plane might just cause the wheels to come off the plan.  Quite literally.
Princes, planes, pens and points of compass all collide in the latest adventure of the Feng Shui Detective.

My take:  For the last day of October, notwithstanding Halloween's Day, I thought I would read an Asian book to catch up with my Global Reading challenge which I have been neglecting of late.  Amongst the mountain-high pile of books in my collection, I came across Nury Vittachi slipped in between Sandra Brown and Ian Rankin and picked him out.  I am not sure how long he has been sitting quietly on the window sill waiting his turn.
I read Nury Vittachi's Feng Shui Detective novels years ago except for this particular one, published in 2008.  If you are not into Chinese geomancy/feng shui, this book may either intrigue you or mystify you.  It is certainly amusing to read about non-native speakers of English trying to speak or even understand the most widely spoken language in the world, for example, when you ask someone to do something for you and that person is able to, that person would either say 'yes' or 'sure' or any other forms of the affirmative but for a non-native, they would say 'can' (a literal translation from their own language to English) and at times, would say it twice so it ends up as 'can can'.  One has to live in that environment to understand how the English language has been twisted and turn into a sub-language, a mixture of the native and the foreign.  I still find it extremely fascinating to say the least.
Vittachi certainly has a way with words and has portrayed the ethnic and cultural differences in the modern world with an amusing sensibility.  I absolutely love the collection of oriental wisdom stories interspersed in between the comedy.  They are little pearls of wisdom based on the experiences of life written in ancient Chinese lore.  I almost wish there is a whole book written on them.
Other than the yin and yang, the metaphysics, ch'i or the fifth dimension, Vittachi's writing is highly entertaining, eccentric, witty, funny and makes you laugh out loud.  BBC has dubbed him 'Hong Kong's funniest commentator'.  There you go.  This book is a love it or hate it book.  I do enjoy his humour.

I am pretty sure that most of you already know who Nury Vittachi is and his very original collection of Feng Shui Detective books but if this is the first time you have come across him and want to know more, you can click on The Curious Diary of Mr Jam  or The Writers' Village to find out.

Here is Vittachi talking about the intricacies and idioms of the English language:





Rating: 4/5