Currently reading
Perfect Strangers
The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir
The Captain's Daughter
The Trader of Saigon
Someone: A Novel
The Wolves of Midwinter
A Killing of Angels
Gravity of Birds Pb
The Return
The Twenty-Seventh City
Sherlock Sam and the Sinister Letters in Bras Basah
I am not a child so I can't in good conscience read this as one, and given that the writers have added easter eggs according to their wiles/whims I am going to read it as such.There might be the name-dropping moniker of Bras Basah (and it does name-check/name-drop quite a few of the usual suspects in the book, and of course the National Library again, just to be in its good books - all pun intended) but there seems to be a muddling/blurring of culture by the inflitration of one of the writers' cultural background (mexican) who has surfaced with a drink recipe (don't worry, it's non-alcoholic) and relatives/characters who are distinctively non-asian and international schools (nope, Singaporeans don't seem to have the privilege of studying/applying for one, according to the govt, despite a lot of upper class Singaporeans having scions in them)
I could write this off as just internationalization and ambitions of the writers (or is it the publisher's) to take their titles worldwide (after all they are churning out the books very quickly) but the plotting of the book seems to be lost in the chop suey of more and more characters and activities (an Sherlock Sam's activity in the pipeline) that the authors have definitely chewed more than they can swallow this time around.
I would have given this one star but I still believe it can be saved.
