Review: Moonlight Murder

Moonlight Murder by Uzma Jalaluddin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love the first book in this series so much that I figured that I was going to love this one just as much. I did not. That is not to say that I hated it; I just didn't like the concept as much during this book. There is a third book coming out, and I do believe that I will be reading it to assuage my curiosity for the next one that needs help from Aunty Detective, which will be Ilya.

We do finally find out just exactly what happened to Ali 18 years ago. We also have a new murder to explore. It is being called an accident or a suicide, but Auntie's granddaughter, Maleeha, doesn't believe that to be so. So what is a grandmother to do but to try to solve this puzzle?

I love learning about different cultures, but at times I really didn't understand the words, and this time my Kindle translator was no help. I fear for those who will read this in paper form.

Another thing I wasn't so happy with was how repetitive it was, though I can see that would help those who didn't read the last book. But the repetitiveness didn't stop with recountings from the last book; it continued with events in this one.

The author does like to use the trope of keeping us all in the closet about what is happening and then being told, 'I'll tell you when I do just one more thing. I wanted to yell for Aunty to just get on with it. I actually got bored and frustrated after a while and was tempted not to finish, but I hung on. I'm glad I did, but as to what happened to Ali, Kausar Khan's late son, but it just didn't work for me.

Well all books can't be everything to everyone so I guess this was just amiss for me...I do think I will be reading the next one now that I have a better handle on how this author works.


*ARC supplied by the publisher Harper Perennial/HarperCollins, the author, and Edelweiss.


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SUMMARY: "Kausar Khan, the Detective Aunty, returns in a new case about the mysterious death of a young man in the Golden Crescent neighbourhood, which draws her back to the unresolved death of her son twenty years ago . . .

When Kausar Khan decided to move back to Toronto to be closer to her family, she didn’t expect to have another murder investigation on her hands so soon—or rather, she didn’t expect to have another murder investigation on her hands ever. But when a young man named Mateen is found dead in their Golden Crescent neighbourhood, and when it turns out Mateen was close with Kausar’s granddaughter, Maleeha, what’s a grandmother to do but try to solve the case?

And it’s not just a heartbreakingly devastated Maleeha that is spurring Kausar on to find answers; it’s also how much the circumstances of Mateen’s death remind her of her own teenage son, Ali, and his mysterious death nearly twenty years before. Kausar knows first-hand what a difference closure could make to a grieving parent—and the more she seeks to find that for Mateen’s parents, the more she begins to realize that perhaps it’s time she find it for herself as well.

As Kausar conducts parallel investigations into both Mateen’s and Ali’s deaths and her “aunty” skills continue to bring information to light, she can’t help but wonder if the similarities in the two cases are more than just mere coincidence—but how could two deaths, twenty years apart, possibly be related?

Detective Aunty is determined to find out . . ."