Review: The Masala Chai Mystery Club

The Masala Chai Mystery Club by M.J. Soni
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.5 Stars

While this book was very diverse in its characters, many of them were unlikeable, including some of the main characters.

The mystery was so convoluted that I nearly gave up, and once you come to the conclusion that you should never discount the elderly (and let's face it, most of the characters are what would be considered elderly in today's society), it is easy to see who-dun-it. It's the how and the why that kept me reading.

You need to suspend a lot of disbelief to read this novel, and that made it very difficult at times for me to keep pushing through this book.

A very light summer read that does give you a lot of information on Indian cuisine.

*ARC was supplied by the publisher  Crooked Lane Books, the author, and NetGalley.

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Summary: "Suspects abound when a much-despised neighbor is killed, perfect for fans of Only Murders in the Building and Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club.

Retired librarian Neeti Shah was hoping for a restful life with her chai-loving friends, but when the body of a neighbor, a childhood friend of Neeti's, turns up dead and the killer’s MO is similar to that of Neeti's most recent book club read, things start to get out of control.

When Neeti hears a commotion at a neighbor’s house, she finds Rohit’s body sprawled across the bottom of the staircase with Agatha Christie’s Dumb Witness nearby. Blackmailing his neighbors, threatening them with lawsuits, and calling them by nasty nicknames were only some of the hateful things that made him so disliked. But were they angry enough to kill?

Neeti is indebted to her old friend, and she's determined to find his killer. But she can't do it alone, so she enlists her mystery-loving friends, the Masala Chai Mystery Club, to get to the bottom of the murder.

But Neeti and her club members need to be careful."