Breakaway Books

Authored by Uzma Jalaluddin; Published May 2025; Mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️

Is it an axiom of cozy mysteries that they must be filled with many, many cups of tea? Detective Aunty certainly features gallons of the stuff and a fine mystery to boot. 

In Detective Aunty, Sana summons her mother Kausar to Toronto in a panic–Sana has been arrested for the murder of her less-than-beloved landlord, Imran. Kausar, who had left Toronto years before following the death of her son Ali, rushes to her daughter’s aid, ready to leverage her exceptional observational skills to find the true killer. But there is more than one criminal wandering the streets of Sana’s neighborhood, and it will take all of Kausar’s wits to parse through her neighbors’ secrets and find the one person who is hiding something deadly.

Like most cozy mysteries, what really makes this novel is Kausar herself. She’s eminently likable–unlike many heroes with finely honed observational skills and gifts of deduction, she also boasts a high level of emotional intelligence. She is well aware that not everything she notices needs to come out of her mouth. She’s also flawed, and she knows that she has failed to be the mother she wants to be at different times in her life. Devastated by the death of her younger son, Kausar sunk into depression and faded from the lives of her other children, but she is determined to make up for it by being a real and supportive presence for her daughter Sana and her granddaughters now. Kausar is the grandmother we want to have, while staying on the realistic side of Mary Poppins. 

The mystery itself is flavored by the community in which it takes place, a part of Toronto filled with Desi immigrants and other communities who struggle from the high cost of living. As always, I enjoyed the opportunity to step into the shoes of another and, in this case, learn more about Canada’s immigrant communities. There was a distinct small town feeling to the novel, with gossip spreading like wildfire and many denizens of the neighborhood trying to hide their embarrassing secrets. I appreciated many of the layers to this mystery, but the ultimate solution was a bit of a letdown for me—it felt like there could have been a more creative explanation for the murder. Nonetheless, it’s difficult not to enjoy Kausar’s amateur investigation in service of her daughter.

Detective Aunty is exactly as cozy as the title would indicate, featuring a kindly but sharp detective whom I won’t soon forget. Snuggle up with this one!