An Unabashed Celebration of All Things Nusantara

The Mystical Mister Kay is the last book in Meihan Boey's trilogy which packs a dense plot and supernatural characters into a genre-busting read

- Ong Sor Fern

THE MYSTICAL MISTER KAY By Meihan Boey Fiction/Epigram Books/ 456 pages/$26.90 ★★★★★

The Mystical Mister Kay is the conclusion to Meihan Boey's trilogy, which began with 2021's The Formidable Miss Cassidy and continued with 2023's The Enigmatic Madam Ingram.

The series has been a singular pleasure to read, a happy rojak of genres that combines dense plotting with a vividly evoked colonial Singapore setting and an endearing, eccentric cast of characters both human and supernatural.

Followers will see how Boey has grown as a writer through each book. The first, engaging as it was, was focused on world-building and slipped a little in the plotting, although the colourful characters and setting kept things moving at a briskly entertaining clip.

The second book marked a distinct leap in ambition and technical skills, upping the stakes with an intricately structured narrative that bounced back and forth through time.

Mister Kay consolidates all the lessons learnt with a smooth sailing read whose fluency belies the thoughtful structuring and the playful mash-up of genre-writing with literary and historical fiction tropes.

While fans of the series will appreciate the rich density of the world Boey has painstakingly built up over the past two books, newcomers can still pick this up as a stand-alone read as the central whodunnit works well as an independent storyline.