The interview took place in the club house where the home owners association meetings were usually held. It was an airy room overlooking the pool and tennis courts, both of which were rarely-used but jealously guarded by the mainly baby boomer residents of Deerfield Estates.
Today, the group of twenty or so people, mean age approximately seventy, took its time to settle down, their walkers jostling against each other like bumper cars at an amusement park.
The journalist from the New York Times was a woman in her thirties, tapping her foot and twirling her pen with the restless energy of a hummingbird. The photographer had the detached boredom of a teenager wanting to get back to TikTok.
“Excuse me. Can you please settle down so we can chat.” the journalist said.
Mrs. Neeti Shah smiled at her naiveté at giving a bunch of senior citizens free license to chat. As she predicted, the cacophony broke out immediately.
“It all began when he pulled up my native plants. I got them from a nursery in Thailand.”
“Umm… I’m not sure that’s allowed. You could introduce alien plants that may take over our plants.”
“Oh, stop being so woke.”
“Actually, it all began with the geese.”
“No, no, you’re all wrong. It began with the goat. And Mandela and … umm, you know, his wife, the couple from Africa.”
“You should say which country in Africa, Africa’s a continent, not a country you know.”
“They’re from South Africa.”
“That’s what I said, Africa!”
“The correct sequence is–plants, geese, goat, and Thandi and Mandla, not Mandela, those are the names of the South African-American couple. Their last name is Ntuli.”
“Entooli, what a strange name.”
“But, what about the lawyers getting involved in the dispute over security cameras?”
“Oh yes, plants, legal dispute, geese, goat, and then Thundee and Mandela.”
“It doesn’t really matter what came first. Let’s start with who discovered the body,” the journalist interjected in the brief silence.
“Which one?”
“This was the Masala Chai Mystery Club’s first case, and it was a do or die one.”
Neeti who had been silent all along, stood up and hitched her saree at the shoulder, the way she usually did when there was work to be done. She looked around the room, her honey-colored eyes scanning the unruly group, her face impassive as she cleared her throat loudly. She waited for them to be quiet, and then, in the deep voice she usually reserved for children’s story hour at the library, she said, “Thank you for your attention. I’ve brewed an urn of masala chai if anyone’s interested. Why don’t we line up and I’ll hand it out, and then we can sit around in a circle and begin in a calmer manner?”
She took the ensuing hum as a sign they all agreed.
THE MASALA CHAI MYSTERY CLUB
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release: July 2026
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link
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. As more bodies turn up and more suspects start to appear, they’ll need to find the killer before they end up in hot water!
About the author
Manju (MJ) Soni grew up in South Africa and wrote, DEFYING APARTHEID, a part-memoir about being a doctor/ activist under apartheid. Since then, drawing on her American, African, and Indian background, she’s written mystery short fiction and her debut cozy mystery, THE MASALA CHAI MYSTERY CLUB, which are full of heart and humor, with a saree-wearing librarian protagonist will be coming out on 21 July with Crooked Lane Books. Connect with Manju at mjsoniauthor.com.