#vu tran

Finished 1/17/22

📔 Crime/mystery novel told from the perspective of Robert, whose ex-wife Suzy — a Vietnamese immigrant — has gone missing. Blackmailed by her new husband, he travels from his home in Oakland, CA to Las Vegas to investigate her disappearance. While moving through a dark underground world of Vegas he uncovers MUCH he didn’t understand or know about his enigmatic ex-wife.

I’m a pretty slow reader and I read this in less than 5 days — the pacing kept me enthralled and wanting to know what wild thing was going to unfold next. There are beautifully written flashbacks through secret letters that tell a story within this story; this meta narrative was my favorite part of this book.

One of the most engaging parts about this story for me was the way Tran writes an immigration narrative through the lens of a white american trying, and failing in more ways than a few, to see and understand his spouse. Also am always compelled by a character who is kind of a pathetic & repressed man just stumbling miserably through a story 🙃

All the moving parts — overlapping narratives, nonlinear timelines, uncovering of secrets, twists & turns & revelations are layered together in a well thought and poetically written manner in this noir crime mystery 🍷

Dragonfish by Vu Tran

Dragonfish is a crime novel wrapped around a literary novel about Vietnamese refugees’ harrowing escape in a boat. Either way it is a welcome debut by first-time author Vu Tran, a new voice for the Vietnamese immigrant experience. The Dragonfish opens with the failed marriage of Los Angeles policeman Robert Ruen and a mysterious Vietnamese woman named Suzy. When Robert hears Suzy is abused by her…