Dragonfish

by Vu Tran Narrated by Tom Taylorson, Nancy Wu

Overview

Robert, an Oakland cop, still can't let go of Suzy, the enigmatic Vietnamese wife who left him two years ago. Now she's disappeared from her new husband, Sonny, a violent Vietnamese smuggler and gambler who's blackmailing Robert into finding her for him. As he pursues her through the sleek and seamy gambling dens of Las Vegas, shadowed by Sonny's sadistic son, “Junior,” and assisted by unexpected and reluctant allies, Robert learns more about his ex-wife than he ever did during their marriage. He finds himself chasing the ghosts of her past, one that reaches back to a refugee camp in Malaysia after the fall of Saigon, as his investigation soon uncovers an elusive packet of her secret letters to someone she left behind long ago. Although Robert starts illuminating the dark corners of Suzy's life, the legacy of her sins threatens to immolate them all.

Vu Tran has written a thrilling and cinematic work of sophisticated suspense and haunting lyricism, set in motion by characters who can neither trust each other nor trust themselves. This remarkable debut novel is a noir page-turner resonant with the lasting reverberations of lives lost and lives remade a generation ago.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times - Carmela Ciuraru

Dragonfish is a hybrid: part crime fiction, part literary fiction. It manages both genres exceedingly well.

The New York Times Book Review - Chris Abani

This is a well-handled and tautly told story, and Robert's devolution into his darkest self is rich all on its own. But the real underbelly here is the past that has haunted Suzy her whole life—a past rooted deeply in Communist Vietnam, which takes her first husband and home and, after the fall of Saigon, leaves her heart further ravaged by the difficult crossing of an unforgiving sea to a refugee camp in Malaysia. When she finally comes to America, she is unable to shake this past, these ghosts and this difficulty…The novel is uncompromising in its confrontations with the dark sides of all of its characters, but Tran treats them with a hard-won dignity, and in this way elevates the narrative away from the sentimental…Dragonfish is a strong first novel for its risk taking, for its collapsing of genre, for its elegant language and its mediation of a history that is integral to post-1960s American identity yet often ignored…Above all, Tran's novel is a refreshing and entertaining story.

Publishers Weekly - Audio

★ 09/28/2015
In Tran’s striking debut crime novel, Oakland, Calif., cop Robert Ruen could be a poster boy for noir fiction. A few years before the story begins, his Vietnamese wife, Suzy, suddenly deserted him for no apparent reason. He eventually found her in Las Vegas, living with Sonny Van Nguyen, a shady but obviously successful Vietnamese smuggler, gambler, and restaurateur. The novel begins with his being visited by minions of Sonny’s cool, sinister son, Junior. Suzy has disappeared and Junior, using threats, forces the detective to return to Sin City to search for her. This part of the thriller is narrated by Ruen, with reader Taylorson catching every rise and fall of his emotional thrill ride, notably his fear of Sonny and Junior, and his desire to help Suzy at any cost. The Chicago-based voice actor imparts a deadly seriousness to Sonny’s shifting, excessive moods and adds a silkiness to Junior’s emotionless demands; he is also convincing in his subtle Vietnamese inflections. Ruen’s narration is interrupted by segments from Suzy’s secret letters, written to the daughter she was forced to abandon at a point in her tumultuous past. These sad, yet lyrically penned missives are gracefully and passionately performed by reader Wu. Ruen’s story gives the book top crime credentials, but it’s Suzy’s letters, lovingly rendered by Wu, that lift it above its genre trappings. A Norton hardcover. (Aug.)

Booklist - Donna Seaman

"Nuanced and elegiac…. Vu Tran takes a strikingly poetic and profoundly evocative approach to the conventions of crime fiction in this supple, sensitive, wrenching, and suspenseful tale of exile, loss, risk, violence, and the failure of love."

Tom Bissell

"Absolutely gripping. Vu Tran has written a terrific—and deceptively weird—novel that manages to make Vietnam and Las Vegas feel like old, familiar friends. Don’t call him a writer to watch. Call him a writer to read."

Barnes & Noble Review

"Everything is perfect there, those quiet little garnishes of idiosyncratic detail are gifts, both amusing and full of character. Tran’s novel is filled with this sort of inspired meticulousness, and reading it is to enter its world."

San Francisco Chronicle - Gerald Bartell

"[R]ichly satisfying work…. A familiar noir trope—the missing woman—blooms darkly in Dragonfish as the story of a lost people, a theme that Tran renders exquisitely, rating the book a place on the top shelf of literary thrillers."

Los Angeles Review of Books

"Like Gatsby, the characters in Tran’s novel yearn for something unattainable…This and the feeling that there will only be a tragic end are what elevate Dragonfish beyond its bookstore genre."

BuzzFeed

"Heartbreaking and haunting."

Chicago Tribune - Lloyd Sachs

"[T]ransfixing…. [L]ike such writers as Caryl Phillips, Dinaw Mengestu and Edwidge Danticat, [Tran] is devoted to capturing the immigrant experience and widening everyone's understanding of its particular as well as universal truths."

Fresh Air - Maureen Corrigan

"A superb debut novel…that takes the noir basics and infuses them with the bitters of loss and isolation peculiar to the refugee and immigrant tale."

Ploughshares

"A sophisticated mystery anchored in one woman’s quest to make amends with the daughter she abandoned, Dragonfish delicately capsizes our notions of what it means to long for escape from the prisons of our own making."

Dallas Morning News - Anne Morris

"Splendid…will quickly engage you with its suspenseful story of marital discord, told in duplicate, and set largely in Las Vegas…A dark and gripping story, Dragonfish will keep you reading, out of fear that if you stop, you will never truly surface."

Chris Abani

"Well-handled and tautly told…[A] strong first novel for its risk taking, for its collapsing of genre, for its elegant language and its mediation of a history that is integral to post-1960s American identity yet often ignored."

NPR Books

"[A] hard-hitting debut novel…. [Suzy is] a mystery no one can solve, particularly the people turning all their efforts in the wrong direction. But while their efforts aren’t fruitful, they’re absorbing. And they speak to the way everyone is a bit of an enigma to other people, no matter how many words they put into the effort to be understood."

Maureen Corrigan - NPR's Fresh Air

A superb debut novel…that takes the noir basics and infuses them with the bitters of loss and isolation peculiar to the refugee and immigrant tale.

Chris Abani - New York Times Book Review

Well-handled and tautly told…[A] strong first novel for its risk taking, for its collapsing of genre, for its elegant language and its mediation of a history that is integral to post-1960s American identity yet often ignored.

Library Journal - Audio

★ 10/15/2015
Vu Tran's first novel is about Suzy, a young Vietnamese widow who, with her preschool-aged daughter, risked a dangerous voyage to Malaysia and survived a refugee camp, leaving everything behind. Robert, her second husband, never stopped loving the baffling and conflicted woman who abandoned their marriage after eight years. Kidnapped from his Oakland home two years later and ordered by her dangerous third husband to find Suzy, Robert uncovers secrets he never suspected. Real threats barely overshadow Robert's enduring love for his tormented wife and Suzy's efforts to make sense of her existence. Tom Taylorson provides a believable voice for Robert, while Nancy Wu narrates Suzy's compelling backstory. VERDICT A gripping and unforgettable debut from an author to watch. ["This haunting and mesmerizing debut is filled with all the noir elements—a dark and seedy underworld, damsels in distress, tarnished heroes, and a blurring of moral boundaries": LJ 5/1/15 starred review of the Norton hc.]—Janet Martin, Southern Pines P.L., NC

OCTOBER 2015 - AudioFile

Narrator Tom Taylorson's deep, sombre voice suits this gritty story, which wends from Las Vegas to Vietnam, then Malaysia, and back to the U.S. Robert Ruen is the standard jaded cop at the center of this noir. His past keeps coming back to haunt him. Suzy, his missing Vietnamese ex-wife, must be found, for her sake as well as his. Taylorson switches believably between the American main character and the supporting cast of Vietnamese hit men. His renditions of accented English add to the ambiance of non-native speakers, which is essential to these characters. Through his precise, insistent pace, the listener is drawn into the danger, shifting settings, and multicultural history at the heart of the story. M.R. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169749892
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	08/03/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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