Rick Van Lam Mysteries Series

One of the beautiful Le sisters is dead. Hartford, Connecticut's small Vietnamese community is stunned. Mary Le Vu, wife of a poor grocery-store owner, is gunned down in a drive-by. Her twin sister insists dutiful Mary "wouldn't be caught dead" in that drug-infested zone. The police rule it an unlucky accident. Skeptics hire private eye Rick Van Lam to get to the truth. Amerasian Rick—his father an unknown US soldier—is one of the Bui Doi, children of the dust, so often rejected by Vietnamese culture. But his young sidekick, Hank Nguyen, a pureblood Vietnamese, can help Rick navigate the closed world of Little Saigon. Surrounded by close friends—a former-Rockette landlady, his crusty mentor, and his ex-wife Liz—Rick immerses himself in a world that rejects him, but now needs his help. Especially when a second murder strikes in Little Saigon. Rick and Hank delve into the families of the Le sisters, one poor, one very rich, and uncover a world of explosive ethnic tension and sinister criminal activity ranging from Hartford's exclusive white suburbs to the impoverished inner city. To solve the murders—and bring closure to Mary's grieving circle—Rick looks to long-buried memories of his Buddhist childhood for the wisdom that will lead him to a murderer. Caught Dead starts a smart, unusual series.

When Marta Kowalski is discovered beneath the Farmington River Bridge, the police write off her death as an unfortunate suicide. Marta had become depressed since the death of an old friend. Marta was a simple woman who cleaned houses, mostly for elderly professors, and faithfully attended Mass. Sometimes she went gambling in Atlantic City or at the Indian casinos. She had no enemies, let alone friends. Murder? There's no evidence of a crime. Yet her niece Karen is convinced of foul play. She hires Amerasian Rick Van Lam, the only investigator she knows in this bedroom community. He had never really cared for Marta. Yes, she'd dusted his apartment a couple of times, but she was a little too nosy. And she'd fought with a local gardener, a full-blooded Vietnamese man. Jimmy, his mentor and partner at nearby Hartford, Connecticut's Gaddy Associates, aces at insurance fraud, frowns on Rick taking another murder case. But aided by his sidekick Hank Nguyen and Hank's wise Buddhist grandmother, Rick begins asking questions and finds himself mired in affluent Farmington's parochial pettiness and scandal. Digging deeper, he unearths rivalries, jealousies, and viciousness to shame a Miss Marple village—and realizes to his amazement that Marta was no mere unassuming housekeeper. Any number of townsfolk had reason to shove her off that bridge—one of them mind-blowing.

On a sunny afternoon in Hartford, Connecticut, PI Rick Van Lam's Vietnam-vet mentor and partner, Jimmy, and Jimmy's old army pal, Ralph, are attacked as they walk down a city sidewalk. Ralph is killed, and Jimmy, backing up, is struck by a car. While the battered Jimmy is under the care of Rick's landlord and friend, Gracie, where an improbable romance seems to be blooming, Rick finds himself in a quandary—he's asked to clear the name of the two attackers named by the police. One is a boy named Simon Tran, known as Saigon; the other, Simon's buddy, Frankie Croix. Rick himself is a bui doi or child of dust, meaning the child of a Vietnamese mother and an American GI father. Leading a life of disdain and torment in a Ho Chi Minh City orphanage as a child, a battered Rick turned on a newly arrived child of dust, a more despised case: a boy who was the son of a Vietnamese mother and a black GI. He's still ashamed of how savagely pleased he was to have another boy become the new target for mistreatment, someone the Vietnamese community viewed as even lower than him. Years later, in Hartford, Rick has to grapple with that troubling childhood memory because Simon is the son of the same bui doi, Mike Tran. Mike is a hard-working, decent man. Despite the difficulties of being Amerasian, he embodies the American Dream: a house, a loving wife, and exemplary children—students at prestigious private schools and colleges. Except for Simon, who seems hell-bent on a life of crime. Working with Hank Nguyen, a young colleague now a state-cop-intraining, Rick tracks Simon to a Vietnamese gang in Little Saigon. How can he not strive to save Simon and Frankie, boys who refuse to be saved? And who may be facing not just murder charges but becoming victims in a vicious gangland war? A unique investigator in a crowded field, Rick's cases both surprise you, and wring your heart. "The Le family members initially seem to fit into obvious molds—the spoiled heiress, the grieving widower, the conservative immigrant parents—but Lanh expertly avoids stereotypes. Each character proves to be a richly drawn enigma. Indeed, Rick's exploration of the Le family is so engaging that readers may forget about the mystery itself. Lanh's faithful portrayal of the complexity of the human experience demonstrates that people, with their secrets and devious motives, are the most captivating mysteries of all." —Publishers Weekly Starred Review for Caught Dead, the first Rick van Lam Mystery by Andrew Lanh

"This complex and very timely story is a riveting study of greed and betrayal." —Booklist Rick van Lam is bui doi, "a child of dust," as the Vietnamese scornfully called a mixed-blood kid whose father was an unknown American GI. But Rick was lucky—in time he was sent to America. And he's ended up in Hartford, Connecticut, where he's made a life as a private eye after leaving a career as a cop at the NYPD. Rick is also teaching a part-time course at Farmington College where brainy Vietnamese student Dustin Trang, a scholarship student with no social skills and an oddly hostile family, is scorned and bullied. It reminds Rick of his own miserable days in a Saigon orphanage and he reaches out. But Dustin rebuffs him. One night as a blizzard strikes, a professor is shot down in the campus parking lot. The man had befriended Dustin, but their relationship had visibly soured. Dustin is everyone's hot suspect for the murder, but Rick believes the boy is innocent. Oddly, Dustin seems indifferent to others' suspicion that he's a killer. And he seems resistant to helping his case. Rick knows he owes who he has become to the loving support of his friend, Hank Nguyen, and Hank's multigenerational family. To pay it forward for Dustin, Rick persuades Hank, a state cop, and some of his circle of Hartford friends to dig into Dustin's dysfunctional world, interviewing faculty and students, relatives, and a busy congregation that seems to be a focal point for the fractured Trang family. As the investigation stalls and the cops close in, Rick realizes he has to break through a web of lies, anger, and betrayals, and force Dustin to reveal whatever it is he fears more than arrest for murder.