Dragonfish

Vu Tran

This is a really interesting genre mixup. On the surface, it is a crime thriller, with Oakland cop Robert Ruen getting involved in the search for his missing ex-wife. She has moved to Las Vegas to work in the casinos as a dealer and has suddenly disappeared. We get a little bit of backstory in the telling of how Ruen finds out about the disappearance, and then are jumped in to the Vegas scene, gambling and crime, the glitzy strip and seedy off-strip reality. In many ways a traditional crime detective novel to race through and then leave on the shelf during your next vacation.

But wait, there's more. The detective-thriller is all just a container for the storytelling. Tran is really giving us a story of the immigrant experience, particularly that of southeast Asians coming to the US after the Vietnam war. It is a story of mental illness, trauma, the loss of culture and relationship (and even the ability to communicate) between the 1st and 2nd generation, and the long term tragic effects of violence and lack of place or home. Tran captures the full emotion of every character, and as you might expect, there is not much happy. Very memorable.

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