Return to Dust: A Rick Van Lam Mystery (Rick Van Lam Mysteries), by Andrew Lanh
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Return to Dust: A Rick Van Lam Mystery (Rick Van Lam Mysteries), by Andrew Lanh
Read and Download Return to Dust: A Rick Van Lam Mystery (Rick Van Lam Mysteries), by Andrew Lanh
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.
Return to Dust: A Rick Van Lam Mystery (Rick Van Lam Mysteries), by Andrew Lanh- Amazon Sales Rank: #3701383 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x 1.00" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 308 pages
Review Did she jump or was she pushed? That's what Amerasian college instructor/detective Rick Van Lam's client wants to know. Although the Connecticut detective agency in which Rick (Caught Dead, 2014) is a partner deals mostly with insurance companies, he occasionally takes outside cases. He barely knows Karen Corcoran, who wants to hire him, but her recently deceased aunt, Marta Kowalski, was his cleaning lady, so he agrees to investigate her death, which the police have dismissed as suicide. Well-known in Farmington, Marta was an argumentative, often grumpy, deeply religious Catholic who nevertheless flirted with men, frequented bars, and took trips to Vegas. Although she appears to have leaped from a bridge, Karen is convinced she was murdered. Rick gets some help from his former student Hank Nguyen, whose Vietnamese-immigrant family has all but adopted Rick, who spent his early years in an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City. Although Rick is still scorned by some Vietnamese for being of mixed race, Hank's family provides an entry into the community. He learns that one of the people Marta fought with was a refugee who did lawn care for Joshua Jennings, a patrician college professor Marta dreamed of marrying. It might seem that Jennings' death and the sale of his ancient house, which Marta adored, pushed her over the edge. The more Rick digs into her surprisingly complicated life, however, the more convinced he grows that she was murdered. Lanh delves into the problems facing many in the Vietnamese community while providing a tantalizing look at the way a woman's obsessions led to her death. (Kirkus)
About the Author Andrew Lanh is a pseudonym of Ed Ifkovic. Ifkovic taught literature and creative writing at a community college in Connecticut for over three decades, and now devotes himself to writing fiction. A longtime devotee of mystery novels, he fondly recalls his boyhood discovery of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series in a family bookcase, and his immediate obsession with the whodunit world. MAKE BELIEVE is the third mystery in his Edna Ferber Mystery series for Poisoned Pen Press. Previous books are LONE STAR (2009). ESCAPE ARTIST (2011), and MAKE BELIEVE (2012).
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Frozen Men and Dust Boys By Just My Op When I first chose this book to read, I didn't realize that it is the second in a series, but it doesn't matter – it worked quite nicely as a standalone. However, I am going to read the first one, Caught Dead, to get more background.A woman commits suicide. Or is it murder? Rick Van Lam is a PI, but he is also a “dust boy,” a mongrel, a maligned mixture of Vietnamese and Caucasian blood not much accepted by either race.This is not a gory mystery at all. It skips the violence of so many mysteries. The woman whose mystery Rick is hired to solve is not especially likable; even her niece who wants her death investigated is ambivalent about her.I liked that the characters were not all good, not all evil. As mysteries go, I was more curious about the resolution of it than empathetic with the person who died.I loved the Vietnamese references – the culture, the mouth-watering descriptions of food, the rituals and attitudes, especially as practiced in the U.S. The protagonist, Rick, is self-effacing with a sense of humor, mostly directed at himself. I appreciated reading about his early life, abandoned at a Catholic orphanage when he was 5.The explanation of “frozen men,” those souls so damaged by what happened during the war that they are just waiting to die, tugged at my heartstrings.For me, the end was wrapped up a little too neatly, too much explanation came too easily, but I still enjoyed the story.This book has a nice combination of intrigue and heart, and doesn't rely on violence to tell its story. It's a series I'm going to keep on my radar.I was given an advance reader's copy of this book for review.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Good Reading By LAS Reviewer When Marta is found dead below bridge, everyone believes it was suicide. Her daughter doesn’t, however, and she hires Rick Van Lam to prove it.Mr. Lanh’s detective is half Vietnamese and half American soldier. That makes asking questions is a bit harder. Neither the whites nor the Vietnamese trust him. The white’s don’t trust his dark skin; the Vietnamese don’t trust his blue eyes. He perseveres and has the skills to wait long enough to get answers or to get thrown out.Marta was his housekeeper. She worked for many others. Most didn’t like her much. Maybe someone hated her. It’s when he finds out she had another side than the one he saw that he learns she had some secrets. She liked to drink, she liked to gamble, and she dressed for the part. Was that what got her killed?This author has a way of drawing you in while showing you the secrets of families and friends. Most everyone in the story has a secret somewhere. He shows you that the death of a man she thought she was in love with was a big issue in her life. She kept trying to find him even after he moved. She was almost obsessed. What she finds by mistake gets her killed but that’s a mystery until the end.The story is paced well, the clues he bleeds into the story keep you reading, and almost every character within is touched some way by this murder and the people involved. It was an interesting read.originally posted at long and short reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. INTERESTING CHARACTERS AND SUBTEXT By CAROL CUSTER This is an interesting book. The main character, Rick Van Lam, had a horrible childhood in Viet Nam. I've heard of how badly children of mixed race were treated there, but didn't realize just how badly. Interesting how the author brings the reference to 'dust' into the book in several different ways. I hadn't known they were referred to as 'children of the dust'. And of course the dead housekeeper had come to 'dust' Rick's house when she was alive. And finally, the thought of dust to dust in the case of Marta's death.I liked the background of Vietnamese culture that was integrated into the story. It was interesting, too, (and rather appalling!) to hear the young people's thoughts on their elders. They seem to think anyone over the age of 60 already had one foot in the grave and was merely living out their life in a boring existence - not worthy of love or romance at such an 'advanced' age.I enjoyed the characters of Rick, Jimmy, Hank, and Gracie; most of the others, not so much. This was an interesting story with the mystery neatly tied up at the end - perhaps too neatly, but maybe that's just me. In any case, I'll look forward to future books with this character.Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
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