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Officer Ruen is treading water in Oakland, California since his wife Suzy left him two years ago. He's still a cop, after a fashion. He keeps thinking someone has been in his apartment, although it's just tiny things that leave that impression. And the telephone calls. And the threats.
There's a gangster in Las Vegas named Sonny. He's Suzy's current husband, and she's missing. For some reason, Sonny thinks Suzy has returned to Robert. She hasn't. Sonny demands that Robert find her; the reasons Robert decides to try are complicated and unclear, even to Robert. As Robert tries to find Suzy, he learns more about her and more about her life before they met. All spouses have secrets. Some are never revealed because they are minor and of no consequence. Some because nobody ever asks. Some because they are better left alone. Suzy has all of these, and more.
If I belonged to a reading group, I would recommend this book month after month after month until we read it. Not because it's a great mystery, although Vu Tran is no slouch in that department. There is just so much to discuss in DRAGONFISH, so many layers of meaning to explore. Tran has written what could be called an "onion" novel - one can just keep peeling back and peeling back, and every layer reveals more. The convoluted nature of the relationship between Sonny and Suzy is good for at least an hour, and that's not counting the time when she's married to him. The quality of "otherness," as it pertains to refugees and inter-cultural marriage and belonging, another hour. This is an exceptionally well-written first novel.
§ P.J. Coldren lives in northern lower Michigan where she reads and reviews widely across the mystery genre when she isn't working in her local hospital pharmacy.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, August 2015
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