No Good to Cry

May 9, 2016
In Lanh’s absorbing if uneven third mystery featuring Hartford, Conn., PI Rick Van Lam (after 2015’s Return to Dust), Rick’s 70-something business partner, Jimmy Gadowicz, is attacked by a thuggish pair of teens. One of the accused is Simon Tran, the son of Mike Tran, a fellow outcast from Rick’s orphanage days, who was brutally stigmatized as the child of a black GI father and a Vietnamese mother. Hoping to clear Simon’s name, Rick probes the fault lines of the Tran children—rebellious Simon, beautiful and emotionally erratic Hazel, resentful and reclusive Wilson, and aloof Michael—all caught in the wake of their father’s striving to make it in America. Lanh (the pen name of Ed Ifkovic) makes an empathetic if jumbled foray into the legacy of war and immigration and the intricate, contradictory shapes of familial love, but the mystery itself unfolds haphazardly. Rick’s investigation technique consists of equal portions of luck and leisurely chats, and the final revelation lacks punch.

Starred review from May 1, 2016
Can solving a tough case expiate a detective's private sins? Years before resigning from the NYPD and moving to Hartford, where he works insurance fraud cases with Jimmy Gadowicz, Rick van Lam spent many of his early years in an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, where, as an Amerasian, he was treated as a foreign devil by the nuns and the other orphans. When an orphan of even lower caste--his father was black--arrived, Rick, to his everlasting shame, joined in the taunting and beating. Now Rick's friendship with aspiring State Trooper Hank Nguyen, whose family treats him as another son, has helped him establish a relationship with the Hartford Vietnamese community. When Jimmy is injured and his friend killed after they're mugged by two street kids, one white, the other Asian, in hoodies, Rick agrees to try to prove that Mike Tran's son Simon, aka "Saigon Kid," and his white buddy Frankie weren't involved. Mike is a half-black Vietnamese who works hard and drives his children to attain success. All have won scholarships to prestigious private schools and strive to achieve the highest grades--all but rebellious Simon, who's already served time in juvie. Despite Simon's connection to street gangs, Rick believes him when he claims that he and Frankie are innocent. Meantime, Rick's ex-wife, Liz, has also become involved in the Tran family drama by mentoring their daughter Hazel, a beauty controlled by a preppie boyfriend who's both verbally and physically abusive. Determined to get to the bottom of the attacks on a growing number of victims, Rick must delve deeply into the dynamics of a family whose problems bring back unwelcome memories of his childhood. Lanh (Return to Dust, 2015, etc.) poses an excellent mystery with a surprising twist while exploring the psychological scars inflicted by a war long ago.

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July 1, 2016

Rick Van Lam is a bui doi, a child of the dust, son of a Vietnamese woman and an American GI. He left the NYPD after shooting a suspect and now lives in Hartford, CT, working as a fraud investigator. He teams up with friend and former student Hank Nguyen, who's training to be a Connecticut state trooper, to investigate Simon Tran and Frankie Croix. The pair are accused of killing an old man and putting Rick's dear pal Jimmy Gadowicz in the hospital, though Simon swears he is being set up. VERDICT The main draw in this third book in the series (after Return to Dust) is the impeccable characterizations, though the plotting is well done, and Lanh's depictions of life for Vietnamese orphans will break readers' hearts.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2016
Two elderly gentlemen walking along a sidewalk in Hartford, Connecticut, are attacked from behind. One of them dies. The survivor owns the detective agency Rick Van Lam works for, and Van Lam is asked to find out what happened and who's responsible. Two teenage boys appear to be the culprits, playing the cruel knockout game, coming at old guys and punching them in the head. Skeptical PI Lam suspects there was more going on. Author Lanh manages to get 300 pages out of this mini-mystery by turning it into an examination of a Vietnamese family's struggles in America. Interestingly, the family turns out to be a recognizable version of miserable families anywhere. Father so pressures the kids to succeed that one retreats into airy aestheticism and the othera mugging suspectis drawn to the gangs, and the beautiful daughter falls for a boy who is definitely not good for her. The lack of crime-story tension in this long section may lose some readers, but those who hang on will be rewarded both by the richness of the family story and by a furious, suspenseful finale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)