Return to Dust

Rick Van Lam Mystery #2

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.

Genres: Mystery

308 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2015

About the author

Andrew Lanh is a pen name used by Ed Ifkovic.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seemed a bit repetitive for most of the novel.

The twist at the end moved this from a three star to a four star.

I enjoy these characters and the Vietnamese family interactions. I enjoy PI investigations.

I borrowed a copy from the public library.

[Elite Group · Rating 4 out of 5]

Return to Dust by Andrew Lanh
(A Rick Van Lam Mystery)

Very good thriller and social commentary on racial prejudice

4 out of 5 stars

Rick Van Lam is a product of the Vietnam War, being the offspring of a Vietnamese mother and an unknown American soldier father. As such, Rick was regarded as ‘bui do, dust boy, impure, mongrel, American blood.’ And now, even in the affluent town of Farmington, outside of Hartford, Connecticut, Rick - ex-cop, Private Investigator and part-time lecturer - is still faced with personal racial issues amongst the small Vietnamese community.
When Rick is asked by Karen Corcoran to investigate the presumed suicide of her aunt, Marta Kowalski, little does he realise the hornets’ nest that he will uncover.

Marta Kowalski was well-known in Farmington circles as a smug, church-going gossip but also competent cleaner of many residents’ houses. Karen tells Rick that although Marta appeared to be depressed, as a Catholic she would not have entertained the idea of committing suicide. It was well-known that Marta had a crush on Joshua Jennings, long-term Farmington resident and fixture at the College, but they had apparently had a big fight and stopped speaking to each other. When Joshua moved away and finally died in New York, Marta was devastated.

When Rick begins his investigations it isn’t long before he discovers that Marta was more than a gossip, and had had verbal battles with Joshua’s gardener Willie Do and also her own nephew, and Karen’s brother, Davey. On the night of her death, she had phoned another old tutor, Richard Wilcox, telling him she needed to see him, and it was on the way to his house that she apparently threw herself off a bridge.

Whilst this is a very good and entertaining thriller with twists and turns right up to the conclusion, Andrew Lanh paints a very vivid picture of the aftermath of the failed American intervention in Vietnam. The Prologue presents us with a concise but detailed snapshot of everyday life in old Saigon, where Rick, as a young ‘forbidden boy’ with American blood and blue eyes constantly runs the gauntlet of cruel racial bigotry.

Thoroughly recommended.
Sméagol

Best Selling Crime Thrillers received an advanced copy of the book to review.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up at the library, with the pleasant anticipation of reading a mystery written by a Vietnamese-American author. While "Lanh" delivers a well-crafted tale set in a small university town with a Vietnamese-American community, I was really taken aback to learn the author was actually a man who appears to be fully Caucasian. There's no denying his storytelling skill, but the choice to take a pseudonym clearly meant to suggest an ethnic identity not his own comes across as something close to literary blackface.

I'm glad to see books with diverse casts, and I realize that means authors must inevitably create characters who differ from themselves in a host of ways, but the author's choice of an Asian-sounding pseudonym left me really uneasy. It may also explain the rather odd prologue -- a kind of origin-story set piece that I expected more in book one of the story than book two. Though "Lanh" creates vivid scenes in both Vietnam and the U.S., the prologue didn't add much to the story's narrative arc and almost seemed like an attempt to show his ability to convincingly write from a Vietnamese perspective.

"Lanh" creates several interesting male characters throughout the book, but I found his characterizations of women much more frustrating. The only positive female characters don't get developed very much, while all the most developed female characters all have significant issues, verging on mental illness. The central figure, in particular, changes dramatically from the start of the book to the end, but in not always plausible ways. "Lanh" repeatedly tell the reader Marta's a "good Catholic," but her virtue seems to mainly stem from regular church attendance and frequently prejudiced moral judgments toward others. Even as a Protestant myself, that's not what I'd consider evidence of piety -- especially given some of Marta's own moral failings, as revealed later!

I had hoped "Lanh" would introduce me to another enjoyable series, but I don't plan to read more at this point.

[Carl Brookins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Billed as a Rick Van Lam Mystery, the novel has more atmosphere and character than one usually expects from a good crime novel. As a consequence, the characters and their backgrounds take up far more space and time than does the careful, sometimes plodding, efforts of the novel’s detective, Rick Van Lam, to answer a rather simple question. Was Marta Kowalski murdered or did she simply slip and fall of a bridge while under the influence?

Rick Van Lam is an Amerasian, a sad by-product of that disastrous war in Viet Nam. Van Lam makes a dangerous trek to America as a young boy. Now he’s a relatively calm and accomplished investigator for a large insurance company. He’s stationed in a bedroom community outside Hartford, Connecticut, where lives a sizeable group of Hmong and other refugees from SE Asia. His relationship to the community is fraught because Lam is not pure blood and many in the small community resent his very existence. That attitude interferes with his investigation. It also offers the author many opportunities to expound on the unique troubles of this group of Asian transfers as they continue to struggle to adapt to their new country.

The woman who died seemed to be an inoffensive sort, semi-retired, she cleaned houses and apartments for a wide assortment of people in the small bedroom community and despite resistance at almost every turn, Investigator Lam persists, wading through thickets of prejudice, suspicion and occasional assistance. Ultimately, of course, he solves the mystery of Marta’s death and in the process, delivers a long and occasionally tortuous dissertation on the outflow of the disaster that was that war in Vietnam.

[Agatha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Half-Vietnamese, half-American main character is hired to determine whether his former maid was murdered or committed suicide. I did NOT care for how the author was REALLY a white male, who assumed a Vietnamese pen-name to write a novel that takes place in a Vietnamese-American community. Luckily it seems like most reviewers agreed with me and one even said it was the literary equivalent of “black face.” I can see why they said it but I personally felt like it was more like the literary equivalent of “yellow fever,” fetishizing anything in the Asian community, like how some creepy white men have a creepy fetish with Asian women. All in all, it turned me off and I will not look for his future books. I should have also looked at the publisher (not a main one, something called Poison Pen Press) and at the reviewers on the back of the book (no one whom I recognized) to realize this was sort of a second- rate book. Not recommended.

[Will Zeilinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Lanh has captured the conflict experienced by many people from different Asian backgrounds when trying to navigate the American lifestyle. Add a private eye and murder, and a great story appears. I enjoyed following Rick Van Lam through this tale. A "good read" for sure.

[Janka H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another human drama for Rick Van Lam, an investigator with Vietnamese-American blood, revealing the complicate tangles of people´ s motives and passions.

Mrs. Marta Kowalski, and older housekeeper, is dead. She committed a suicide. Rick sent the flowers to her funeral and wouldn´t think more about her, if not her niece Karen, who is sure her aunt must have been murdered. Rick is not convinced, but he starts an investigation - and is surprised by finding that this older woman had more about her than he would thought. Marta was a complicated personality - she loved the attention of men, but was virtuous; she was a bit adventurous with her trips to casinos and occasional drink or more, but she was also narrow-minded, and so on and so on. But is this enough for a murder? But Rick´s gut is telling him that there is something wrong, something worthy digging for.

The second installment of the Rick Vam Lam mysteries is taking a different angle compared to the first novel - this time the world is the world of academia and professors older and younger, their wives and ambitions. Their world is not the only one portrayed here, but is the most frequent one. I believe this is because the author (real name Ed Ifkovic) has been the part of this world itself. And I somehow think that his relationship with this environment made his writing in this novel more sarcastic and snappy than kind (I had the opposite feeling about the first book - a bit sarcastic, but much more kind). The Asian part is somewhat toned down, which I am a bit sad about because I loved that in the first book.
Rick Van Lam is an interesting hero - smart, personable and sensitive, but also a bit of loner. He is unsure about how to have a real relationship with a woman - he is still in pretty deep, but platonic contact with his beautiful ex-wife Liz, whom he obviously adore and vice versa, but they are convinced that they can´t live together; but also having some soft spot for sensitive and unbalanced Karen. Somehow he values his friendships more - with his young Vietnamese sidekick Hank and his warm family; his boss Jimmy and his elder landlady Gracie, a former Rockette. And he has also the issue with his mixed blood going on - someone between the worlds, comfortable in his own skin and yet missing his roots in any of his cultures.
I like Rick.
But I didn´t liked this of his adventures much - too much of red herrings on the way to truth to the point the plot seemed dragged. Also the ending, if surprising, was also not that interesting.
But what was my biggest problem was the victim´s personality. There was too much contrasts in her that she came out just unconvincingly. The less is more.

A star goes out for some snappy comments about Catholicism, which I find unnecessary for the plot.

I will read the following book in the series. I hope for another insight about the Vietnamese community!

[Susan (aka Just My Op) · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rick Van Lam is the product of the Vietnam War in that his mother was Vietnamese and his father an American soldier. Escaping the poverty and loveless atmosphere of his native country he comes to the U. S. becoming a private investigator and college instructor. Most of his cases involve insurance fraud but when the niece of his cleaning lady believes her aunt was murdered and did not commit suicide Rick cannot resist investigating what might be his first murder case.

This is the second in the series and the first I have read with this character. I sometimes got bogged down in what seemed to me the same sentences replayed over again but with a different twist. It still was not enough to not keep my interest and I was rooting for this young man with demons of his own as he traversed the landscape of lies, deceit, jealousies, and hate to discover if this was really a suicide, or a murder.

I await the next in the series.

Enjoy!

Thank you Poisoned Pen Press for the advanced reading copy.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating mystery steeped in several unique cultures that strongly impact our protagonist's investigation. The Private Investigator is Amerasian and shut out of many Vietnamese activities, making him both an outcast and a great cultural observer. He also teaches at the local college and the mystery involves several aged faculty members. Lastly, he is fascinated with attractive American women, and one hires him for this job. Much of the book involves trying to determine whether the mystery involves a suicide or a murder. The author has created a complex world with secrets galore. The reader will really enjoy discovering them as they are uncovered, carefully, in this well developed mystery. I received my copy from the publisher and NetGalley.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book through the goodreads firstreads program. It was a little hard for me to follow, though I'm not sure why.
It begins with the main character, Rick, as a boy in Vietnam. He ends up as a Private Investigator in America. He's asked to take the case of a woman who had been presumed to have committed suicide. Her neice believes it was murder. He bounces around, seemingly aimlessly looking for clue before ultimately solving the case. I'll admit, it wasn't obviously, nor a conclusion I would have even guessed. I'm wondering if I missed some clues by reading parts when I was over tired.

[Clarissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This read like a Jessica Fletcher mystery. I couldn't figure anything out until the very end. It is filled with characters with so many secrets, hidden agendas and a PI who is determined to get to the bottom of it all. The only reason this isn't getting a 5 is simply because I didn't like the homophobic ranting.

[Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good straightforward writing without flourishes. But it's not as good as the first in the series.

The author violates one rule of 1st person mystery writing: tell the reader what he knows. He follows this rule faithfully until the end, when the final "clue" isn't revealed until the killer is confronted. So Rick's logic may be brilliant but the reader's chance to be also is eliminated.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

wonderful play on words in the title .. the cleaning woman who dusts all their homes is killed by one of her employers and goes back to dust. Entertaining. Many red-herrings. Well done. Recommended.