Caught Dead
A Rick Van Lam Mystery

It's rare thing that a book catches me from the first page, but this one did. Rick Van Lam is a biracial private investigator who usually sticks with insurance fraud. He's half Vietnamese and half white soldier. He was brought to the US as an orphan when he was thirteen and he never really felt part......more

CAUGHT DEAD was an intriguing story. Rick Van Lam - the Vietnamese son of an unknown American soldier - is a private investigator in Hartford, Connecticut. He specializes in insurance fraud. But when his friend Hank Nguyen comes to him and asks him to investigate the death of Mary Le Vu, one of the......more

I like this mystery a lot. Mysteries are often not only about the whodunit, but about the issues and cultures surrounding the case, and this one is as much about the Vietnamese community as it is about who killed Mary and why. The older Vietnamese, mostly immigrants, are trying to hold on to their c......more

For a lot of reasons, I had high hopes for this book. Set in Hartford, on streets I've traveled regularly. The PI is Ameriasian, and the book explores (but not too deeply), the Vietnamese culture in Hartford. Disappointingly, the book ambles through two murders with a Socratic method of exploration......more

Very interesting read. Good to *see* the inner workings of culture for a Vietnamese American and the original immigrants. Though I was not surprised by the ending this was better than some offerings in the PI genre.......more