Andrew Lanh – Carol's Notebook

Author: Andrew Lanh

Andrew Lanh is a pseudonym of Edward Ifkovic. Ed 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.

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 culture, while their grown children are losing the connection to the traditional ways. Rick is not fully accepted by the community, but Hank, his sidekick, is and it is at Hank's family's request that Rick is investigating. The characters are the strong point of the book for me. Mary and her family are not rich, but her sister and her sister's American husband certainly are. The children, in their late teens and early 20s, are a mixed lot, mostly self-centered, unwilling to cooperate. In the end, though, greed and love are what it comes down to - and fear. Each has his or her own goals, secrets, and ambitions. For...