Little Saigon Parker transmutes familiar themes into a powerful meticulously orchestrated novel, or every note, every chord serves to build towards a violent climax and moral Coda. Little Saigon, it is called Little Saigon. The teeming community in Orange County, California, where 100000 refugees, Cambodians, La Oceans, Chinese But mostly Vietnamese have come to live and where Chuck Fry, sometimes journalist and sometimes pro surfer comes face-to-face with the horror that his charismatic older brother saw in the Vietnam war, investigating the unexplained fry maneuvers through a maze of street gangs, businessmen playing on the fears of the community and cadres from as far away as Hanoi. Who exploits the lingering specter of war and all of it, pointing to a transpacific espionage network?
Andrew Fry's own brother. The circle of betrayal is shocking. Enough, but it is only the trap door to a darker one. Even more frightening is Underworld, where the war has not ended where government agencies loom like puppeteers over the police. Where the people around Fry, including the woman he loves, are dying, disappearing, or deceiving him and where a plot to topple the leadership of Vietnam races against rumors of living Americans in prison there.
Little Saigon is a dazzlingly applauded novel of atmosphere and suspense. Charged with surprises that detonate, even as we turn the final pages, it is richer and even more satisfying than Laguna. Heat teaches Jefferson Parker's previous bestseller and affirms him as a novelist who, like no other of this decade, draws his storytelling power from the ultimate elements of our experience.
