Jacquie Pham’s transportive debut, Those Opulent Days, delivers a classic historical murder mystery centered around the glamor, violence, wealth, and opium of 1920’s French-colonial Vietnam that meshes the structural brilliance of Lucy Foley’s The Guest List with the historical vitality of Vanessa Chan's The Storm We Made, and the upstairs-downstairs drama of Downton Abbey.
One will lose his mind. One will pay. One will agonize. And one will die.
Duy, Phong, Minh, and Edmond have been best friends since childhood. Now, as young men running their families’ formidable businesses, they make up Saigon’s most powerful group of friends in 1928 Vietnam’s elite society.
Until one of them is murdered.
In a lavish mansion on a hill in Dalat, all four men have gathered for an evening of indulgence, but one of them won’t survive the night. Toggling between this fatal night and the six days leading up to it, told from the perspectives of the four men, their mothers, their servants, and their lovers, an intricate web of terror, loyalty, and well-kept secrets begins to unravel.
As the story creeps closer to the murder, and as each character becomes a suspect, the true villain begins to emerge: colonialism, the French occupation of Vietnam, and the massive economic differences that catapult the wealthy into the stratosphere while the poor starve on the streets.
Those Opulent Days is at once both a historical novel of vivid intensity and a classically structured, pitch-perfect murder mystery featuring a robust cast of characters you won’t soon forget.
Genre: Historical Mystery
One will lose his mind. One will pay. One will agonize. And one will die.
Duy, Phong, Minh, and Edmond have been best friends since childhood. Now, as young men running their families’ formidable businesses, they make up Saigon’s most powerful group of friends in 1928 Vietnam’s elite society.
Until one of them is murdered.
In a lavish mansion on a hill in Dalat, all four men have gathered for an evening of indulgence, but one of them won’t survive the night. Toggling between this fatal night and the six days leading up to it, told from the perspectives of the four men, their mothers, their servants, and their lovers, an intricate web of terror, loyalty, and well-kept secrets begins to unravel.
As the story creeps closer to the murder, and as each character becomes a suspect, the true villain begins to emerge: colonialism, the French occupation of Vietnam, and the massive economic differences that catapult the wealthy into the stratosphere while the poor starve on the streets.
Those Opulent Days is at once both a historical novel of vivid intensity and a classically structured, pitch-perfect murder mystery featuring a robust cast of characters you won’t soon forget.
Genre: Historical Mystery
Praise for this book
"Eerie, atmospheric, and shot through with peril, Those Opulent Days captures six heady, violent days in French-colonial Vietnam that will forever alter the lives of this unforgettable cast of characters. Both a riveting mystery and a moving historical drama, this is a glittering debut." - Kirstin Chen
"A masterful portrait of the enduring power of friendship and the weight of family - the ones we are born into and the ones we create on our own. Harrowing, suspenseful and beautifully written, Jacquie Pham's debut novel, Those Opulent Days, introduces a stunning new voice in crime fiction." - Danielle Girard
"A compelling and complex portrait of human relationships, desires and failings, set against the beautifully evoked backdrop of colonial Vietnam." - Jane Pek
"A fascinating portrait of French colonial Vietnam, replete with simmering class tensions and murderous consequences. Pham succeeds at evoking an era both grim and glamorous in the service of a mystery that informs as much as it entertains." - Andromeda Romano-Lax
"A masterful portrait of the enduring power of friendship and the weight of family - the ones we are born into and the ones we create on our own. Harrowing, suspenseful and beautifully written, Jacquie Pham's debut novel, Those Opulent Days, introduces a stunning new voice in crime fiction." - Danielle Girard
"A compelling and complex portrait of human relationships, desires and failings, set against the beautifully evoked backdrop of colonial Vietnam." - Jane Pek
"A fascinating portrait of French colonial Vietnam, replete with simmering class tensions and murderous consequences. Pham succeeds at evoking an era both grim and glamorous in the service of a mystery that informs as much as it entertains." - Andromeda Romano-Lax
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