Those Opulent Days: A Mystery

By: Pham, Jacquie

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802163807
• ISBN13: 9780802163806
• Release Date: November 2024
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.9" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Tiptoes through the plot!

I felt the richness of the rich, the poorness of the poor. I felt the characters struggles and conflicts within and amongst each other. This book tiptoes nicely around the main plot, just when you think you’re starting to learn more, you realize you have so much more to learn. It’s so incredibly enticing, and I love that it pieces together the story through each character’s point of view. The detailed descriptions transported me to what I could imagine as 1920’s French-colonial Vietnam. I definitely recommend this read!