INDOCHINE

by Christie Dickason ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 30, 1987

A sprawling romantic novel in the epic mode (first published in England last year under the title The Dragon Riders) about a half-caste heroine who finds love and adventure in a deeply atmospheric Vietnam. At the heart here is the exotically beautiful Nina, the daughter of a rather silly French woman and a stern, secretive, vastly wealthy Vietnamese opium czar named Luoc. In the mid-50's, while Nina is still a teen-ager, Luoc's enemies blow up his Saigon home--he disappears, Nina's mother is killed, and Nina herself is saved by Andrew Martell, one of Luoc's shady employees. She marries him, then pulls herself up by her bootstraps to follow her father as one of South Vietnam's top opium dealers--the Indochina drug trade at the time is described in marvelous detail. In the meantime, the American puppet Diem has been installed in Saigon, and there's civil war as he tries to consolidate his power. Nina has Andrew killed when she discovers he's trying to do the same to her, and the story moves into the 60's and the growing American presence. Nina carries on dual affairs with the extremely spooky guerrilla leader Colonel Thu and an American journalist (really CIA) named Will John. In the end, John wins out: Nina sells her drug network to the Mafia and leaves Vietnam, ahead of the coming storm, to join John in America. The novel sags a bit in the middle as Dickason appears to lose track of her rather complicated plot (double-cross upon double-cross), but this is, in all, a vivid, well-done, romantic debut.

Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Villard/Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION