Blood Rubies (A Rune Sarasin Caper)

March 18, 2024
A jewel thief faces an onslaught of obstacles in the undercooked debut from art historian Doquang. The action opens somewhere in upper Manhattan, with career burglar Rune Sarasin’s wrists being zip-tied while her captors set fire to her surroundings. A flashback rewinds the plot six days: Sarasin has just broken into Bangkok’s Mandarin Oriental hotel to steal blood rubies from notorious gem trafficker Charles Lemaire. She makes off with the stash, but not before Lemaire’s henchmen spot her and vow to track her down. To make matters worse, Sarasin’s boyfriend, Kit, reveals that his younger sister, Madee, has vanished somewhere in Thailand. The couple then tries to track Madee down while evading Lemaire’s men, but when the crime boss catches up to them, he poses an awful ultimatum: Kit or the rubies. The problem? Sarasin seems to have misplaced the gems. Doquang comes out with her guns blazing, throwing everything and the kitchen sink at her intrepid antiheroine. Unfortunately, Sarasin never really comes to life, and there’s little here to please any but the most die-hard action lovers. This caper is no diamond in the rough—it’s mostly just rough. Agent: Liza Fleissig, Liza Royce Agency.

April 1, 2024
An intricate plan in a far-off city to snatch some priceless gems. What could possibly go wrong? Doquang opens her twisty cat-and-mouse thriller with a "Day 7" cliffhanger featuring resourceful heroine Rune Sarasin tied to a chair somewhere in Upper Manhattan and facing imminent death. Then the story rolls back to Day 1, with Rune and worrywart boyfriend Kit ensconced in Bangkok's elegant Mandarin Oriental Hotel as they prepare to steal the title jewels from American gemstone trafficker Charles Lemaire. Except for a brief car chase, the heist comes off without a hitch. But the duo's planned getaway aboard a ferry is abruptly aborted with the news that Kit's teenage sister, Madee, is missing. Abandoning their best-laid plan, Rune and Kit search the city with the murderous Lemaire in hot pursuit. Doquang's familiarity with Bangkok's "glorious views and the nascent hum of urban life" is on full display; her portrait of this unique city, from glitter to gutters, is her novel's main appeal. Given the flash-forward prologue, it's no spoiler to disclose that Rune gets back to New York for some tense interaction at Sotheby's celebrated auction gallery before her capture. Doquang writes gracefully about sunrises and suites and crowded streets, but her tame and often elegant prose is not well suited to her propulsive plot, which offers a potentially nail-biting encounter or a violent twist in nearly every chapter. And it's certainly questionable whether the reader will be drawn to the abrasive and self-involved Rune. A crisp caper whose detailed setting is its biggest attraction.

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April 15, 2024
In Bangkok, expat jewel thief Rune Sarasin and her boyfriend, Kit, have just pulled off the heist of a lifetime. However, the excitement is short-lived when they learn that Kit's teenage sister, Madee, has disappeared. The rubies that Rune has snatched from Charles Lemaire, a black-market broker, take a backseat to finding Madee. Rune and Kit trace her to a youth center deep in Bangkok's monsoon-soaked slums, but lose the trail after wrestling Madee's backpack away from a raging meth addict. Unfortunately, Rune also loses the rubies in the fight. When Lemaire and his goons turn up, Rune's only play is to persuade Lemaire to allow her to retrieve the rubies she's "hidden." Her ploy buys her twenty-four hours to find Madee and the rubies, with Kit held as collateral. Rune's instincts tell her that the youth center's aims aren't altruistic, and she's soon digging too deeply into a deadly smuggling plot. This debut thriller heralds a series to watch; Rune Sarasin is an alluring antihero battling injustice at breakneck speed.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.