With it being Asian heritage month I wanted to shed some light on Asian horror and thriller writers. My last post was all about horror books by Asian authors. Now this one is going to be all about thrillers by Asian authors.
They deserve the attention and I have slowly realized that I really haven’t read many books by Asians. I want that to change. I just hope within the next year or so I can find books by them in the genres I love! Let’s get to it, here is a list of thrillers by Asian authors!
Thrillers by Asian Authors
Most of these Thrillers by Asian Authors are books I hope I can actually get to soon! I know I definitely need to diversify my reading a little bit more. Hopefully, these books catch your interest as well.
Dragonfish
Robert, an Oakland cop, still can’t let go of Suzy, the enigmatic Vietnamese wife who left him two years ago. Now she’s disappeared from her new husband, Sonny, a violent Vietnamese smuggler and gambler who’s blackmailing Robert into finding her for him. As he pursues her through the sleek and seamy gambling dens of Las Vegas, shadowed by Sonny’s sadistic son, “Junior,” and assisted by unexpected and reluctant allies, Robert learns more about his ex-wife than he ever did during their marriage. He finds himself chasing the ghosts of her past, one that reaches back to a refugee camp in Malaysia after the fall of Saigon, as his investigation soon uncovers the existence of an elusive packet of her secret letters to someone she left behind long ago. Although Robert starts illuminating the dark corners of Suzy’s life, the legacy of her sins threatens to immolate them all.
Vu Tran has written a thrilling and cinematic work of sophisticated suspense and haunting lyricism, set in motion by characters who can neither trust each other nor trust themselves. This remarkable debut is a noir page-turner resonant with the lasting reverberations of lives lost and lives remade a generation ago.
I’m not really sure if this is my type of thriller but I obviously wanted to include it on the list. Don’t get me wrong the story sounds interesting. Hopefully, some of you might find interest in Dragonfish since it has a pretty interesting concept to it! If you do read the book make sure to let me know what you think.
A Quiet Place
While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn’t totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly-spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed. How did it come about that his wife—who was shy and withdrawn, and only left their house twice a week to go to haiku meetings—ended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo neighborhood?
When Tsuneo goes to apologize to the boutique owner for the trouble caused by his wife’s death he discovers the villa Tachibana nearby, a house is known to be a meeting place for secret lovers. As he digs deeper into his wife’s recent past, he must eventually conclude that she led a double life…
So A Quiet Place actually sounds really good to me. I love books and movies that deal with characters that have a double life. Granted it is something that I wouldn’t want to deal with for myself or my significant other. Just a lot of drama and heartbreak. But just because I don’t want to deal with it personally doesn’t mean I don’t want to read about it.
This very well might be a book I have to read soon!
The Hole
Ogi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident. It was an accident that took his wife’s life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Ogi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in. His memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house. But soon Ogi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden. She’s uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.
Ya know I don’t think I would be happy about my mother-in-law having to take care of me after being in an accident. Not that I don’t think she would do a good job but I would not feel comfortable with it at all. The plot actually makes me think about how things are completely different in the Asian culture compared to the American culture. But I love the whole monster-in-law trope when it comes to movies and books. It makes me realize how lucky I am that my mother-in-law really isn’t that bad.
This will have to be another book I’m going to have to read soon!
The Only Child
An eerie and absorbing novel following a criminal psychologist who has discovered shocking and possibly dangerous connections between a serial killer and her stepdaughter
Criminal psychologist Seonkyeong receives an unexpected call one day. Yi Byeongdo, a serial killer whose gruesome murders shook the world, wants to be interviewed. Yi Byeongdo, who has refused to speak to anyone until now, asks specifically for her. Seonkyeong agrees out of curiosity.
That same day Hayeong, her husband’s eleven-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, shows up at their door after her grandparents, with whom she lived after her mother passed away, die in a sudden fire. Seonkyeong wants her to feel at home but is gradually unnerved as the young girl says very little and acts strangely.
At work and at home, Seonkyeong starts to unravel the pasts of the two new arrivals in her life and begins to see startling similarities. Hayeong looks at her the same way Yi Byeongdo does when he recounts the abuse he experienced as a child; Hayeong’s serene expression masks a temper that she can’t control. Plus, the story she tells about her grandparents’ death, and her mother’s before that, deeply troubles Seonkyeong. So much so that Yi Byeongdo picks up on it and starts giving her advice.
This is another I don’t know if I really care about reading but it does sound interesting. Who knows this may be one of my reader’s next favorite book.
If you have read The Only Child then let me know what you thought about it!
The Vegetarian
Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye’s decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye—impossibly, ecstatically, tragically—far from her once-known self altogether.
The Vegetarian actually has a really interesting concept! If I had these dreams I don’t know if I would go to these lengths but then again I guess it would depend on what exactly the dream was about.
I may have to check out this one soon, but it does sound like it may be a little gruesome.
Seven Years of Darkness
The truth always rises to the surface…
When a young girl is found dead in Seryong Lake, a reservoir in a remote South Korean village, the police immediately begin their investigation. At the same time, three men–Yongje, the girl’s father, and two security guards at the nearby dam, each of whom has something to hide about the night of her death–find themselves in an elaborate game of cat and mouse as they race to uncover what happened to her, without revealing their own closely guarded secrets.
After a final showdown at the dam results in a mass tragedy, one of the guards is convicted of murder and sent to prison. For seven years, his son, Sowon, lives in the shadow of his father’s shocking and inexplicable crime; everywhere he goes, a seemingly concerted effort to reveal his identity as the reviled mass murderer’s son follows him. When he receives a package that promises to reveal at last what really happened at Seryong Lake, Sowon must confront a present danger he never knew existed.
This is another I found when doing some research on thriller books by Asian authors. The plot has really caught my attention and I’m actually really curious about what secrets these characters are hiding. I’m especially curious about the father and what exactly he could be hiding!
These were the few thrillers by Asian authors I was able to find. Hopefully, soon I can do more research and find more books to share. In the meantime make sure to leave some recommendations in the comments if there are any I missed!
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