Blood Rubies
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A Deadly Pleasures Magazine Best Debut of 2024 and Globe and Mail Best Book of 2024
Rune Sarasin is about to learn just how quickly the life of a jewel thief can spiral out of control.…
Seven days are all it takes for Rune Sarasin’s life to completely derail. It starts with a routine heist: lifting a pouch of rubies from the Bangkok hotel room of wealthy smuggler Charles Lemaire. Rune nearly gets caught when Lemaire’s goons give chase, but she manages to escape with her boyfriend Kit. Then Kit delivers some terrifying news: his teenage sister Madee has gone missing. They track her cell phone to the dangerous Khlong Toei slum, but the trail ends there. The night gets even worse when Rune realizes she lost the pouch of gems somewhere in the slum while searching for Madee.
Charles Lemaire is the wrong man to mess with. He is a perfectionist when it comes to both his attire and his crimes, and he isn’t afraid to kill to get what he wants. When he catches up to Rune and Kit, he gives Rune an ultimatum: return his rubies or she will never see her boyfriend again. Now Rune must race against time to either recover the lost gems or find something even more valuable with which to ransom Kit back from Lemaire. But she also still needs to find out what happened to Madee. As Rune investigates deeper into the shadows of the Khlong Toei slum, she uncovers a web of crime with consequences far more insidious than just one missing girl and a handful of stolen rubies.
Hurtling from the back alleys of Bangkok to the glamorous auction houses of New York City, Mailan Doquang’s heart-pounding debut will leave readers questioning just how far they would go for the ones they love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
