You've Read "Crazy Rich Asians;" Now Read These Books.

       The "Crazy Rich Asians" franchise, in  which author Kevin Kwan chronicles the hilarious fictional saga of the travails of the Singaporeans who shoulder the burden of belonging to the Richest-People-On-The-Planet Club, continues to rank at the top of the best-sellers list,

​...as well as at the box office.

      There's no arguing that the "Crazy Rich Asian" books are the best of reads, and if you haven't already read them, do.
      But there's another fiction series also set in South East Asia that you absolutely should read: R. Bruce Logan's superb "Finding Lien" (See post from 5/11/2018) and his equally superb just-released sequel "As the Lotus Blooms."

      One could say that both authors' books deal with the problems of a particular economic class; however R. Bruce Logan's novels are about wealth, poverty, and depravity intersecting in the most horrendous way in the child-sex trade that is rampant in South East Asia, where among the other commodities that  wealth can buy is the body of a child.
        Still, despite the harrowing subject matter, both of Logan's books are engaging, fast-paced thrillers full of twists, turns, heart-gripping and heart-stopping moments of daring rescues of young girls who have been enticed or entrapped then sold to brothels, pimps or as child brides.
          In the first novel, "Finding Lien," a sudden shocking revelation compels a retired U.S. Army officer to return to Vietnam to deal with the consequences of a brief, long-forgotten liaison with a young Vietnamese woman back when he was a young soldier during the war over forty years earlier. This compelling, quick-moving story takes the reader down into the dark world of the Southeast Asian child sex-trafficking trade and is populated with realistic characters in realistic settings. It is an authentic story that juxtaposes human evil, depravity and corruption with human goodness, courage and love.
         Though "Finding Lien," can stand by itself,  “As the Lotus Blooms” picks up where the first book left off.
       In  “As the Lotus Blooms”  - and don't be fooled by the tranquil title, this book is dynamite -  a sex trafficking ring led by an elusive leader known only as The Pied Piper has been luring and kidnapping girls from Vietnam to sell to the brothels and pimps of Singapore or to men seeking young brides in rural China. An organization of courageous anti-trafficking workers whose mission it is to rescue these young victims must take on the dangers, hairpin logistics and super-sleuthing of organizing rescues where minutes make the critical difference between saving the lives of these children or losing them forever. This book, like the first, is an edge-of-your-seat page-turner that also pulls your heart along for the ride.

    Author R. Bruce Logan knows his subject matter well, as he is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and humanitarian whose cause is that of ending the child sex-trafficking trade in Southeast Asia.

​      Bruce  and his wife, Elaine Head, travel frequently to Vietnam and in their work and research have come to know well the  structure of the trafficking and slavery network and have met and interviewed victims of child sex trafficking in that part of the world.

    Bruce  is donating all profits from his  books to Blue Dragon Children's Foundation, (https//www.bluedragon.org), a Vietnamese organization working to end child trafficking and slavery, and represented in "As the Lotus Blooms" as as a group called Green Gecko, a thinly veiled pseudonym for Blue Dragon.
    Though worlds apart in subject matter from the "Crazy Rich Asians" books, I promise that once you pick up "Finding Lien” and "As the Lotus Blooms" you won’t be able to put them down, and once you’ve finished reading them you won’t be able to stop thinking about them.
     And good news: There's a third novel in the "Finding Lien" series in the works.

"Finding Lien" is available at Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Lien-R-Bruce-Logan-ebook/dp/B01F9ETB2O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526000305&sr=8-1&keywords=finding+lien

​"As the Lotus Blooms" is currently available in paperback at Amazon, but will be released in Kindle Edition next week.
https://www.amazon.com/As-Lotus-Blooms-Bruce-Logan/dp/1684331021/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537728654&sr=8-1&keywords=as+the+lotus+blooms