Who was murdered, and who did the deed, in colonial Vietnam?

Cover image of "Those Opulent Days," a mystery set in colonial Vietnam

Wherever Europeans established colonies, there was always at least a handful of the local elite who prospered. Europeans rarely learned the local languages or worked with any of the millions of poor people they ruled—except when they hired them as household servants. But there was always a need for managers, interpreters, police officers, and others whose proximity to the European elite set them a level far above others. And that gap was inconceivably greater for a privileged few locals who had acquired great wealth and power in the years before the Europeans arrived. That’s the case with the three men whose lives we observe in Jacquie Pham’s superb debut novel, Those Opulent Days. The events at the heart of the story take place in 1928 in colonial Vietnam in what later came to be known as the country’s South.

Three young Vietnamese and a French diplomat’s son

Those Opulent Days centers on the relationships among three privileged Annamese men and Edmond Moutet, the son of a senior French diplomat. Duy’s wealth derives from opium. His family produces the drug and sells it through a network of opium dens favored by French and Annamese alike. Phong is the son of a “renowned chemist” who had grown wealthy through his chain of pharmacies. And lastly Minh. “His father was Khải Siêu, making him the richest heir to the biggest rubber plantation in Cochinchina, richer than Duy and his family’s opium business, and certainly richer than Phong and his chemist father. . . They were the only three amongst a handful of Annamite students who were as wealthy as the French children.”

And as students, the four young men visit a fortuneteller, who advises them that “‘The four of you. One will lose his mind. One will pay. One will agonize. . . [And] one will die.'” And so it is. Years later, “Die, one of them did. A death by poison.” And Those Opulent Years tracks the years before and after that murder, as the identity of the murdered man emerges and, finally, that of the killer.

Those Opulent Days by Jacquie Pham (2024) 295 pages ★★★★★

Photo of Saigon street scene in the 1920s, when this mystery took place in colonial Vietnam — *A colorized photo of Saigon’s Majestic Hotel in the 1920s, before the events in this novel took place. Image: Saigoneer*

Obscene wealth and destitution among the characters

Others join the four men on the list of characters in Those Opulent Days. The most notable among them are León Moutet, Edmond’s father. He epitomizes the French colonial elite to whom even the governor defers. Minh’s mother, Madame Như, a vainglorious older woman who treats her servants as lower than human. Two of the servants in Madame Như’s household, Hai and Tattler, who gain her attention in different ways. And a Frenchwoman named Marianne, who raised Edmond in his mother’s absence and considers him her son. All eight become deeply involved in the mystery that unfolds in a series of flashbacks and flash forwards. And a surprise awaits us in the end.

When the French ruled Indochina

French Jesuit missionaries first visited Indochina early in the 17th century, and traders became involved in later years. But the French conquest of the region began only in the 19th century. First, the region of present-day South Vietnam then known as Cochinchina. Then, progressively, Cambodia, Tonkin and Annam (today’s central Vietnam), and Laos. All these areas together comprise the French-ruled Indochinese Union when the events in Those Opulent Days unfold in 1928. (After 1949, Vietnam became a single country, under French control until 1954, when American influence began.)

As Jacquie Pham portrays in the novel, French rule was openly racist and brutal, and resistance frequently flared up, always savagely repressed. The revolt by workers on a rubber plantation owned by Minh’s family that Pham describes was typical of the continuing growth of revolutionary consciousness among millions of the desperately poor people forced into virtual slavery by the French.