Best Book of 2024, an Amazon Editor's Pick, and a Strand Pick of the Month. Mailan enjoys traveling, photography, and running. She is a Canadian transplant and longtime resident of New York City.
Doquang applied the Page 69 Test to Ceylon Sapphires, the follow-up to Blood Rubies, and reported the following:
Page 69 of Ceylon Sapphires catches jewel thief Rune Sarasin on the tail end of a job in the affluent resort town of Deauville, France. She hears strange noises coming from the back of the mansion that is serving as her staging site. The tension builds as she moves closer to the source, ending with a revelation (no spoilers!) that foreshadows the life-threatening troubles ahead.Visit Mailan Doquang's website.
Page 69 provides an excellent snapshot of the book. First, it acquaints readers with the protagonist, Rune, a half American, half Thai jewel thief working to repay Charles Lemaire, the ruthless crime lord she robbed in Blood Rubies (Book 1 of the series). Second, it captures the dangerous situations Rune finds herself in throughout the book as she strives to dodge Lemaire and the police. And third, it provides a strong sense of place, which is a salient feature of my writing.
As an historian of architecture, I’ve spent my career researching, writing about, and teaching the history of places, including buildings, neighborhoods, and more broadly, cities. Ceylon Sapphires transports readers to some of my favorite places in Europe. It opens with a heist at the Louvre in Paris, where I lived and worked during graduate school, before moving on to other European hotspots, such as the southern French city of Marseille, the Dutch capital of Amsterdam, and the wealthy enclave of Deauville, colloquially known as Paris’s 21 arrondissement. Page 69 is the last time Rune is in Deauville, but the town remains central to the book. Not only is it the setting of the burglary that sets Rune on her dangerous path, but it is also home to one of her greatest adversaries, and of a powerful ally.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
