JUAN INORIZA ‣ The Mekong Vanishing

A Borderland Thriller of Trust, Trade, and Trafficking

The Mekong Vanishing. A Borderland Thriller of Trust, Trade, and Trafficking by Juan Inoriza

The Mekong Vanishing

Borderland Thriller of Trust, Trade and Trafficking

Phong was as fixed a presence at the Mekong Restaurant as the ceiling fan’s whir or the river’s shifting light. When he fails to appear for his three o’clock shift, Cần Thơ’s fragile rhythms begin unravelling. His brother Dũng picks his way down rain-lashed backroads, scouring ditches and questioning shuttered shops for any trace of the vanished – while neighbours trade whispers of convoys slipping towards Cambodia.

Major Yên Linh (PC02) traces digital ghosts: pixelated CCTV, cloned SIM cards, and forensic traces left by a modified van. Suspicion settles on the restaurant’s expatriate regulars—polite, private men with patchy alibis. Yet each technical clue and fractured testimony pulls the inquiry deeper into the delta’s shadows, where every lead tastes of doubt.

Looming over it all: the unresolved death of Hòa Bình, exactly one lunar year before. As Rằm tháng Bảy approaches—when hungry ghosts are believed to wander and altars thicken with smoke—the 15th day of the seventh moon binds both tragedies. Khmer drums, Hoa votives, Catholic candles: ritual stains every conversation, twisting suspicion into a matter of faith as much as fact.

Steeped in monsoonal dread and fractured loyalties, The Mekong Vanishing is a slow-burn thriller of family, faith and the cost of absence. Where tradition collides with technology at the water’s edge, and the river tallies every debt—who truly disappears, and who must bear the silence left behind?