Heart Of Glass by Ivy Ngeow
Heart of Glass is a pacy literary thriller set in the 1980s’ disco era. It is exotic and noirish popular fiction. Li-an is a con artist and talented Chinese American musician in Chicago’s Chinatown. With accomplice Dallas, she drugs and robs rich guys in bars. Dallas is caught. Li-An wants to come clean.
Chicago, 4 November 1980, US elections night. America is celebrating Reagan's win over Carter. She accepts a piano-playing job in Macau offered by Italian restaurant businessman Paolo. She gets to live luxuriously in a Portuguese colonial gothic mansion.
She meets New York DJ Ben, her crush, her nemesis and a compulsive gambler in the Macau casinos. He says she’s being exploited. When he overhears that Paolo has left her all his assets, he plots to kill Paolo so they can cut a recording deal in New York.
But will it work? Will she ever escape?