Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hanoi Jane | 2011 | Elka Ray | Buy |
| 2 | Saigon Dark | 2017 | Elka Ray | Buy |
| 3 | Killer Coin | 2020 | Elka Ray | Buy |
| 4 | A Friend Indeed | 2024 | Elka Ray | Buy |
Elka Ray’s standalone novels cover significant tonal ground across her career. Hanoi Jane, her debut, follows a young American reporter in Vietnam who becomes fixated on her ex-fiance’s new girlfriend. The setup is comedic and the pacing light, but Ray builds in enough tension to keep it from being purely frothy.
Saigon Dark, published five years later, is a different kind of book. A young mother swaps her dead child for a Vietnamese street kid and spends the next decade maintaining the lie. When a note arrives saying “I know what you did,” the story becomes a psychological race against exposure.
A Friend Indeed (2024) shifts the setting to the Pacific Northwest and deepens the suspense further. When Jo’s childhood friend Dana kills her abusive husband and begs Jo to help cover it up, the two women find their thirty-year friendship tested by blackmail, gossip, and a growing web of deception. Ray’s most recent standalone shows how much range she has developed across her career.