Names Have Been Changed

Balasingamchow debuts with a thrilling narrative full of hairpin turns and complex questions about the narrator’s reasons for being on the run. The protagonist, a 37-year-old Singaporean voice actor who goes by Ophir, unspools her story in the form of a podcast recorded somewhere in America. Her trouble started back home, 10 years earlier, when her best friend Nirmala convinced her to hold onto stolen cash from a guy they call Charlie. As Ophir tells it, Nirmala is caught by the police, and Ophir, afraid of the same fate, takes Charlie’s $60,000 and flees the country. She works as a hostess at a bar in Tokyo, loses the stolen cash in Switzerland, and, years later, winds up in London working at the Golden Pearl Noodle House. She stays under the radar until Florissa, a former school friend, unexpectedly visits the Golden Pearl. After Ophir finds herself in the middle of Florissa and her husband’s dangerous marital spat, she pulls up stakes once again. Ophir is an endlessly companiable narrator despite her patently unreliable version of events, which careens like a roller coaster from one scrape, mistake, or escape to the next. It’s a blast. Agent: Lucy Carson, Friedrich Agency. (June)