Follow Her Home

February 4, 2013
Early in Cha’s intriguing if uneven debut, Korean-American Juniper Song, a Philip Marlowe fan, accepts a request from a Yale classmate, Lucas Cook, to find out if Lori Lim, an alluring young Korean-American, is having an affair with his father, a prominent Los Angeles lawyer. After following Lim to her house in Hancock Park, Song is knocked unconscious and awakens to discover a body in the trunk of her car. She quickly realizes her apartment has been searched, and she’s being stalked. Like Marlowe, she avoids the police, skirts the legal system, and doesn’t take good advice. Her hunt for the killer becomes more urgent after a close friend’s murder. Abrupt shifts in the narrative that lead to a secondary plot about her troubled younger sister jar, but it’s clear that Song, a chain-smoking, hard-drinking, and noirish young woman with a Raymond Chandler fixation is well on her way to being a first-rate investigator. Agent: Ethan Bassoff, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin.

March 1, 2013
A young woman's obsession with a fictional detective involves her in a real-life murder. Los Angeles-based Korean-American Juniper Song has been friends since high school with Luke Cook, the son of a wealthy lawyer who supports his ambitions as a filmmaker. Luke and Song went to Yale, where they met Diego, who became the third member of their group and, for a while, Song's boyfriend. After graduating from law school, Diego married and went to work for Cook Senior's law firm. Song's ambitious career path changed when, after she left for college, her younger sister was seduced by a teacher and eventually committed suicide. Now she drifts, working as a tutor and hanging out with Luke while constantly rereading the novels of Raymond Chandler. When Luke asks her to find out if Lori Lim, a very young Korean girl who works for the law firm, is sleeping with his father, Song agrees, thinking that all the years she's spent with Philip Marlowe will give her a leg up on sleuthing. Song takes the drunken Lori home but is sapped in her driveway and awakens in another part of town. After she gets Luke to take her back to her car, she discovers the body of another employee of the firm in her trunk. Threatened by a smooth-talking stranger who knows a lot about her family, Song calls on Luke and Diego for help, only to get Diego murdered for his trouble. Song, who can't help seeing something of the sister she thinks she failed in Lori, is determined to untangle the mystery that's already claimed one of her dearest friends. Cha's debut updates Marlowe's dark and dangerous LA to modern times while keeping the quirky characters and a twisty mystery that will hold readers to the bitter end.

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March 1, 2013

A favor for a friend turns into a long, painful weekend for a young, directionless L.A. woman whose passion for the works of Raymond Chandler are put to the test in Cha's debut novel. Juniper Song (known as "Song") has been asked by her best friend, Luke, to investigate a young woman who may be having an affair with Luke's father. Song soon finds a body in her trunk and her closest friends and family are threatened. While piecing together the mystery, Song reminisces about what Chandler's sleuth Philip Marlowe might do in such a situation, and revisits the painful memories of the last time she played detective--trailing and confronting the man who seduced her underage sister. VERDICT Like Chandler's The Big Sleep, the "whodunit" is really beside the point, and the work succeeds (and at times fails) because of the atmosphere it creates. Some of the relationships that are meant to be important, such as that of Song's two best friends Luke and Diego, fail to register, while Cha's examination of young women of Asian descent as objects of predatory fetishes (through the investigation of Lori and the backstory of Song's sister) are disturbing and compelling--propelling the mystery into its best moments. For fans of urban noir and of mysteries that address contemporary social issues. Cha is a promising mystery author to watch. [See Prepub Alert, 11/4/12.]--Julie Elliott, Indiana Univ. Lib., South Bend

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