Follow Her Home is
the first offering from L.A. native Steph Cha. Cha quite clearly
loves the noir masters like Chandler and Hammett – a love she
passes on to her protagonist Juniper Song. By embracing these
influences she is able to create a likeable heroine and connect with
readers all in the same introductory space and get the story moving
quickly. In a way Song's experiences mirror the author's possible
apprehensions. Writing a first novel is a lot like having your first
case as a private eye – you have some idea of how things should fit
together, but until you are really in it for real you can't be all
that sure how things will shake out. Thus having the literary
touchstones to help serve as a guide can only be a comfort.
This
book does follow tried and true conventions in some respects. It
moves fast, like all noir should in my opinion. The genre's best
examples are page turners that hook you early and send you careening
into dark places both physical and emotional. Places where dead
bodies are sure to pile up and deceptions only seem to get deeper and
more layered as time passes.
Song
is enlisted by her best friend Luke to investigate the possibility of
an affair between his big shot lawyer father and an attractive young
woman, Lori Lim, who works at his firm. This is merely how we get
started however, we quickly learn that Song has gone snooping in the
past and that the results were somehow disastrous. Through this
secondary mystery we will learn more about Song's past and her
current motivations too succeed where she once failed.
Many
a noir has begun with a mysterious woman being followed or otherwise
investigated. Though this is the first time I have personally read
such a novel with a female gumshoe. [not that there aren't examples
out there, but young boys don't typically go for Nancy Drew
mysteries]. Call me a sexist if you must, but the one time I caught
ten minutes of an episode of the tv adaptation of the #1 Ladies'
Detective Agency series - I was decidedly not into it.
As a
sleuth Juniper is a bit of a smart-ass, but if your hero is Philip
Marlowe this is to be expected. Maybe that is why I found it easier
to like the character. It didn't feel like 'gendered genre fiction'.
It was simply a good modern noir story for anyone who appreciates
mystery and plot twists. Song often thinks in terms of what Marlowe
would be doing in her position, not having a wealth of previous cases
to fall back on. I also had one of those weird 'meta moments' when
Song mentioned Murakami being on a certain bookshelf – if you
glance at my goodreads shelf just now you'll see I'm currently
reading Kafka on the Shore.
I
don't want to give much of the plot away, so I won't go too far into
detail. I think it's enough to say that the book kept me engaged
throughout the duration. I read it in two days and enjoyed it more
than I expected. I'll gladly check out what Cha puts out next though
I'm curious to see if it will be another 'Juniper Song Mystery'. I
guess I could see it happening because so many of these things turn
into series – though in my view that is also why many of them fall
into a rut of feeling formulaic in short order. I suppose Hammett's
Continental Op, and Chandler's Marlowe were notable exceptions to the
rule so maybe underestimating the staying power of Cha's heroine
would be a mistake on my part.
Whatever
the case may be, this was a solid debut by my reckoning. For the song
on this one I have selected “Shadows” by Warpaint. Fittingly
enough a kick-ass 'girl band' also, from L.A. It was featured on
their 2010 debut full length The Fool
which was one of my favorites from the year. Oh, and one last point of curious interest - whilst I was trying to make up my mind on a song for this review I stumbled onto some mock up movie trailers for this. I kid you not. It must have been a school assignment for a whole class or something, because there were quite a few and they all had groups of four to five students in them. It was one of those strange things that could only be possible on the internet.
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