Follow Her Home
Juniper Song is obsessed with Philip Marlowe, so when her best friend, Luke, asks her to do a little snooping for him, she is ready to go. Luke thinks his father may be having an affair with a young woman in his office, and he is worried that his mother, already very fragile, will be pushed over the edge by a betrayal. Song goes into private-eye mode and follows the young woman home. She finds a suspicious car nearby, but when she goes to investigate, she gets sapped. When she comes to, she finds a dead body in her trunk and realizes this caper is more serious than she anticipated. The story moves back and forth between Song’s past with her troubled younger sister to the present-day mystery, drawing some eerie connections between the two. Unfortunately, while Juniper Song is an intriguing protagonist, and Cha vividly evokes the Korean American culture of Los Angeles, the novel suffers from a cartoonish supporting cast, and the mood—despite the Chandler angle—is more soft- than hard-boiled. --Stacy Alesi