Playing for Thrills
Subtitle: A Mystery
Edition: 1st U.S. Ed edition
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
Published: March 1997
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 325
ISBN-13: 9780688130466
Subjects: Modern fiction; Mystery & Detective - General; Chinese (Language) Contemporary Fiction; Fiction; Fiction - Mystery/ Detective; Mystery/Suspense; Mystery & Detective - Hard-Boiled; Antiheroes; Alienation (Social psychology); Mystery fiction
Description: A tripped-out, sarcastic novel of urban alienation, Playing for Thrills follows the investigation of a mysterious murder of a possibly imaginary character that took place more than ten years before. The chief suspect is the narrator of the novel who may or may not have committed the crime - even he isn't sure.

As our charismatic antihero careens around Beijing drinking beer, having sex, and questioning a bunch of people who speak like characters in a gangster movie, he tries to find someone who can remind him which girl he was with and what he was doing at the time of the murder. Suddenly, the narrative explodes, and the reader is thrust into a countdown leading up to the crime itself.

The result is a sometimes frightening, sometimes hilarious, always astonishing novel that is totally unlike anything ever published from China.