Follow Her Home by Steph Cha

Published by Minotaur Books on April 16, 2013

Lucas Cook suspects his wealthy father is having an affair with a young Korean woman named Lori. Lucas' best friend, Juniper Song, agrees to snoop around. She's a long-time Philip Marlowe fan and relishes the chance to play detective. Before long there's a corpse in her trunk and she's receiving death threats. All in a day's work for Marlowe, but not much fun for Juniper. A new complication arises when Juniper meets a real private investigator whose sister suspects that her husband is sleeping with Lori. The dead guy in the trunk also had a thing for Lori. Is Lori a butterfly who flits from man to man, or does she play a more sinister role in the killings that occur as the story unfolds?

A subplot, told in flashbacks, concerns Juniper's sister Iris, who became involved with an older teacher with a fetish for young Asian girls. Its primary interest lies in the way Juniper's experience with Iris shapes her response to Lori's suspected affair with Lucas' father.

Steph Cha is no Raymond Chandler -- she doesn't achieve the level of suspense for which she was striving -- but she tells a good story. I didn't get the impression that Juniper ever felt endangered or disturbed, although she tells us about feeling rattled and afraid. She's just too glib, too nonchalant, to convey the sense that she's really fearful. Even when Cha darkens the story with unexpected death, Follow Her Home is missing the grittiness and fatalism of true noir.

It may be that, Raymond Chandler references notwithstanding, Cha wasn't aiming for noir. As Juniper notes, Philip Marlowe lived in a world that broke his heart every day. Juniper is (and wants to be) a sunnier person than Marlowe. Tellingly, Juniper comments that the mystery genre is "too shiny, fake, and cardboard, with implausible plots and ciphers for people." I suspect Cha set out to write a mystery that would defy that description, and she largely succeeded. Cha doesn't overreach. The plot stays within the boundaries of credibility and (except for Juniper's bland reaction whenever she's facing death), the characters react in believable ways. Mildly surprising revelations toward the novel's end bring the story to a satisfying resolution. While I would like to experience a greater sense of urgency in a novel entitled Follow Her Home, the story accomplishes Cha's goal, despite the muted suspense: the plot is clever without becoming shiny, fake, or cardboard, and the characters are easy to understand.

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