Before Steph Cha achieved
international fame with her multi-award-winning novel of contemporary social dissonance
in Los Angeles, Your House Will Pay (Ecco, 2019), she wrote
three books about Juniper Song, a perceptive young Korean private investigator
in Southern California. In the second book, Beware, Beware (Minotaur,
2014) Song is trying to put the harrowing events of her debut adventure behind
her. Song has also become formally apprenticed to a private investigative firm
and is working on accruing enough hours in the field to receive her own
license.
One day Chaz
Lindley, her mentor and part-owner of the firm, who is one of my favorite
characters in the book, hands off what should be a simple assignment of finding
and following Jamie Landon who seems to have gone AWOL. His artist girlfriend Daphne
Freamon in New York is afraid his current job with a Hollywood star might
encourage him to re-engage with drugs and is willing to pay whatever it takes
to put her mind at ease.
Song’s monitoring
suggests Daphne had good reason to be concerned. The all-night parties with
Hollywood insiders and periodic visits to an isolated house in the Valley
indicate Jamie might well be back in the drug world. Song breaks the news to Daphne
and continues to watch Jamie while she waits for Daphne to decide what to do
next. She’s nearby when Jamie awakens after a night of partying to find the
Hollywood star he works for violently dead. He calls Daphne in New York, who tells
him to call Song, making her one of the first people on the crime scene. She
calls the police, and the havoc that surrounds the unnatural death of a famous
personality ensues.
Jamie is under
suspicion, and Daphne wants Song to try to uncover enough evidence to at least
create reasonable doubt. Song’s interviews and research reveal the back stories
of the players are more complex than she thought. Her shock is comprehensible
by anyone who’s taken people at face value, only to learn reality is far
different. The lies she’s been told and how she is supposed to proceed causes
her a good deal of lost sleep. All of this against a backdrop of modern Los
Angeles, which is captured in well-turned vignettes.
Song is an
intriguing spin on the contemporary private investigator, intelligent and alive
to nuances, perhaps a little too sensitive for the sometimes brutal profession
she’s fallen into. The supporting cast of characters is realistic, not a
cardboard outline among them. The noirish story line is almost tortuous in its convolution.
Recommended.
·
Hardcover: 304 pages
·
ISBN-10: 1250049016
·
ISBN-13: 978-1250049018
·
Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition (August
12, 2014)
Aubrey
Hamilton ©2020
Aubrey
Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and
reads mysteries at night.
No comments:
Post a Comment