Sleuth asks: What would Marlowe do

Steph Cha’s intriguing debut, “Follow HerHome,” is a testament to the power of storytelling and a cautionary tale against forsaking reality for fiction.

As a teenager, Korean-American Juniper Song found that safe retreat in Raymond Chandler’s novels, immersing herself in PhilipMarlowe’s adventures to escape her overprotective mother. But too often she allowed herself to believe she could be a sleuth likeMarlowe. While that led to a family tragedy from which she has never recovered, her desire to be a detective has never dampened.

So she jumps at the chance to play private eye when her best friend and former Yale classmate Lucas Cook asks her to find out whether his father is having an affair. Lucas suspects that his father, William, a prominent L.A. attorney, is seeing Lori Lin, who also isKoreanAmerican. Lucas isworried that his emotionally fragile motherwould be pushed to suicide if the affair became public.

Song, as her friends call her, romanticizes all thingsMarlowe, including hard-drinking and chain-smokingways. Try as she might, she has never quite mastered either. But Song is about to get a dose of reality while driving around L.A.’s side streets andwondering what Marlowewould do. After following Lori to her home, Song is knocked unconscious andwakes to find her car trunk contains a body, which then disappears. As Song begins to prove that she can be an insightful detective in her own right, the case becomes personal. Song begins to believe that Lori is a victim, not a predator, a situation that echoes Song’s own life.

Cha elevates “FollowHerHome” with glimpses at the culture ofKoreanAmerican families. But these scenes are too brief and only make the readerwant more.

Although at times a bit uneven, “FollowHerHome” works as an homage to Chandler as the plot explores a young woman learning to trust her own instincts. LikeMarlowe, Song must find the knight errant within herself before she can help another.

Cha