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Play the Fool: A Mystery Paperback – March 28, 2023
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For Katie True, a keen gut and quick wit are just tools of the trade. After a failed attempt at adulting in Chicago, she’s back in the suburbs living a bit too close to her overbearing parents, jumping from one dead-end job to the next, and flipping through her tarot deck for guidance. Then along comes Marley.
Mysterious, worldly, and comfortable in her own skin, Marley takes a job at the mall where Katie peddles Russian tchotchkes. The two just get each other. Marley doesn’t try to fix Katie’s life or pretend to be someone she’s not, and Katie thinks that with Marley’s friendship, she just might make it through this rough patch after all. Until the day when Katie, having been encouraged by Marley to practice soothsaying, reads the cards for someone who stumbles into her shop. But when she sneaks a glance at his phone, she finds more than intel to improve her clairvoyance. She finds a photo. Of Marley. With a gunshot wound to the head.
The bottom falls out of Katie’s world. Her best friend is dead? Who killed her? She quickly realizes there are some things her tarot cards can’t foresee, and she must put her razor-sharp instincts to the ultimate test. But Katie’s recklessness lands her in the crossfire of a threat she never saw coming. Now she must use her street smarts and her inner Strength card to solve Marley’s murder—or risk losing everything.
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBantam
- Publication dateMarch 28, 2023
- Dimensions5.18 x 0.64 x 7.96 inches
- ISBN-100593500660
- ISBN-13978-0593500668
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A sharp, unique, and memorable debut, Play the Fool is unlike any mystery I’ve read before—and that’s a good thing! Lina Chern’s voice shines brightly, and readers will be immediately drawn into Katie True’s twisty and gripping investigation. It’s a fantastic read.”—Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity
“Lina Chern’s Play the Fool pulls off a tricky blend of humor and menace that had me flipping pages like crazy. The mystery is fresh and twisty, but it’s her characters (and voice) that kept me enthralled. I can’t believe this is a debut novel, and I can’t wait for more.”—Duane Swierczynski, award-winning author of Canary
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I always knew Marley would disappear. We worked across from each other at the Deerpath Shopping Center, me at the Russian knickknack place and her at the goth boutique, where she rang up anarchy T-shirts for tweens in five-hundred-dollar Nikes. She was a lot like me—smart enough to get the hell out of Lake Terrace once she grew up, but dumb enough to come back. For how long, I didn’t know. She put out a chill bloom-where-you’re-planted vibe but always looked like she was watching the exits, marking the days until she could peel out and leave Lake Terrace in the rearview.
When she did disappear, it didn’t go down how I expected.
The guy who set the whole thing off walked into Firebird Imports on a Sunday, the deadest day of the week and consequently the only time my boss, Larissa, trusted me to run the place alone. Less for me to screw up. I was laying out a three-card tarot spread when the store’s heavy glass door slammed open.
I jerked up. He was plastered against the inside of the door, breathing hard and staring out into the mall—a weight-lifter-looking guy with a bristly haircut on a blocky head, a faded Gold’s Gym T-shirt, and jogger sweats. He spun toward me and I froze, hands on the cards. There was an angry red gash on the man’s forehead.
A low warning throbbed in my mind. “Are you— Do you need—”
He took a stumbling step into the store and collided with a sign reading 60% off all musical spoons. The sign bowled over and he floundered after it, hooking it with his arm before it hit the ground. He looked like he was tangoing with a beautiful lady who had been, alas, enchanted into a piece of advertising.
A squeaky honk flew out of me, part dimwit guffaw, part concerned oh! The guy jiggled the sign back into place. I glanced across the mall court: was Marley watching this? At Stone Blossom, the “alternative lifestyle boutique” where Marley worked, a pale mope in a Black Flag T-shirt slouched at the counter. No Marley. I hadn’t seen her all day.
“Do you need a tissue?” I pointed to my own forehead. “Or an ambulance or something?” My eyes slid to my phone. The low-charge light was blinking, as usual. I didn’t have extra cash lying around for new tech toys, so I plundered my brother’s castoffs. By the time they reached me, their best days were far behind them.
The guy flinched like he’d already forgotten I was there. A red splotch crawled down his temple and landed—plop—on his shirt. “I’m fine,” he said hoarsely and disappeared in the jungle of display racks at the front of the store. I craned my neck after him. At least if he stole something, I could tell Larissa a piece of merchandise had made it out of here today. He picked up a lacquered box and stared at it with glassy eyes. “Just looking around.”
Shocker. Everyone was always just looking around. Earlier, a guy came in looking for a Cubs jersey, and I had to inform him, reading off our perfectly visible sign, that we sold only “fine goods from Russia and Eastern Europe.” Then a mom came in with three kids and a screaming baby, looking for a bathroom. I pointed her to the family one out in the mall, where someone had Sharpied a set of anatomically correct genitals on the dad icon.
“Suit yourself.” I sat down and swept the loose cards into the deck. I pegged this guy for a Cup, but a sloppy, backassward one, awash in reversed Swords. All emotion, no control. He’d probably just gotten in a parking lot shoving match with some other muscle-head over a dinged-up Jeep. In my head, I was already telling Marley about him. We’d been hanging out every Sunday night after our shifts for the past two months, in a tiny courtyard off the emptying forty-year-old white stone hulk of the mall. We talked while she smoked her unfiltered cigarettes, lighting up the dark with tiny fireballs. She was older than me by ten years or so, a tall, lean bruiser of a woman watching me from behind a wall of crimson-streaked hair, black eyeliner, and silver jewelry. The kind of look I’d always toyed with but never had the stones to pull off. She was my best friend, if you can call someone you’ve known only two months your best friend. It helped not to have any other friends. We were like rare specimens of some exotic breed of loser.
“Anybody actually buy this junk?” Gym Guy’s thick voice burst through my thoughts. He picked up a miniature balalaika and twanged its strings.
I did a quick mental tally of the bathroom family. “We just had six customers in here before you.” This guy was breaking all of Larissa’s rules: touching stuff, loitering, wearing sweats as regular clothing. Also being a dick, but that was more my rule.
Gym Guy doubled over, clutching his gut and grabbing a shelf of decorative plates for balance. The plates jingled.
“Hey.” I hopped off my stool. “Are you . . . ?”
He produced a bottle of pills. “I’m fine,” he huffed. “I got a nervous stomach is all.”
My phone uttered the first in its series of death beeps. Larissa was too cheap to get a landline for the store, so if this guy was going to pass out, he needed to do it before my phone died or I’d be stuck carting him to the hospital in my Ford Fiesta. I watched him shoot a handful of pills into his mouth and crunch loudly. “You know,” I said, “we have water if you—”
“I said I was fine,” he snapped.
A sorry laugh nearly bubbled out of me at this knucklehead pretending he wasn’t upset that someone had just bashed his damn head in. He’d probably been told all his life to suck it up, grow a pair, don’t be a pussy. Whatever road rage pushy-pushy he’d just survived had obviously messed with him, but hell if he’d let anybody see that. He was already hiding the bottle of pills.
“Have it your way.” I sat back down, watching him out of the corner of my eye.
He fished his phone out of his pocket, glanced at it, then stuffed it back in. He wasn’t here to shop, but he wasn’t leaving. He kept looking out into the mall like he was waiting for someone. Or killing time until it was safe to leave. I stacked the cards up for the Vegas dealer shuffle my aunt Rosie taught me when I was a kid. The deck went frrrrt into a neat dome in my hands.
Gym Guy swiveled toward me. He zeroed in on the cards. “Is that those fortune-telling cards?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Interesting. I wouldn’t have pegged him for a guy who put much stock in spooks and spirits. I spread the cards back out, moving in slow circles. “Want me to read them for you?”
He looked out into the mall. “You know how to do that?”
“I picked it up here and there.” Aunt Rosie was a full-on grifter who hung around carnivals wearing headscarves and bilking grandmas out of their Christmas money. She’d started teaching me to read tarot cards when I was six, on one of the extended drop-ins that happened whenever she ran out of money or ditched her latest sleazebag boyfriend. My parents let her crash with us in exchange for “babysitting,” which consisted mostly of me accompanying Rosie on fantastic, semi-reputable errands that I knew better than to report to my parents. I spent a lot of time in empty daytime bars sipping Cokes and eating maraschino cherries while Rosie picked up crudely wrapped packages in the back room, or racing back and forth between monitors at the OTB to help her track her bets. She wasn’t super great with kids, so she just treated me like a very short adult, which I loved. Hey, she’d say, picking out a stranger from across the casino buffet, what’s his story? Then she’d point out all the signs you could pick up from people when they thought no one was watching, all the details they broadcasted loud and clear without saying a word. He’s here because he hates it at home, she would say, or She hides the credit card bills from her husband. “What’s their story?” was my favorite babysitting game.
Product details
- Publisher : Bantam (March 28, 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0593500660
- ISBN-13 : 978-0593500668
- Item Weight : 7.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.18 x 0.64 x 7.96 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #653,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,724 in Friendship Fiction (Books)
- #11,996 in Amateur Sleuths
- #19,206 in Women Sleuths (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Lina Chern has been published in Mystery Weekly, The Marlboro Review, The Bellingham Review, Rhino, The Collagist, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and The Coil. She lives in the Chicago area with her family. Play the Fool is her debut novel.
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My favorite thing about the book was the main character. Katie was an absolute mess. She couldn't hold a job, lived in squalor, and had no real plans for her life. She was super impulsive and just bounced from thing to thing. I was captivated by her hot mess of a life, and the main reason I kept reading was to find out what kind of disaster she would create for herself next. She did grow quite a bit, though, and learned a lot about herself from the things she experienced in the story. I also really loved how the use of tarot was weaved into the story through her character. She saw people and the world through the cards, and her instincts were fun to follow. I honestly wish the author had leaned even harder into the tarot/mystical aspect of the story, but I also liked the focus on how Katie had learned to pick up on clues and read people that way.
One of my biggest problems with the book was that I didn't find much of it to be very believable. From the start, I questioned why Katie would react the way she did to the supposed death of someone she barely knew. I get the sentiment behind it. She didn't really have any friends and thought she might finally have one in Marley, but it all just felt a bit too extreme of a reaction. Katie's interactions with the police also didn't seem very believable. As the story unwound, it just became more and more impossible for me to suspend my disbelief at some of the circumstances. Katie seemed to always get out of trouble easily even though she did some REALLY stupid stuff.
I also didn't think there were many compelling themes in this book. The standout issue was Katie learning to be true to herself and pursue her strengths and passions in her own way. There could have been interesting explorations into policing, but instead a nuanced commentary on how police handle cases like this one was swept aside for the cop romance. I get that not every book needs to be thematically complex, but it just seemed like a big missed opportunity.
Overall, this was an easy read with some entertaining characters and a decent mystery. If you are looking for something quick that isn't too complex and are able to suspend disbelief for a bit, you'll probably have a good time with this one. I was just hoping for something a bit more. Therefore, I rate this book 3 out of 5 stars.
Katie was a really misunderstood and lost FMC, but she is also quite hard on herself. Because she doesn't want to achieve as much, or on the same path, as her family, she is seen as a low achiever and she embraces that, even though the author makes clear that Katie is good at things in her own right. It was actually kind of heartbreaking to read at the beginning, of a person who just wants to be seen as valuable in her own right. I found that Katie was full of potential, but she was bogged down by others, who she believed. I wouldn't call her quirky, I wouldn't call her quirky, but instead lacked confidence in herself and didn't want to continue to fail the way she is told she does by others.
When she finally starts TRULY breaking out of that narrative and starts to believe in herself, the book ends. She was fun and I loved that she could "read" situations with tarot. I wish that aspect was explored a bit more because it is clear that the author is trying to showcase her abilities as atypical from what we expect of achievement, but it just didn't get there fully.
The relationship Katie has with her brother, Owen, and the detective on the case, Jamie, was amazing. It was like both of these characters could see the best in her, which was refreshing since Katie is so hard on herself. These characters also offered more diversity in terms of the social aspect of individuals (how not everyone needs to be super outgoing and have lots and lots of friends) and neurodivergence, and I appreciated that representation.
The actual mystery part was lacking, but again, I think that is because the mystery was supposed to be secondary to the characters. For the mystery, I was trying to figure out what happened and it was an easy read. So it wasn't extremely obvious what the outcome would be and I was flying through this book. I was interested, yes, but not overly invested in needing to know what happened. It seemed like you had to suspend disbelief a bit throughout and I never felt that Katie was in any real danger. The mystery didn't seem pressing and the bad guys didn't really seem that bad. The central idea was solid, but this would have been a slam dunk if the character development AND the mystery were equal.
Overall, I think this was a really solid book if you are interested in character driven mysteries and nonstandard characters! However, you may not be as enthralled if you read mysteries for the twists and turns.