Play the Fool #2
This book follows Chern’s Edgar winner, Play the Fool, which introduced Tarot card reader Katie True. While I haven’t read the first book, this one still did an excellent job of weaving Katie’s origin story into the plot. As the book opens, Katie, who runs a tarot reading business out of her sister’s real estate office, is stunned when her friend Gina is arrested for the murder of local hero cop, Matthew Peterson, better known in town as “Officer Pete.” Not only is Katie rocked by Gina’s arrest, she’s rocked by the death of Officer Pete, who famously rescued baby Katie True from a car wreck and saved her life.
As she grew, Officer Pete had checked in with her, telling her she had been saved for something extraordinary. While Pete may have meant well, Katie feels not only is this far from true, but she’s pretty much failed at everything: college, jobs, relationships. Her little tarot reading place in her sister’s office is the only thing that feels right to her. Otherwise, she lives in a crappy and noisy apartment and drives a crappy car.
What she has going for her are friends – Gina, for one, but there’s also Jamie, a cop, and Matt, Officer Pete’s son who has reappeared after this tragedy and is reconnecting with Katie. And there’s also her odd, genius brother Owen who sometimes appears in her apartment. He’s a professor and sometimes crashes with Katie to get some work done. This oddly assembled group (except perhaps Owen) are all trying to find out who killed Officer Pete. The only thing Katie is certain of: it wasn’t Gina.
Weaved through the story are vignettes of Katie and her slightly disreputable aunt Rosie, who taught her cards when she was eight. Each card Rosie turns over for the young Katie then ties to the chapter in the present, which is a neat structural trick, as well as giving the reader an insight into why Katie finds tarot a refuge in a busy and chaotic world. The way the cards are explained in this book, the way Katie reads them, make so much sense I became a convert.
I also became a convert to Chern’s prose and her sometimes nuttily resonant turns of phrase. She so captures the chaos of being a young person in the world trying to figure out where you might best belong, something that’s not limited to finding the perfect job, as Katie also seems pretty clueless in the romance department.
This book is also an excellent look at the public persona of someone – in this case, Officer Pete – who visited schools, sponsored a children’s group, and was a great dad – his son, Matt, has grown up in his image and become a cop himself. And then there’s the underside of Officer Pete, which of course is a major part of the book. The public part of the man was so accepted and so circulated that the underside is hard or impossible for people to grasp.
Katie, through sheer determination and a belief in her cards (she carries them with her everywhere) does manage to get to the bottom of Pete’s murder. This book for sure isn’t a cozy but it’s not quite a noir either. It’s certainly a thoughtful and original read. I enjoyed Katie True and look forward to reading more about her. — Robin Agnew