{"id":6518,"date":"2025-06-30T02:57:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T09:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6518"},"modified":"2025-06-30T17:14:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T00:14:14","slug":"lina-chern-tricks-of-fortune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/lina-chern-tricks-of-fortune\/","title":{"rendered":"Lina Chern: Tricks of Fortune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Play the Fool #2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This second installment follows up\u00a0 Chern\u2019s Edgar winner, Play the Fool, <\/em>which introduced Tarot card reader Katie True.\u00a0 Even though I hadn\u2019t read the first book, this one still did an excellent job of effortlessly weaving Katie\u2019s origin story into the plot.\u00a0 As the story opens, Katie, who runs a tarot reading business out of her sister\u2019s 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 \u201cOfficer Pete.\u201d\u00a0 Not only is Katie rocked by Gina\u2019s arrest, but also by the death of Officer Pete, who years ago famously rescued baby Katie True from a car wreck, saving her life.<\/p>\n

As she grew up, Officer Pete periodically checked in with her, claiming she had been saved for something extraordinary.\u00a0 While Pete may have meant well, Katie thinks his prediction has hardly come true, as she\u2019s pretty much failed at everything she\u2019s tried, including college, jobs and relationships.\u00a0 Her little tarot reading place in her sister\u2019s office is the one thing that feels right to her, but otherwise she lives in a crappy, noisy apartment and drives a junker car.<\/p>\n

What she also has going for her are friends, Gina, for one, but also Jamie, a cop, and Matt, Officer Pete\u2019s son who has reappeared after this tragedy and reconnected with Katie. Not to mention her odd, genius brother Owen, a professor who sometimes crashes at her apartment to get some work done.\u00a0 This oddly assembled group (except perhaps Owen) are all trying to discover who killed Officer Pete, with Katie certain of only one thing \u2013 the guilty party wasn\u2019t Gina.<\/p>\n

Weaved through the story are vignettes of Katie and her slightly disreputable aunt Rosie, who taught her the tarot when she was eight.\u00a0 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 such a welcome refuge in a busy and chaotic world.\u00a0 The way the cards are explained in this book and the way Katie reads them was so persuasive that I wanted to pick up a deck myself.<\/p>\n

I also became a convert to Chern\u2019s prose and nuttily resonant turns of phrase.\u00a0 She expertly captures the chaos of being a young woman in the world trying to figure out where she fits in, not just in her professional life, but her even more confusing romantic one as well.<\/p>\n

This book is also an excellent portrayal of the public persona of someone \u2013 in this case, Officer Pete \u2013 who visited schools, sponsored a children\u2019s group, and was a great dad whose son, Matt, has grown up in his image and become a cop.\u00a0 And then there\u2019s the underside of Officer Pete, which of course is a major part of the book, with his public profile being so accepted and so publicized that the underside becomes hard or even impossible for many people to accept.<\/p>\n

Katie, through sheer determination and a belief in her deck (she carries it with her everywhere) eventually manages to get to the bottom of Pete\u2019s murder. I wouldn\u2019t call this book a cozy or a noir, but simply a thoughtful and original read.\u00a0 I enjoyed Katie True and foresee many more satisfying adventures for her in the cards.\u00a0\u00a0— Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Play the Fool #2 This second installment follows up\u00a0 Chern\u2019s Edgar winner, Play the Fool, which introduced Tarot card reader Katie True.\u00a0 Even though I hadn\u2019t read the first book, this one still did an excellent job of effortlessly weaving Katie\u2019s origin story into the plot.\u00a0 As the story opens, Katie, who runs a tarot … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2186,919,2185,2182,2183,1276,2184,2181],"class_list":["post-6518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-baby-rescue","tag-bantam","tag-false-persona","tag-lina-chern","tag-play-the-fool","tag-robin-agnew","tag-tarot-cards","tag-tricks-of-fortune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6518"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6532,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6518\/revisions\/6532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}