“Song and Siren” is the beginning of a very descriptive story about Juniper Song, aspiring novelist and travel writer, and her friend Cal.  Cal suspects that his father is having an affair.  He asks Juniper to do a little “detective work” and find out if he’s just being paranoid.  The book is written in a style very reminiscent of Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep”.

The story is narrated by Juniper Song.  Song, as she prefers to be known, shows up at Cal’s condo-warming party to have a drink.  Cal introduces her to the very drunk Lori Lim, who works at his father’s company.  He never says why she’s there, or mentions his father being at the party, but Lori, the only person other than Song in heels, is obviously having fun.  Cal then takes Song aside and tells her he thinks his father is sleeping with Lori.  He wants Song to find out for him.  There is a bit of background given that indicates that Song and Cal went to college together, Cal tends to jump to the wrong conclusions, and Song has helped straighten him out before. 

So far the characters are a bit flat.  Song seems a bit cynical and world-weary, but it’s Friday and she could just be tired.  Cal comes across as nervous, paranoid and a messy housekeeper.  Lori is a fun drunk.  She’s friendly, light on her feet, easy to fool into giving up her keys, and doesn’t throw up on anybody.  Seems like a nice girl, actually. 

The writing starts out seemingly an homage to “The Big Sleep”.  Cal’s condo is in the Marlowe building, a reference to Chandler’s detective, Philip Marlowe.  If you like the 1930’s style of detective stories, this is a fairly close approximation.  I personally find there is a tendency to over-describe things in this style of writing.  In “Song and Siren”, everything is described.  The types of shoes in the front hall are all listed, the kind of soap Song uses to wash her hands is “aloe-scented Dial antibacterial soap”, and even the toothpaste is described as “a tri-colored Aquafresh dollop”.  This may explain why after 8000 words nothing much has happened.  However, at the end of the third chapter something happens that indicates there may be more to the situation than Cal’s paranoia.

I had a few problems with the website itself.  When I went to read the story I found myself on a page with the banner “See Steph Write”, a couple of links and the word “One”.  This turned out to be the first chapter of the story but it would have been a bit friendlier to have the title of the story appear somewhere.  The links for the next and previous chapters do appear at the end of each chapter.

So far, “Song and Siren” is a modern story told in the style of “The Big Sleep”.  The style is a bit slow, with lots of description and bantering dialog and not much action.  This may change soon as the main character has gotten herself into trouble.  If you like 1930’s noir detective novels you may want to check this out.

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The writing is very good.  If you like a lot of detail, clever metaphors and hard-bitten tone, you’ll enjoy this.  So far, there’s no divergence from the central plot, so if you like subtleties of character and motive or exploration of setting or history or deep thinking, this might be too noir-ish for you.

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