Reviews

Playing for Thrills by Shuo Wang, Howard Goldblatt

2000s's review

2.0

This book is marketed as being badass and mysterious and cool but I found it was barely any of those things. I was incredibly bored the whole time and none of the plot or characters stuck with me. 

carlosernesto's review

4.0

Perplexing, mysterious, hypnotic. Playing for Thrills is the story of Fang Yan, a down-and-out gambler who finds himself accused of a decade-old murder. In trying to establish an alibi, Yan discovers that there is a gap of seven days for which he cannot account. His investigation leads him to some dubious characters, but as he begins to investigate that missing week, he runs into more mysteries. Who is the mysterious woman he allegedly spent the week with? What role did the man in the striped shirt play? Identities shift and become confused. Recalling film noir, the fiction of Roberto Arlt and the movie Memento, Playing for Thrills is a strange story of one man's attempt to uncover a past, yet frustrates both protagonist and reader in the way the facts to be uncovered become clearer yet less helpful the deeper one goes.