- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Saint Martin's Press (5 Dec 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0312352085
- ISBN-13: 978-0312352080
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.2 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 725,634 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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"Impressive." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Superb." - Booklist (starred review) "Outstanding." - Library Journal (starred review)"
Product Description
Sit on a quiet hillside at dawn among the wildflowers; take a picture of a car coming up a deserted highway from the south. Simple orders for Inspector O, until he realizes they have led him far, far off his department's turf and into a maelstrom of betrayal and death. North Korea's leaders are desperate to hunt down and eliminate anyone who knows too much about a series of decades-old kidnappings and murders - and Inspector O discovers too late he has been sent into the chaos.This is a world where nothing works as it should, where the crimes of the past haunt the present, and where even the shadows are real. A corpse in Pyongyang's main hotel - the Koryo - pulls Inspector O into a confrontation of bad choices between the devils he knows and those he doesn't want to meet. A blue button on the floor of a hotel closet, an ice blue Finnish lake, and desperate efforts by the North Korean leadership set Inspector O on a journey to the edge of a reality he almost can't survive.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This debut novel from a psuedonymous American intelligence officer has one big thing going for it -- an unfamiliar setting. Its protagonist is "Inspector O", a North Korean policeman who becomes entangled in a feud between rival North Korean intelligence units and must bob and weave to avoid ending up caught dead in the crossfire. While the book does an admirable job of giving a sense of the daily emptiness of life under a totalitarian regime, the plotting is rather oblique, and those expecting a standard mystery or thriller will likely leave disappointed. The story is told through a fairly clumsy framework, as Inspector O sits in a safe house in Prague being "interviewed" by an Irishman apparently working for MI5. Through this interview, which sometimes previews plot points (such as the deaths of central characters), Inspector O tells the story. Unfortunately it's never explained why the Inspector is being interviewed in this manner, and the format only detracts from any suspense.
The tale Inspector O tells is of how, after a routine stakeout operation, he is gets pushed all over the map by his direct superior and the mysterious intelligence operative named "Kang." It's all very unclear, since no one tells the inspector anything beyond "go there, wait here, etc." and the reader is simply tagging along from point A to point B in equal bewilderment. Fortunately the inspector is an appealing figure -- the grandson of a war hero, he's filled with a sardonic, but not overly rebellious, attitude toward those in power. It would have been easy to make him a cardboard closeted reformer, but the author wisely avoids that route, instead making him a somewhat romantic soul, resigned to a hard life and seeking solace and life in small chunks of wood. There's also a wry subplot, which I'm sure is a homage to a classic pulp story (just can't recall which one), about his inability to score a cup of tea throughout the whole book.
Eventually it becomes clear that the factional maneuvering which is the cause of Inspector O's being moved all over the place has something to do on one level with a scheme to smuggle cars from South Korea to China, and on another level, with diplomatic moves to "right old wrongs" between North Korea and Japan. (Potential readers will find it especially useful to learn about North Korea's kidnapping of Japanese citizens in the late '70s and early '80s before starting the book.) However by the time the book sputters to the end, many will have lost interest in the subtlties of all this and said "Forget it Inspector O, it's Pyongyang." The North Korean setting is reasonably interesting, and Inspector O is reasonably engaging, but the plotting and pace of the book leave a great deal to be desired.
Note: Those interested in fiction from North Korea should check out the recent anthology "Literature from the Axis of Evil and Other Enemy Nations" and the September 2003 edition of Words Without Borders.
The tale Inspector O tells is of how, after a routine stakeout operation, he is gets pushed all over the map by his direct superior and the mysterious intelligence operative named "Kang." It's all very unclear, since no one tells the inspector anything beyond "go there, wait here, etc." and the reader is simply tagging along from point A to point B in equal bewilderment. Fortunately the inspector is an appealing figure -- the grandson of a war hero, he's filled with a sardonic, but not overly rebellious, attitude toward those in power. It would have been easy to make him a cardboard closeted reformer, but the author wisely avoids that route, instead making him a somewhat romantic soul, resigned to a hard life and seeking solace and life in small chunks of wood. There's also a wry subplot, which I'm sure is a homage to a classic pulp story (just can't recall which one), about his inability to score a cup of tea throughout the whole book.
Eventually it becomes clear that the factional maneuvering which is the cause of Inspector O's being moved all over the place has something to do on one level with a scheme to smuggle cars from South Korea to China, and on another level, with diplomatic moves to "right old wrongs" between North Korea and Japan. (Potential readers will find it especially useful to learn about North Korea's kidnapping of Japanese citizens in the late '70s and early '80s before starting the book.) However by the time the book sputters to the end, many will have lost interest in the subtlties of all this and said "Forget it Inspector O, it's Pyongyang." The North Korean setting is reasonably interesting, and Inspector O is reasonably engaging, but the plotting and pace of the book leave a great deal to be desired.
Note: Those interested in fiction from North Korea should check out the recent anthology "Literature from the Axis of Evil and Other Enemy Nations" and the September 2003 edition of Words Without Borders.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Author "James Church," a former western intelligence officer with "decades of experience" in Asia, including, presumably, North Korea, provides a stunning and profoundly interesting portrait of "real life" in this secretive and sometimes paranoid country. Inspector O, the main character in Church's novel, works for the North Korean Ministry of People's Security, but even at the level of inspector, he has no idea why he is assigned many of his tasks, nor does he know why he is often sent from the capital, Pyongyang, to outposts like Manpo and Kanggye on the Chinese border. He can trust no one, and he must constantly watch his back to ensure that he does not accidentally discover information about crimes that he does not even know exist.
Though the inspector is inured to a life of uncertainly and to the inexplicable behavior of his superiors, most readers of mysteries have developed a set of expectations about plots and characters. This one ignores the "rules"--and may be all the more fascinating, as a result. The biggest mystery here, in fact, is what is the mystery? Neither Inspector O nor the reader has any idea what is going on or why. Any suggestion of a plot becomes even more ephemeral when it is interrupted regularly by an interrogation taking place in Prague by an Irish security official who is interviewing Inspector O, though we don't know why. The ambiguities of the plot are paralleled by the ambiguities of character. Inspector O is "round" enough to keep readers interested--he is iconoclastic and refuses to wear his badges, and he is the grandson of a man who was a hero of the revolution--but we learn almost nothing else about him, other than the fact that he would love to spend his time creating furniture.
The action begins when Inspector O is asked to observe and photograph a luxury car emerging from a tunnel in the countryside, and continues with the discovery of the body of a Finn in the Koryo Hotel in Pyongyang. Soon, the violence increases with additional murders in other parts of the country to which O is sent. The rivalry between Kang, Deputy Director of the Investigation Department, and Kim, from Joint Headquarters, with O's Ministry of People's Security continues throughout the novel, and O is caught in the middle, never sure whether he can trust anyone, even Pak, his superior in the ministry. The possible involvement of non-communist countries in a conspiracy involving representatives from some of North Korea's ministries raises intriguing questions and suggests that North Korea may not be as monolithic as we have previously thought.
While I appreciated the picture of North Korea and life within it and found the book stimulating, I still don't feel that I know Inspector O very well. Still I have purchased the remaining two novels in the series because the series is so different and provides apparently reliable information about life in North Korea. Existential in its concepts and dark and ironic in its execution, THE CORPSE IN THE KORYO provides the interested reader with new ways of thinking about a "mystery nation," and offers a new way of thinking about its goals--and our own. n Mary Whipple
HIDDEN MOON (Inspector O Novel), #2 in the series
Bamboo and Blood (Inspector O Novel), #3 in the series
Though the inspector is inured to a life of uncertainly and to the inexplicable behavior of his superiors, most readers of mysteries have developed a set of expectations about plots and characters. This one ignores the "rules"--and may be all the more fascinating, as a result. The biggest mystery here, in fact, is what is the mystery? Neither Inspector O nor the reader has any idea what is going on or why. Any suggestion of a plot becomes even more ephemeral when it is interrupted regularly by an interrogation taking place in Prague by an Irish security official who is interviewing Inspector O, though we don't know why. The ambiguities of the plot are paralleled by the ambiguities of character. Inspector O is "round" enough to keep readers interested--he is iconoclastic and refuses to wear his badges, and he is the grandson of a man who was a hero of the revolution--but we learn almost nothing else about him, other than the fact that he would love to spend his time creating furniture.
The action begins when Inspector O is asked to observe and photograph a luxury car emerging from a tunnel in the countryside, and continues with the discovery of the body of a Finn in the Koryo Hotel in Pyongyang. Soon, the violence increases with additional murders in other parts of the country to which O is sent. The rivalry between Kang, Deputy Director of the Investigation Department, and Kim, from Joint Headquarters, with O's Ministry of People's Security continues throughout the novel, and O is caught in the middle, never sure whether he can trust anyone, even Pak, his superior in the ministry. The possible involvement of non-communist countries in a conspiracy involving representatives from some of North Korea's ministries raises intriguing questions and suggests that North Korea may not be as monolithic as we have previously thought.
While I appreciated the picture of North Korea and life within it and found the book stimulating, I still don't feel that I know Inspector O very well. Still I have purchased the remaining two novels in the series because the series is so different and provides apparently reliable information about life in North Korea. Existential in its concepts and dark and ironic in its execution, THE CORPSE IN THE KORYO provides the interested reader with new ways of thinking about a "mystery nation," and offers a new way of thinking about its goals--and our own. n Mary Whipple
HIDDEN MOON (Inspector O Novel), #2 in the series
Bamboo and Blood (Inspector O Novel), #3 in the series
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is not your usual detective noir set in foreign climes. For the simple reason that we're talking about North Korea, possibly one of the most bizzare places in the world. There were shades of "Fatherland" and "Berlin Noir" but, again, here we're talking about a country most of us has never read about. The pace, I felt, reflected the kafkaesque nature of North Korea perfectly.
Thoroughly reccomened.
Thoroughly reccomened.
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