In A Corpse in the Koryo, James Church introduced readers to one of the most unique detectives to appear in print in years—the elusive Inspector O. The stunning mystery was named one of the best mystery/thrillers of 2006 by the Chicago Tribune for its beautifully spare prose and layered descriptions of a terrain Church knows by heart.
And now the Inspector is back.
In Hidden Moon, Inspector O returns from a mission abroad to find his new police commander waiting at his office door. There has been a bank robbery—the first ever in Pyongyang—and the commander demands action, and quickly. But is this urgency for real? Somewhere, someone in the North Korean leadership doesn’t want Inspector O to complete his investigation. And why not? What if the robbery leads to the highest levels of the regime? What if power, not a need for cash, is the real reason behind the heist at the Gold Star Bank?
Given a choice, this isn’t a trail a detective in the Pyongyang police would want to follow all the way to the end, even a trail marked with monogrammed silk stockings. “I’m not sure I know where the bank is,” is O’s laconic observation as the warning bells go off in his head. A Scottish policeman sent to provide security for a visiting British official, a sultry Kazakh bank manager, and a mournful fellow detective all combine to put O in the middle of a spider web of conspiracies that becomes more tangled—and dangerous—the more he pulls on the threads.
Once again, as he did in A Corpse in the Koryo, James Church opens a window onto a society where nothing is quite as it seems. The story serves as the listener’s flashlight, illuminating a place that outsiders imagine is always dark and too far away to know. Church’s descriptions of the country and its people are spare and starkly beautiful; the dialogue is lean, every thought weighed and measured before it is spoken. Not a word is wasted because in this place no one can afford to be misunderstood.
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"Inspector O is fast becoming one of the most compelling characters in modern crime fiction. A detective in the Ministry of People's Security in North Korea, O works in a country and system that few of us can scarcely imagine. In this novel, O is called to investigate a bank robbery, the first to ever occur in Pyongyang. As he investigates, he learn that this event is only the tip of the iceberg in a plot that has national and international ramifications. The pseudonymous James Church, a former intelligence officer stationed in Asia, has written a mystery that unfolds slowly like a flower. This thoughtful narrative requires patience from the reader, but that patience is rewarded with a truly first rate story and fully developed characters. Anyone who has enjoyed John Burdett's wonderful series of mystery novels set in Bangkok will feel a kinship. This is a true thinking-person's mystery novel and it is recommended without reservation."
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Tim (5 out of 5 stars)