A Corpse in the Koryo (Inspector O Series #1) Book

This was one of those books that starts out as a mystery and finishes...well, pretty much the same - still a mystery. Part police story and part 007 spy drama, you never quite know what exactly is going on. The protagonist, Inspector O, (at least I can spell his name)is ordered about from pillar to post on a series of investigative odd jobs. He seems as mystified as the reader regarding the deaths and corruption encountered during the course of his investigative meanderings.

I'll be the first to admit that I know sweet diddly about North Korea, but I doubt that police and security agencies there gun each other down in the streets and office buildings on a regular basis. Maybe that's what the author was counting on...that the reading public would be so ignorant of the country that he could make any old thing believable. It seemed odd to me; I understand inter-departmental rivalries, but this seemed to go too far.

Mr Church didn't make Inspector O work for me; he is portrayed as a thoughtful and sensitive man trying to function in a brutal and oppressive regime, but seems oddly detached when people close to him are bumped off along the way. Maybe that's what Church was going for, but it didn't work for me. I didn't believe the character and found the convoluted story line hard to follow. In fact, having read the book, I'm still not sure what the heck happened there.

This book has some redeeming qualities. Church is a capable writer and has created some good descriptive passages and entertaining verbal exchanges, of which I will include a small sampling:

(p.72) - Listening is the anvil that forms the sword, the fire that
melts the lead for the bullet. Listening is the time to
recoup, to gather your wits, to plan your attack. If you
listen to anyone carefully enough, you'll hear the slip
that points to their vitals. It's the compass on the
killing map. People talk, but no one wants to say
anything because someone might listen."

Or this exchange between O and an Irish operative named Richie:

(Ppg 107-108)
"Kang is an interesting character"

"I thought so. Very complicated man. The sun bounced off
him in a thousand directions. Like a diamond. Built up
quite a list of enemies, as far as I could tell."

"Nice image, Kang as a diamond. How many karats would you
say?"

"A diamond in a garbage pile, who cares what it might have
fetched on the world market."

The Irishman clicked his pen.

Finally, a brief excerpt of a passage in which O is describing the Alps (he has a thing for mountains):

The peaks I saw clawed the sky, so that the dawn was
wounded and the sunlight bled into the day.

In fact, the writing was just good enough to overcome a confusing story line and a protagonist who doesn't seem to be fully developed. I liked it just enough to give the next Inspector O book a try sometime just to see if a different setting changes my opinion.