Customer Reviews

A Corpse in the Koryo (Inspector O Novels)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I read A Corpse in the Koryo a year ago in manuscript form, sent to me my Mr Church's editor. I loved it.

Inspector O is an endearing character, with a mix of necessary pragmatism and romanticism, as well as authentic complexity.

It's not just the milieu (North Korea) that appeals--though that certainly does, taking the reader to a place few know at all. More, it's the writing--a beautifully honed minimalism that nonetheless evokes its scenes with great detail. I love it when writers are able to leave room for the reader's imagination. It takes talent to know where to leave those spaces, and James Church has plenty of such talent.

If you like fine writing, eye-opening characters and locales, and a quiet but purposeful intelligence wrapped inside a thrilling story, get ready to go to Church.

This is really outstanding. I picked this up after seeing it mentioned in a newspaper article, and didn't put it down until I finished.

At a basic level, it is a startling but entirely plausible depiction of daily life in contemporary North Korea. I have no experience in North Korea so cannot assess its accuracy, but most of the key elements ring true: the factionalism, the bureaucracy, the bungling, the corruption, the role of personal connections, the brutality, and the lack of resources. One of the most features of this depiction is that the author does it entirely through the dialogue, the action, and the details, not through the long and pedantic expository passages that are usually the downfall of novels that seek to introduce the reader to another society. Thus, for example, the protagonist's effort to cross an intersection without using a pedestrian underpass turns into a wonderful lesson in daily life in Pyongyang.

The characters all seem authentic. They are not automatons dedicated to Dear Leader, or closeted reformers who all secretly yearn for change. Rather, they struggle to make the most of a very bad situation, without giving much thought to great and abstract issues. Again, I have never been to North Korea, and have only met a few North Koreans, very briefly and quite some time ago, so I can't give a definitive assessment, but based on my previous experience in another socialist country before it began to reform in earnest, it all rings true.

The book stands on its own as a good novel, which cannot always be said about detective fiction set in exotic or historical locations. The protagonist and other main characters are all fully realized and three-dimensional. Even minor characters like hotel clerks, cleaning ladies, and tour guide who appear only briefly are deftly sketched and vivid. The protagonist, while not a hero in the typical sense and in some ways not even very likable, is nevertheless a sympathetic character, as are many of the other main characters.

Along those lines, the complex narrative structure is quite clever, a sort of story within a story and it's a pleasant surprise that someone who appears to be a first-time author pulls off such a feat. The author, like Xiaolong Qiu, also pulls off the difficult feat of writing a gripping police procedural in a setting where at some level there is no procedure as we would understand it, and where the resolution of the case has more to do with the configuration of the players involved and their relative power. I'm not sure I followed all the twists of the plot, and am unclear about how at least a few of the characters fit in, but in this Kafkaesque world, it didn't matter.

This success at writing a procedural in a setting without procedure stands in contrast with many of the procedurals I have read that are set in Italy. In those procedurals, personal connections also seem to be as important as the facts, and yet with the exception of the Inspector Montalbano mysteries, I have always found them a disappointment.

While others have compared this very good novel to Martin Cruz Smith's "Gorky Park", I would like to suggest another analogy: Graham Greene's novels, in particular what he referred to as his "entertainments." Graham Greene spent time in intelligence, as apparently the author of this novel did, and it showed. His "entertainments" were thrillers that addressed larger themes and were populated with complex and morally ambiguous characters. While it has been a long time since I read "Gorky Park," a novel which I remember enjoying immensely, I thought that in some ways "Corpse in the Koryo" was actually more ambitious.

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.

If you thought the Soviet Moscow of Martin Cruz Smith is a bleak place, it is freaking Disneyland compared to James Church's oppressive North Korea in this intelligent and intricately plotted mystery depicting life inside one of the globes most closed and sinister societies. Likewise, Smith's sullen Inspector Arkady Renko is a regular Adam Sandler next to the cynical, irascible Inspector "O" of "A Corpse in the Koryo."

It is in this unusual setting that Church layers an unsettling mystery that sinks the reader deeper into intrigue and complexity with each passing chapter. The wily Inspector "O" is sent out one early summer money with a strange but simple assignment: watch the main road from the south leading to North Korean capital Pyongyang, and photograph "a car". While Dirty Harry wouldn't put up with such obscure orders without a complete explanation, this is, after all, North Korea, the tyrannical playground of deceased mad man Kim Il-sung and his dangerously wacko son Kim Jong-il. It is a country of hope long burned out and forgotten inspiration. A country so poor that, in a darkly humorous subplot, "O" spends seeks fruitlessly for an elusive cup of tea. While is the familiar American crime novels of New York, LA, or Chicago political corruption and questionable motives might run as undercurrent, in Church's North Korea, the graft and turpitude is blatant and acknowledged. One wonders why even bother with a police department, as party members and government officials seems to move and act with absolute impunity. But back to the story, the corpse of an identified westerner turns up in a room of the Hotel Koryo, an enclave for foreigners and their ever-present Korean spies in downtown Pyongyang. "O" soon finds out that the murder is the least of his worries, as people close to him are turning up dead and he fins himself in the middle of high-powered scheming where few are who they seem and no one can be trusted.

In short, a brilliant debut, but one word of warning: anyone with fantasies of idyllic Communistic worker paradises risk having their illusions shattered by Church's jagged-edged expose of a nightmare only Karl Marx could appreciate. For the rest of us, a refreshing if sobering mystery on uncommon quality.

What's good about James Church's debut novel is its depiction of a viperous, sclerotic, graft-ridden North Korea. Everyone watches each other. Allegiances shift. Everyone is not quite who they seem. It's a snapshot of a regime that seems to be rapidly collapsing inwards. If even one-quarter of the book is on the mark (and the author - writing under a pseudonym - seems to have the pedigree to get this story plausibly right) - then it paints a devastating and bleak picture of life north of the 38th Parallel.

What's not so hot is the mystery itself. Like other reviewers here, I just didn't get it, to put it plainly. There are these interspersed chapters where the protagonist - Inspector O - is being debriefed by an Russian-speaking Irishman. After almost 300 pages, I'm still trying to figure out why these sessions were taking place. It added nothing to the book. Take those chapters out, the book reads exactly the same. Even after the denouement, I was still left scratching my head trying to figure out exactly what the mystery was, how it was resolved, and frankly, why I cared. For such a well-researched and well-crafted book, the core mystery at its center could have been presented better. Still, 'Koryo' a very good read.

I read this book more for the insight into North Korea as a society then for the mystery aspect as I mostly read non-fiction. The story is told inline with the main character, Inspector O, being interviewed by a Western Intelligence agent about the events that took place. So you get the real-time events interspersed with the interview that looks back at what transpired and sometimes foreshadows events that will take place later in the story. The mystery is layered in the complexity of the different North Korean military, intelligence and police organizations and in the process reveals a lot of what life is really like. An excellent book for a first time author.

James Church's A Corpse in the Koryo is the first in the pseudonymous author's series of Inspector O novels. (Church is former intelligence officer who spent decades in Asia.) The Inspector is a police officer, an insignificant cog in the legal machinery of North Korea. One morning he finds himself sitting on a hill at dawn, looking over a highway, under orders to photograph a car that is due to go speeding north. The orders don't make much sense, and the mission fails badly. But from this nonsensical episode stems the rest of the book's action, in which Inspector O tries to figure out the rules of the game he's apparently being forced to play--something that's got Military Security involved and may get O killed. The problem is that no one in the book--and by extension no one in North Korea--speaks his mind. All discourse is suggestive, the better part left unsaid, because in the paranoid atmosphere of the book you can't trust anyone. Thus trying to get simple questions answered is a lesson in frustration.

A Corpse in the Koryo has its good points. Inspector O is a likable, three-dimensional character: He inevitably fails to wear his pin of the Great Leader, which counts as rebellion in North Korea. He detests his brother for reasons that aren't revealed in this first installment. Most endearingly, O, the grandson of a carpenter (and hero of the revolution), is preoccupied with wood. He calms his nerves and intimidates suspects by rubbing pieces of wood in his fingers until they assume the shape and smoothness nature intended. Among his prized possessions is a small collection of sandpaper--which, because it's an American product, has to be hidden from the authorities lest it be confiscated.

Church's writing is also poetic in parts, Inspector O being unusually thoughtful and attentive to the natural world. Finally, the fact that the novel is set in North Korea makes it an inherently interesting piece of fiction. The book is suffused with a sense of paranoia and deprivation, but I didn't feel as immersed in that alien culture while reading as I had expected.

The problem with A Corpse in the Koryo is that the book is so slow that reading it feels interminable. It's also very hard to understand what's going on because everything is hinted at rather than spelled out. Eventually, despite good writing and enigmatic characters, trying to figure out the book's plot doesn't seem worth the effort.

-- Debra Hamel

James Church's 1st Inspector O mystery - still my favorite of the 3 published so far - captures the unique struggles of everyday life in North Korea, in a way that pays homage to the work of Barbara Demick and Andrei Lankov. The author is a veteran intelligence officer with wide experience in Korea and the Far East, and his attention to detail - offered through Inspector O's voice - is lucid. The details of the mystery are complex and non-linear, and involve various North Korean intelligence agencies and police bureaucracies, all competing with each other in a variety of intrigues and power struggles. The author's descriptions of this Kafkaesque maze make for good reading. These passages are contrasted with Inspector O's haunting descriptions of North Korea's landscape, and these lovely, poetic passages give a different sensibility to this novel. But the most intriguing part of the novel is how the author uses Inspector O's interactions with foreigners - with an Irish intelligence officer, who debriefs him in Prague, and with a woman of Finnish-Chinese descent, whom Inspector O runs across throughout North Korea - to illuminate a different world, a different place, and a different culture, with its own pride, history, and moral outlook (provided by the character of Inspector O's grandfather, a famous North Korean general). Most of all, the author's sensitive portrait of Inspector O's country makes one feel as though one can reach out and touch it, like an ember of a cigarette or the wick of a candle, whose orange flame burns lightly, waiting to be extinguished. This is a book that meets the litmus test --- a book to be read and re-read, and to be shared with a friend. Overall, a magnificent achievement.

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: An Inspector O Novel (Inspector O Novels), #2 in the series
Bamboo and Blood: An Inspector O Novel (Inspector O Novels), #3 in the series

I enjoyed reading 'A Corpse in the Koryo', yet after reading a chapter or two, I wouldn't get back to the book until a week later. I think that was because the mystery itself was not too compelling, rather it was the description of life in North Korea that was engaging. In fact, trying to learn about North Korea from a different angle than history, news reports, or gulag memoir was the reason I bought the book. Because North Korea is so closed, I have no idea whether Mr. Church was accurate in describing the mindset of a police detective there (or the mindest of many different types of people in N Korea), but it is unique to see someone try. Inspector O certainly seemed way too independent than I imagine a detective being in North Korea. Who knows?

As someone who lives in China currently, I find Qiu Xiaolong's books to be better 'red' mysteries, but not entirely accurate of life in China now.

Probably will buy Church's next book, though, as I am still curious about descriptions of the place.