Wandering Ghost [Hardcover]

Martin Limon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2007

Praise for Martin Limón:

“It’s great to have these two mavericks back. . . . Mr. Limón writes with . . . wonderful, bleak humor, edged in pain, about GI life.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Limón’s crisp, clear storytelling opens a door to another world and leaves one hoping the next installment won’t be so long in arriving.”—The Baltimore Sun

“Limón has the military lingo and ambience down to a T. Plot, pacing, and plausibility are just about perfect.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer (editor’s choice)

“As usual, Limón paints a picture of Korea in the mid-1970s that is so detailed and richly atmospheric that the reader’s senses are flooded with the sounds, smells, and tastes of the place. Fans of the Sueño-Bascom series, who have been waiting eagerly for a new novel, can relax. It was well worth the wait.”—Booklist (starred review)

The only female MP assigned to a base in the DMZ is missing. Has she been abducted, killed, or, possibly, gone AWOL? Eighth Army cops George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, sent to find her, discover a murder that has been concealed, rampant black marketeering and corruption, crooked officers, rioting Korean civilians, and the wandering ghost of a schoolgirl run down by a speeding army truck. It is up to them to right egregious wrongs while being pursued by criminals who want to kill them.

Martin Limón is the author of four earlier books in the Sueño-Bascom series. His debut, Jade Lady Burning, was a New York Times Notable Book.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The turbulent Korean peninsula provides the backdrop to this fine military mystery, the fifth (after 2005's The Door to Bitterness) to feature U.S. Army criminal investigation agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom. A crack combat unit stationed near the strife-torn demilitarized zone proves strangely uncooperative when a military policewoman disappears. The missing soldier had made herself unpopular with her chain of command when she attempted to testify against two GIs who accidentally killed a Korean schoolgirl while speeding. As Sueño and Bascom dig past the obfuscation, they uncover an unsavory mix of black marketeering, sexual harassment, corruption, rape and murder, risking disgrace in their quest to find their fellow cop before it's too late. Limón, a veteran who spent 10 years stationed in the Republic of Korea, captures precisely the experience and atmosphere of the tension that exists between the American military and South Korean society, two vastly different worlds bound together only by realpolitik. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

In their fifth outing, agents George Sueno and Ernie Bascom, of the Eighth Army Criminal Investigations Division in Seoul, Korea, are sent to Camp Casey, on Korea's Demilitarized Zone. Their assignment: find a female MP—the second Division's first female MP—who has gone missing. What they immediately find is palpable hostility to their presence and evidence that criminal activities abound at Camp Casey: sexual harassment of female soldiers, black marketeering, and possibly murder. With an investigative technique that is as subtle as frontal assault, mayhem ensues, again and again, with Sueno and Bascom barely escaping death each time. The great strength of this novel is the author's painfully and chillingly plausible portrait of Korea and the U.S. army. Korea is portrayed as beautiful but poor and dependent on U.S. dollars and military protection. The army is shown to be an arrogant bureaucracy largely contemptuous of Korea and its people. Fans of crime and military fiction may find this an eye-opener. Gaughan, Thomas

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Soho Crime (November 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569474818
• ISBN-13: 978-1569474815
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 1.1 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,127,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

At seventeen, Martin Limon joined the army and served briefly as a reporter for the Pacific Stars & Stripes in Seoul, Korea. During five tours in Korea, he studied the language, traveled the country from the DMZ to the Yellow Sea, and was personally embroiled in the clash of cultures on this trip-wire edge of the American empire. His first novel, Jade Lady Burning, was published by Soho Press in 1992 and was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. The series features 8th Army detectives George Sueno, from East L.A., and Ernie Bascom, a native of the suburbs of Detroit.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Limon Always Hits a Triple, December 11, 2007

By 

T. Berner (New York, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wandering Ghost (Hardcover)

People read mysteries for plot, setting or characters. You're usually lucky to find a writer who satisfies with two out of three of these elements, but Martin Limon is one of the few mystery writers who does well on all three. His police procedural plots reflect the thought processes of the solid investigator that he was when he was in the military and he captures the odd clash of cultures between the Republic of Korea and the U.S. Army of the 1970s. Sueno and Bascombe, his characters are a wonderful combination of brains and brawn. Both characters came from bad childhoods to find a home in the Army. Particularly affecting is Agent Sueno's continuing discovery of Korean culture.

That said, I agree with the two other critics. One suspects that Mr. Limon's agent bullies him into over the top scenes in order to sell his books to the movies (a roller coaster ride in a mine car in Buddha's Gold and, here, the destruction of a 30 foot statue of an MP by an armored vehicle). He is too fine a writer to have to rely on such grandstanding to produce solid entertainment. Also, his two characters have made the military a career and Mr. Limon clearly appreciates the finer aspects of military life, so he should acknowledge that along the way. True, the military, especially in the 1970s, had a rough time of it, but one of the attractions of his heroes is that they try to uphold the military virtues against a host of bad guys.

Still, no Limon is worth passing up. You always have plot, setting and character.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Trip Back In Time, January 3, 2010

By 

R. CROSBY "jcrosbychi" (Northern, illinois) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wandering Ghost (Paperback)

I stumbled upon this book at my local library. Now I'll have to read all of the series. What hooked me was the location of this novel. I served in The 2nd Inf. Div, 2nd Med. Batt. Camp Casey (Tongduchon)Korea from Nov.1972 to Dec of 1973 (13 months). I was 18 when I arrived and in my 19th year when I left. I forgot all about that place and never gave it a second thought over the decades until this book. Even though it is a crime novel I grinned pretty much the entire time I read it. It brought back a flood of bitter sweet memories: "The Ville" "TDC" "The Crack" and Dragons Teeth and Quanset huts and starched fatigues...it goes on and on. As Bob Hope sang "Thanks for the memories" Mr. Limon. You hit the nail on the head for that era and place I think. I never thought I'd see anything in print about 2ID c.1973. Wow.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars American Military Detectives in 1970's Korea., July 25, 2009

By 

Ray J. Palen Jr. "Ray" (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wandering Ghost (Paperback)

Martin Limon has been credited with writing "the best military mysteries in print today" by best-selling author, Lee Child. With THE WANDERING GHOST, the 5th novel in the Sergeants Sueno & Bascom mystery series, he continues his exemplary track record with a thoroughly engaging mystery taking place within the American military camps located in Korea during the early/mid 1970's.

George Sueno and Ernie Bascom are Civilian Detectives (CID Unit) who are charged with investigating any criminal matters involving members of the U.S military that are stationed around Korea. In THE WANDERING GHOST, they are tasked with an assignment to locate Corporal Jill Matthewson - the only female MP to a base in the Korean DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) who has gone missing. During the start of their investigation of her Camp (the 2nd Infantry Unit), they find out that another MP, Marvin Druwood, had been found dead on the Camp's obstacle course --- the victim of an apparent suicide. The leaders of the Camp try to paint a picture of Druwood committing suicide due to being rejected by MP Matthewson. However, Sueno and Bascom do not follow this line of reasoning as they search Druwood's corpse to find residue of concrete lodged in his skull --- the obstacle course has no concrete.

A letter from a U.S. congressman, sent on behalf of Corporal Matthewson's mother in the U.S., is what prompts the investigation. Sueno and Bascom feel that the leaders of her Camp --- specifically Colonel Alcott and Desk Sergeant Bufford --- are all to ready to dismiss the Matthewson case as a mere AWOL and wrap things up quick and tidy. As the investigation continues, Sueno and Bascom discover that Jill took a second job as a patrol-person for a Korean village called Tongduchon located near her camp. It seems she needed any reason to be away from the constant male dominance and sexual harassment she was inflicted with during her MP duties. Was she a victim of foul play? Could her disappearance be directly linked to the death of MP Druwood? Or, is something bigger and more sinister going on?

Traveling among the various Korean towns and villages, Sueno and Bascom find a picture being painted of an area riddled with both prostitution and black marketeering and corruption. To confuse matters, Jill Matthewson was a direct witness to an incident where a young Korean girl named Chon Un-suk was killed by an out-of-control U.S. Military jeep driven by two officers from the 2nd Infantry. Korean culture dictates that when a person dies away from home, their spirit will remain unsettled and thereby become a `wandering ghost'. The only way to save the spirit from eternal unrest and wandering is for the person who was last in contact with the body before it passed to participate in an ancient ritual to put the spirit at rest. Sueno and Bascom find out from Chon Un-suk's parent that Jill Matthewson was the last to touch their daughter before she passed on and they are in as much need of locating her as the U.S. Military Detectives.

The title of the novel, "The Wandering Ghost", presents a metaphor that not only represents the spirit of the dead girl but also for Corporal Jill Matthewson who may also be wandering in a state of unrest. Martin Limon's novel is well-crafted and each chapter presents a deeper image of what Sergeant's Sueno and Bascom are truly up against. They quickly find themselves in a fight for their own careers and lives amid a tumultuous Korea that is beginning to riot against the very Military Base that they hold responsible for murdering one of their own citizens. The truth may be best left alone as all of the lead characters in this crisp novel stand to lose everything if it is uncovered.

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