Policing crime under a dictatorship

"On the surface, A Corpse in the Koryo is a crackling good mystery novel, filled with unusual characters involved in a complex plot that keeps you guessing to the end." ---Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post One of Publishers Weekly Top 100 Books of 2006 One of Booklist's Best Genre Fiction of 2006 One of the Chicago Tribune's best mystery/thrillers of 2006 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 decade's-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. Author James Church weaves a story with beautifully spare prose and layered descriptions of a country and a people he knows by heart after decades as an intelligence officer. ". . . an outstanding crime novel. . . . a not-to-be-missed reading experience. " ---Library Journal (starred) "Inspector O is completely believable and sympathetic . . . The writing is superb, too . . . richly layered and visually evocative." ---Booklist (starred) ". . . an impressive debut that calls to mind such mystery thrillers as Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park. . . ." ---Publishers Weekly (starred)

He made too many enemies. He lost his party membership. Once Moscow’s top criminal investigator, Arkady Renko now toils in obscurity on a Russian factory ship working with American trawlers in the middle of the Bering Sea. But when an adventurous female crew member is picked up dead with the day’s catch, Renko is ordered by his captain to investigate an accident that has all the marks of murder. Up against the celebrated Soviet bureaucracy once more, Renko must again become the obsessed, dedicated cop he was in Gorky Park and solve a chilling mystery fraught with international complications. Praise for Polar Star “Stunning.”—The New York Times Book Review “Impossible to put down . . . a book of heart-stopping suspense and intricate plotting, but also a meticulously researched, ambitious literary work of great distinction.”—The Detroit News “Martin Cruz Smith writes the most inventive thrillers of anyone in the first rank of thriller writers.”—The Washington Post Book World “Gripping . . . absorbing.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer