This novel is set in North Korea and has as it's protagonist a police inspector known simply as Inspector O. James Church is a pseudonym, the only information about him is what is on the book jacket: he is "a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia."
This book take awhile to warm up but once you are sucked in you realize that Church knows his stuff and has some writing chops as well. The writing can be vague in places but the descriptions of the people and what it must be like to live in a place so foreign from our own shine through.
The main thrust of the story concerns O's efforts to solve a murder, the aforementioned corpse in the Koryo, but what it is really about are his struggles with the politics and infighting of his country. The scarcity of goods is emphasised and that really made me think about how lucky we are. Socio-economics aside, for the most part if we want something simple then we can usually just go to the store and buy it. The characters in Church's story don't have that luxury as almost everything is closely rationed and/or has to be smuggled in.
It also opens up a door into a word that most people know nothing about. Often we think of other countries as vague political entities but we forget that they are populated by regular people who are just trying to live their lives.
If you enjoy books about other cultures or would like to see North Korea form a different angle then check out this book. There are several others in the series as well. This debut was listed on many "best-of" lists and the featured in a panel by the Korea Society which you can find here. You can also hear Church discuss Kim Jong Un as successor to his father in an NPR interview.
As always, feel free to contact me at jeffsemonis at yahoo.com or on twitter @jeffsbookcase.
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