Hidden Moon: An Inspector O Novel

by James Church

Book Overview

"Hidden Moon reads more like a spy novel by a Korean Kafka. Final word: Fascinating." --Rocky Mountain News

In A Corpse in the Koryo, James Church introduced readers to one of the most unique detectives to appear on page in years---the elusive Inspector O. The stunning mystery was named one of the best mystery/thrillers of 2006 by the Chicago Tribune for its beautifully spare prose and layered descriptions of a terrain Church knows by heart.
And now the Inspector is back.
In Hidden Moon, Inspector O returns from a mission abroad to find his new police commander waiting at his office door. There has been a bank robbery---the first ever in Pyongyang---and the commander demands action, and quickly. But is this urgency for real? Somewhere, someone in the North Korean leadership doesn't want Inspector O to complete his investigation. And why not? What if the robbery leads to the highest levels of the regime? What if power, not a need for cash, is the real reason behind the heist at the Gold Star Bank?
Given a choice, this isn't a trail a detective in the Pyongyang police would want to follow all the way to the end, even a trail marked with monogrammed silk stockings. "I'm not sure I know where the bank is," is O's laconic observation as the warning bells go off in his head. A Scottish policeman sent to provide security for a visiting British official, a sultry Kazakh bank manager, and a mournful fellow detective all combine to put O in the middle of a spiderweb of conspiracies that becomes more tangled, and dangerous, the more he pulls on the threads.
Once again, as he did in A Corpse in the Koryo, James Church opens a window onto a society where nothing is quite as it seems. The story serves as the reader's flashlight, illuminating a place that outsiders imagine is always dark and too far away to know. Church's descriptions of the country and its people are spare and starkly beautiful; the dialogue is lean, every thought weighed and measured before it is spoken. Not a word is wasted, because in this place no one can afford to be misunderstood.

Praise for Hidden Moon:

"The book's often sharp repartee is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler's dialogue, while the corrupt North Korean bureaucracy provides an exotic but entirely convincing noir backdrop. . . . Like Marlowe and Spade before him, Inspector O navigates the shadows and, every now and then, finds truth in the half-light." --The Wall Street Journal

" Hidden Moon] . . . is like nothing else I've ever read. Church creates an utterly convincing, internally consistent world of the absurd where orders mean the opposite of what they say and paperwork routinely gets routed to oblivion." --Hallie Ephron, The Boston Globe

"Church uses his years of intelligence work to excellent advantage here, delivering one duplicitous plot twist after another . . . the author's affection for the landscape and people of Korea is abundantly evident. A] stunning conclusion." --The Washington Post

"...the real pleasure of Hidden Moon is its conversations, loaded down with layers of secrecy and suspicion that surface words are meaningless in the face of buried intention. Thanks to Church, mystery readers are learning about the minds and hearts of North Koreans--and putting a human face on a world so far away." --The Baltimore Sun

Critical Acclaim for A Corpse in the Koryo:

"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

"The best unclassified account of how North Korea works and why it has survived . . . This novel should be required bedtime reading for President Bush and his national security team." --Peter Hayes, executive director of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development

"A new offering that reminds you of why you started reading mysteries and thrillers in the first place." --Chicago Tribune

"What's perhaps most remarkable---and appealing---about A Corpse in the Koryo is the tremendously clever complexity (and deceptions) of the plot. The reader is left to marvel at the author's ability to keep his readers on their intellectual toes for almost three hundred pages. We can only hope that Church has many more novels up his sleeve." --Tampa Tribune

"An impressive debut that calls to mind such mystery thrillers as Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"In Inspector O, the author has crafted a complex character with rough charm to spare, and in eternally static North Korea, he has a setting that will fascinate readers for sequels to come." --Time magazine (Asia edition)

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312387660
• ISBN13: 9780312387662
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Unuusual insights

I read murder novels for escape, but I also like to learn about different places. This fits the bill and is filled with numerous twists and turns. I look forward to reading more of the Inspector O Novels!

A great follow-up to his first book....

As mentioned in my first review I read his first book more for the insight into North Korea than for the mystery aspect. This book is less about what day to day life is like in North Korea and more about the absuridty of living in a country where nothing is what it seems to be. The character development of Inspector O is outstanding. His constant banter with his boss and others throughout the book brings humor to what otherwise would be a humorless situation. The beginning of the book was a tad slow and then it really picked up and I couldn't put it down until the end.

A smart cop in a mind-bendingly paranoid regime

Church's second Inspector O novel finds the North Korean detective feeling his way gingerly, reluctantly, stubbornly around a sensitive case - a bank robbery, the first ever in Pyongyang. " `There's nothing in the training manual about bank robberies.' I pointed at the green-covered book on the floor behind me. It had been there when I came into the office years ago, and there had never been a reason to disturb it. `That means no standard procedures, no approved plan of operations. I wouldn't know where to start,' " he tells his boss, knowing it's a no-win case, one he's meant not to solve, probably, but to appear to be trying to solve. Probably. Sure enough, things are immediately hinky, with a dead bank robber he's not allowed to see, an attractive bank manager who talks in riddles, a Scottish cop he's expected to baby-sit and a State Security man looking over his shoulder. "Hidden Moon" more than fulfills the promise of Church's first, "The Corpse in the Koryo," with its likable, canny, sardonic protagonist and succinct, witty - sometimes hilarious - prose. Church, the pseudonym of a former intelligence operative in North Korea, paints a detailed, absorbing picture of an authoritarian regime built on shifting sands of paranoia and secrecy.

Even better than A Corpse in the Koryo

The plot this time still is not one that a reader will grasp on first reading. But again the point is, here's what life in North Korea is like, up to a point. I was a big fan of the first installment and like the 2d even more. -Bradley Martin

Challenging, demanding, disjointed with purpose, and darkling bright

Like "A Corpse in the Koryo", "Hidden Moon" creates more questions than it answers. It may not satisfy a reader's need for clarity and closure. Comfort must be found elsewhere. The opening line is a gem: "The afternoon lay strangled in a gloom of Chinese dust." Later, with only the slightest context, "Native to Korea is one venomous snake, whose bite is lethal but which is not aggressive. The tigers left long ago. New bears have been seen." Gentle humor blossoms: "There was an old monk that lived at the temple after the war. No one bothered him. A couple of political types came up that first September and asked him a few questions. When they were leaving, they told me it was my job to watch him. It was funny and we all laughed. Setting a blind man to watch a monk."