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A Corpse in the Koryo (Inspector O #1)

3.43 of 5 stars 3.43 · rating details · 541 ratings · 126 reviews

Against the backdrop of a totalitarian North Korea , one man unwillingly uncovers the truth behind series of murders, and wagers his life in the process.

...more

Against the backdrop of a totalitarian North Korea , one man unwillingly uncovers the truth behind series of murders, and wagers his life in the process.

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 decades-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. A corpse in Pyongyang's main hotel---the Koryo---pulls Inspector O into a confrontation of bad choices between the devils he knows and those he doesn't want to meet. A blue button on the floor of a hotel closet, an ice blue Finnish lake, and desperate efforts by the North Korean leadership set Inspector O on a journey to the edge of a reality he almost can't survive.

Like Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy and the Inspector Arkady Renko novels, A Corpse in the Koryo introduces another unfamiliar world, a perplexing universe seemingly so alien that the rules are an enigma to the reader and even, sometimes, to Inspector O. 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. This is a chilling portrayal that, in the end, leaves us wondering if what at first seemed unknowable may simply be too familiar for comfort.

Critical Acclaim for The Corpse in the Koryo

"This is a fine, intelligent, and exciting story that takes us into the netherworld of contemporary North Korean communism. It evokes the gray milieu without ever overstepping its mark, allowing us to see it from the inside rather than the outside, wherein the humanity of all the characters, both good and evil, is apparent. Inspector O is a particularly wonderful creation, a true mensch attempting to hold on to his humanity in a world where humanism is under constant attack. Subtlety is the method, and the result is fantastic work that should mark the beginning of a brilliant career for James Church."
---Olen Steinhauer, author of Liberation Movements

"For over fifty years Americans have tried to understand the world of North Korea. James Church does a better job of describing the isolated, impoverished, corrupt, and out- of-touch life in the North than anything I have seen. This novel is a must-read for anyone who would understand how precarious the dictatorship is."
---Newt Gingrich, author of Winning Back the Future and Never Call Retreat

"A gripping story of mystery and intrigue. The laconic Inspector O follows in the traditions of Inspector Arkady Renko, operating in a world of complexity and danger we're meeting here for the first time."
---Don Oberdorfer, author of Tet!

"Church's debut thriller breaks new ground. O is an original. This is an expert take on a complex, brutal, and mystifying society. Immerse yourself in it."
---Marshall Browne, author of Eye of the Abyss and the Inspector Anders series

"The Corpse in the Koryo is a spellbinder. Bloody and chilling, yet subtle in its psychological detail, with an amazing understanding of North Korea."
---Ezra F. Vogel, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University Asia Center

"The (pseudonymous) author, a veteran intelligence officer, has intimate knowledge of Asian life and politics, and it shows: He gives the North Korea setting a feeling of palpable reality, depicting the nature of daily life under a totalitarian government not just with broad sociopolitical descriptions but also with specific everyday details. . . . There is also a little of Martin Cruz Smith's early Arkady Renko novels here. The writing is superb, too, well above the level usually associated with a first novel, richly layered and visually evocative."
---Booklist (starred review)

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Hardcover, 288 pages

Published October 17th 2006 by Minotaur Books (first published 2006)

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Aug 19, 2008 Christopher rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of my coworkers is married to an editor for St. Martin's, and he came to a company party one time with a bunch of free books. Among the stack, I saw A Corpse in the Koryo and the title made me give it a second glance. The fact that it was set in North Korea sold me -- my sisters are adopted from South Korea, and I've had some interest in both countries for some time now.

The book's pacing is not particularly speedy, but it doesn't ever get bogged down either. The plot ticks away as more chara...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Kemper rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 5-0, crime-mystery, over-there, spy-vs-spy

A current-events float.

Kim Jong-il wasn’t just another fascist dictator whose only hobby was firing cruise missile over Japan when he got bored. He was also reportedly an incredible golfer. According to the state newspaper, the first time he ever played, Kim finished 18 holes in just 34 shots. Which would be 25 shots lower than the best official round ever played and would mean that he hit multiple holes-in-one in a single round.

With the whole country so completely locked down, it’s hard for us...more A current-events float.

Kim Jong-il wasn’t just another fascist dictator whose only hobby was firing cruise missile over Japan when he got bored. He was also reportedly an incredible golfer. According to the state newspaper, the first time he ever played, Kim finished 18 holes in just 34 shots. Which would be 25 shots lower than the best official round ever played and would mean that he hit multiple holes-in-one in a single round.

With the whole country so completely locked down, it’s hard for us to know how the people of North Korea really feel about their leaders. We tend to think of them as this oppressed but possibly brainwashed sea of humanity that lives in a combination of fear and awe of Kim Jong-il. But people are people, and surely there were some in North Korea who read that their Dear Leader shot the lowest round of golf in history, rolled their eyes and thought, “Just how stupid does that asshat think we are?”

Inspector O is kind of like that. He routinely ‘forgets’ to wear his pin with Kim’s picture on it that everyone is required to wear, and he shows a surprising amount of rebellious spirit when having to navigate the treacherous bureaucratic waters of running criminal investigations in a police state. O is given a mysterious assignment to go outside Pyongyang and take a picture of a car that is supposed to drive by at a certain time. O isn’t happy about being sent on this errand, and since nothing works in North Korea, the camera he was given has a dead battery so he isn’t able to take the picture.

This draws O and his boss Pak into a dangerous games where they’re being used as pawns between two powerful rivals, Kim from the Military Security forces and Kang from the Investigations Department. Despite their efforts to say out of the fight, O has to follow Kang’s orders to a dangerous town on the Chinese border and then into investigating the murder of a foreigner at the Koryo hotel.

The obvious comparison to this series is Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko series that started in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Like Renko, O is a decent man who has no illusions about the government he serves, but he also isn’t stupid enough to try and change it. Just trying to do a little honest police work is dangerous enough.

James Church is supposedly the pseudonym of a former Western intelligence agent. The details of everyday life in North Korea ring true, and O is a fascinating character. The writing is also very good, but the plot is pretty confusing. O spends a great deal of the book just blindly being sent to different places, and neither he nor the reader knows why until very late in he book. Plus, there’s a large plot point regarding O’s hated brother abruptly dropped into the middle of the book with no history or explanation. Maybe the later books in the series get into that more, but it seemed kind of random though.

Still, this was a well written thriller with an interesting main character in a setting that most of us outside of North Korea will never know. (less)

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Sep 22, 2008 Terence rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Terence by: New York Review of Books

Shelves: mysteries

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In the same vein of decent cops working for dictatorial regimes like my recently read Thirty-Three Teeth is James Church's A Corpse in the Koryo. Here, however, the atmosphere is far darker. Where Cotterill plays up the absurdities of the Pathet Lao's regime, Church's North Korean bureaucrats are vicious thugs and the slightest mistake could (and does) cost lives.

Inspector O is the grandson of a respected general and war hero, which gives him a certain amount of freedom denied his peers but it's...more

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May 24, 2013 Lukasz Pruski rated it 3 of 5 stars

Inspector O, the protagonist of James Church's "A Corpse in the Koryo" works for the North Korean Ministry of People's Security. We meet him as he is unable to take a picture of a suspect car because of dead batteries in his camera (batteries are almost impossible to get in North Korea, like almost any other consumer item). Then he is sent on a mission from Pyongyang, through Kanggye, to Manpo, and all this time (covering over 120 pages) neither he nor the reader knows what is going on. Complete...more Inspector O, the protagonist of James Church's "A Corpse in the Koryo" works for the North Korean Ministry of People's Security. We meet him as he is unable to take a picture of a suspect car because of dead batteries in his camera (batteries are almost impossible to get in North Korea, like almost any other consumer item). Then he is sent on a mission from Pyongyang, through Kanggye, to Manpo, and all this time (covering over 120 pages) neither he nor the reader knows what is going on. Completely random, often absurd, things keep happening, sort of like in Scorsese's movie "After Hours", only here things are not that funny and we are aware that people can pay with their lives for a single misstep. Finally, back in Pyongyang, O gets a "normal" case to solve, the murder of a foreigner in a hotel. From that moment, until the end of the novel, most of the confusing things that initially made no sense whatsoever, get slowly untangled. More bizarrely, the narration is interspersed with O's conversation with Richie, an Irish agent. Again, the conversation does not make much sense, until the very end of the novel.

The author, who apparently has personal knowledge of life in the highly totalitarian North Korea, does a pretty good job presenting the grim and bleak realities. Even for me, born and raised in a country where for many years one could not get most basic items in stores, where there were enormous lines to buy food, where meat, sugar, and many other things were rationed, the North Korean situation is unimaginably bad. In fact, I regret that the author does not spend a bit more time to show glimpses into the lives of regular citizens of North Korea, rather than focusing on functionaries, who, after all, are quite privileged.

The portrayal of rivalries between the three agencies, the Ministry of People's Security, the Military Security, and the Investigations Department of the Central Committee is one of the best aspects of the novel. The author also seems to imply that, as powerful as they are, all these organizations depend on a mere whim of the top party people. Whether it is true or not, I do not know, but it adds another layer of complexity to already complicated structure of the plot.

Throughout the novel Mr. Church writes in a cold, impassive style, and allows emotions to show only a few times. I particularly like the phrase "the 1960s, when everyone was poor but still had hope." I love the fragment about young O's travel, with his grandfather, to Siberia to get wood for a furniture store they planned to open. On the other hand, I do not care for the device of intertwining the plot with conversation with Richie. To me it smacks of the author showing off his literary prowess. Funny, I usually love books that are out of the mainstream, ones that bend or mix the genres. "A Corpse in the Koryo" is quite out of the mainstream, yet I like the traditional parts in it more than the unusual ones. Maybe because they are written better?

Three stars.
(less)

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Feb 26, 2013 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, mystery, spies-intrigue, thriller

James Church's first novel, "A Corpse in the Koryo" introduces us to Inspector O, a policeman based in North Korea's capital city of Pyonyang. O is initially tasked with taking a photograph of a mysterious car as it travels north along a rural highway, but soon finds himself caught between competing government factions while he investigates a murder no one apparently wants solved and tries to keep his footing on rapidly shifting political sands.

The obvious comparison to make when describing the...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Grace rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm a bit of a North Korea nut, but had mostly stuck to nonfiction until a friend put me onto this series, and I'm so glad he did. It's a detective series unlike any other, and gives a view of North Korea that's different from a lot of the defector stories in that Inspector O is realistic about his country's shortcomings, but never really considers leaving it. It means a story where the bitterness has mostly been transformed into irony and sarcasm... because if anyone overheard him trashing the...more I'm a bit of a North Korea nut, but had mostly stuck to nonfiction until a friend put me onto this series, and I'm so glad he did. It's a detective series unlike any other, and gives a view of North Korea that's different from a lot of the defector stories in that Inspector O is realistic about his country's shortcomings, but never really considers leaving it. It means a story where the bitterness has mostly been transformed into irony and sarcasm... because if anyone overheard him trashing the State, he'd be disappeared.

Inspector O is a policeman in Pyongyang. He patrols his sector, he spars with his boss Pak, and he irritates the hell out of everyone by constantly playing with chips of wood as he thinks. Then one day, he is called to a crime scene, and things go into motion.

Pretty typical detective novel setup, right? Not so fast - as the investigation unfolds, it becomes more and more obvious that finding the bad guy is not necessarily in O's best interest. Better yet, it turns out that it is frequently not in O's best interest to solve crimes; all Pak wants to do is produce some notes to stick in an official file, then shuffle the whole problem off to someone else. Unfortunately, O is one of those guys who subconsciously puts things together and almost effortlessly follows up on hunches. Even more unfortunately, there's someone high up who is directing events and appears to want O on the case, and that usually means someone is being set up: whether it's the Minister, Pak, the Department or O himself, no one quite knows. But they can feel it coming.

The way Church introduces North Korean culture is just so cool. Inspector O is something of a protected class in that his grandfather was a war hero, so has grown up a little less overshadowed by the surveillance state - basically, if he slipped he was unlikely to vanish into a camp, because someone would just "lose" that part of his file. So his outlook is maybe a little more worldly than most. But that culture of informing and tailing and interrogating is still a huge part of his life, and it intersects so damn weirdly with his police work. It took me a while to really grasp what O's role was, until I realized that policing a place where people vanished inexplicably (and are never spoken of again by a silent, community-wide agreement) all the time would be surreal. Why follow up a murder when your colleague inexplicably turned up in a river, having managed to apparently bash his own brains in - after all, the morgue has him down as a suicide. Also, he never existed.

It's just surreal! Inspector O has all the makings of a really good detective. But he's stuck in a country where doing that job properly would be fatal, and where he and his department are routinely used to fight interdepartmental wars as directed by Party officials who are never seen nor heard of. If you're looking for an Agatha Christie loose-ends clearup here, you're not going to get it. For an Inspector O book, success is not so much about solving the case, it's about O being able to pass on the file while he still has all of his limbs.

The only drawback to this book is that almost everyone speaks in the same rapid-fire banter. Church relies mostly on physical quirks to signal differences in personality, but it is noticeable that everyone down to a phone operator speaks in a cheeky, quick tone. It's entertaining banter, so I don't mind, but it is unrealistic.

Very, VERY unusual book that kicks off a very worthwhile series - thanks for suggesting it, Andrew!(less)

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May 24, 2012 Annabelle rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is a novel by the pseudonym, James Church, who was an intelligence operative, probably CIA, focusing on his protagonist Inspector O. I like Inspector O. He is a non conformist and tries to solve problems, and do his responsibility of keeping crime down in Pyongyang, while resisting the strangling politics of the party, and deadening bureaucracy, like the impossibility of getting a kettle for office. Also the description of the communist state with no resources, and living conditions, small...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Lisa Sansone added it

I agree with the general sentiments of most of the reviews on here.

I liked a lot of things bout the book. I thought the character of Inspector O was interesting and engaging, and I was particularly moved by his relationship with both his grandfather and with his boss, Pak. In many ways, I liked the atmosphere set by the author, and really appreciated his attention to the small detail, as well as his evocative descriptions of people and places.

That said, I'm not entirely sure that the actual plot...more

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May 27, 2012 Syrdarya rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, north-korea, spies

This book is rather different from the mysteries I've read lately. It's slow-moving, and the humor is often subtle, but I liked the story and the characters. Inspector O's neverending search for tea was amusing, and his travels around North Korea were pretty cool, because documentaries about North Korea hardly ever talk about anything except the capital and the border with South Korea.

The mystery begins when Inspector O is assigned to photograph a car driving down the highway in the early mornin...more

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Jan 19, 2012 mkld rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Es un libro que sabe mantener el suspense y la intriga, pero quizás demasiado, pues acabas de leerlo sin saber si lo has entendido bien.
Hay mucho misterio, muchos personajes y sobre todo muchos departamentos y grupos que tienen sus propios intereses y en general, información que no es fácil de interpretar. Recordemos que este libro pasa en Corea del Norte, donde nada es lo que parece y la actitud de la gente no es como en una democracia occidental. Supongo que tiene mucho que ver el estilo prop...more

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Sep 12, 2010 Paul Patterson rated it 4 of 5 stars

It took some work on my part to find the rhythm of this novel. I enjoy reading international mystery novels because I think the genre of mystery can reveal and uncover the nuances of societal behaviour in a unique way. A Corpse in Koryo does so extremely well. The spirit of North Korea is however harder to understand than any other political regime. Only a writer with intimate acquaintance of the people and the political regime they live in would be able to translate the convoluted processes tha...more It took some work on my part to find the rhythm of this novel. I enjoy reading international mystery novels because I think the genre of mystery can reveal and uncover the nuances of societal behaviour in a unique way. A Corpse in Koryo does so extremely well. The spirit of North Korea is however harder to understand than any other political regime. Only a writer with intimate acquaintance of the people and the political regime they live in would be able to translate the convoluted processes that take place on every dimension of life in this almost fantasy-like kingdom. No one but a intelligence operative could do that and that is what we have in James Church the (pseudonymous) author of A Corpse in Koryo.

He has obviously absorbed the culture and does his best to translate it. Many readers complain that the central crime is barely solved and we are left wondering if all the loose ends were neatly wrapped up. Plainly they just weren't resolved. The reason is not the author's fault but is cause by the fact that the political oppression and paranoid culture is so potent in North Korea that it obscures everything else.

There is very little inter-agency trust in North Korea and the corruption of it officials complicates even the simplest task. As the reader will see the job whatever it is takes a back seat to mere survival in this world. The job of solving a murder is subsumed in acts smuggling and political backbiting. Our protagonist Inspector O desires to do his job and to do it authentically but in his context even if the culprit be found and the crime solved, justice would be illusive. The reader learns to empathize with Inspector O’s sense that solving crimes is futile when social justice is absent.

A Corpse in Koryo is a mystery come espionage novel whose tone is definitely that of the finest literary novel. In the end, its hard reading but worth it. It would definitely take more than one reading to fully grasp all its nuances, especially the subtle inter-relationship between the descriptions of nature and their relationship to the plot.

Paul Patterson(less)

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Apr 01, 2012 Gregory Gay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, detective, north-korea, spy

A Corpse in the Koryo was an excellent thriller, set in the heart of North Korea. It was a good page-turner - definitely kept my attention from cover to cover.

I had to exercise my sense of disbelief a little bit. Inspector O definitely plays up the renegade detective stereotype, and from everything that I've heard of North Korea, he wouldn't last a week with some of the attitudes he displays. It wasn't a huge issue, though - every good detective novel suspends reality a bit.

Despite the main ch...more

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Jul 06, 2008 Anita rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those interested in North Korea

Shelves: north-korea, mysteries, fiction

While the prose is very elegant and quite superior to most of those books in the genre, the plot was overly complicated and surprisingly uninteresting. Definitely not a page turner, and I really had to force myself to finish it.

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Oct 19, 2012 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

An amazing and ambitious first novel. Think of it as Raymond Chandler gets hardboiled and eaten cold by a North Korean bureaucracy where the good guys don't just battle crime, but have to fight through a broken, Kafkaesque maze of political nihilism, factionalism, and stoic fatalism JUST to get some gas or a cup of tea. Church's natural details are amazing, his writing is both polished and crisp, and his story is superbly well-crafted (I can imagine the idea for Inspector O slowly evolving and b...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Megan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

I really quite enjoyed this book. I loved the atmosphere and the really subtle humor. I also enjoyed reading something set in North Korea (a place i know vanishingly little about). I thought some of the imagery was quite beautiful.

It did have a problem that i find occasionally in this type of book, where the main character was running around following a plot so obscure that it never did become that clear to the reader, either. And perhaps just as bad, the process leaves it unclear whether the pr...more

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May 13, 2009 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

The author, a former intelligence officer, provides a surreal glimpse into one of the world's most closed societies, North Korea. When Inspector O, a state security officer, is given a not-so-routine surveillance assignment, he realizes that competing forces in the military and intelligence hierarchies are setting him up for a fall. The death in the Kyoro Hotel is only one of many murders that litter the tale but, unlike the others, this one must be investigated because the victim is a foreigner...more

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Jan 26, 2012 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'll admit it, I read this book from some sort of goody-goody impulse, thinking I'd get some insight into N Korea via the trojan horse of a police procedural. I'm not sure that really worked, though-- Church, for me, misses the mark in both directions, though only by a little.

Here's what I mean: the overarching plot here has something to do with corruption and infighting in whatever we'd call the NK politburo-- and it's about smuggling, fancy cars from someplace outside NK to someplace else outs...more I'll admit it, I read this book from some sort of goody-goody impulse, thinking I'd get some insight into N Korea via the trojan horse of a police procedural. I'm not sure that really worked, though-- Church, for me, misses the mark in both directions, though only by a little.

Here's what I mean: the overarching plot here has something to do with corruption and infighting in whatever we'd call the NK politburo-- and it's about smuggling, fancy cars from someplace outside NK to someplace else outside NK. And this whole smuggling plot feels like low-hanging fruit, like not a distinctive enough plot to really say, only there. The murder at the middle of the book (and by middle, I mean page count but not centrality to plot) is never really solved, even though to me it might've been the most intriguing part of the book: what do you do when a foreigner dies in the finest hotel in your ultra-secretive regime. But that avenue is mostly unexplored-- this, to me, was a failure in the direction of not-specific enough, where I felt like this could've happened in Cuba, Belarus, Yemen: you get the idea.

On the other side, there's the inside baseball stuff, about the history of relations between Koreans and Japanese, how people feel about the legacy of the revolution, what it means to be a member of the administration, even in a minor way like administrator Pak. This stuff is what, on some level, I was reading for, and I found it insufficiently explained. It's like there was a level of this book that went on just outside my visual range, and that was kind of frustrating.

Really, this is a better and more rewarding book that my criticism suggests; it felt, more than anything, like a first book, like Church wanted to say more than his plot allowed, so he muffed some elements. And I liked the character of O, I like the way deprivations of equipment make investigations more challenging. I'm not running to the library to read the next Inspector O book, but I definitely haven't ruled it out-- I think maybe it's the kind of series that can only sing when the backing tracks of this novel have been laid down.(less)

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Dec 01, 2009 Beth rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: asia

This book did not appeal to me as much as I thought it would...a bit dry, redundant, and whiny!

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Apr 24, 2013 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, mystery

This was one of those books that starts out as a mystery and finishes...well, pretty much the same - still a mystery. Part police story and part 007 spy drama, you never quite know what exactly is going on. The protagonist, Inspector O, (at least I can spell his name)is ordered about from pillar to post on a series of investigative odd jobs. He seems as mystified as the reader regarding the deaths and corruption encountered during the course of his investigative meanderings.

I'll be the first to...more This was one of those books that starts out as a mystery and finishes...well, pretty much the same - still a mystery. Part police story and part 007 spy drama, you never quite know what exactly is going on. The protagonist, Inspector O, (at least I can spell his name)is ordered about from pillar to post on a series of investigative odd jobs. He seems as mystified as the reader regarding the deaths and corruption encountered during the course of his investigative meanderings.

I'll be the first to admit that I know sweet diddly about North Korea, but I doubt that police and security agencies there gun each other down in the streets and office buildings on a regular basis. Maybe that's what the author was counting on...that the reading public would be so ignorant of the country that he could make any old thing believable. It seemed odd to me; I understand inter-departmental rivalries, but this seemed to go too far.

Mr Church didn't make Inspector O work for me; he is portrayed as a thoughtful and sensitive man trying to function in a brutal and oppressive regime, but seems oddly detached when people close to him are bumped off along the way. Maybe that's what Church was going for, but it didn't work for me. I didn't believe the character and found the convoluted story line hard to follow. In fact, having read the book, I'm still not sure what the heck happened there.

This book has some redeeming qualities. Church is a capable writer and has created some good descriptive passages and entertaining verbal exchanges, of which I will include a small sampling:

(p.72) - Listening is the anvil that forms the sword, the fire that
melts the lead for the bullet. Listening is the time to
recoup, to gather your wits, to plan your attack. If you
listen to anyone carefully enough, you'll hear the slip
that points to their vitals. It's the compass on the
killing map. People talk, but no one wants to say
anything because someone might listen."

Or this exchange between O and an Irish operative named Richie:

(Ppg 107-108)
"Kang is an interesting character"

"I thought so. Very complicated man. The sun bounced off
him in a thousand directions. Like a diamond. Built up
quite a list of enemies, as far as I could tell."

"Nice image, Kang as a diamond. How many karats would you
say?"

"A diamond in a garbage pile, who cares what it might have
fetched on the world market."

The Irishman clicked his pen.

Finally, a brief excerpt of a passage in which O is describing the Alps (he has a thing for mountains):

The peaks I saw clawed the sky, so that the dawn was
wounded and the sunlight bled into the day.

In fact, the writing was just good enough to overcome a confusing story line and a protagonist who doesn't seem to be fully developed. I liked it just enough to give the next Inspector O book a try sometime just to see if a different setting changes my opinion. (less)

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Dec 11, 2012 Brian Hope rated it 5 of 5 stars

His books are to em similar to the Scandinavian crime writers, though faster moving than many of them. It also helps that he writes, until the latest, about life in North Korea and I wonder whether his CIA activity there made him focus on it. Whatever, he certainly conveys the spooky nature of things there, in a mad society, but above all his characters are totally human and comprehendible, and sympatico. Wish there were more. I hadn't even realised there were so many, there certainly aren't at...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Philip rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: foreign-fiction, mystery-thriller, fiction-series, korea

I actually enjoyed the fact that for the whole first half of this book, I didn't really know what was going on -- even the titular corpse doesn't appear until halfway through, (and even then isn't really all that important to the story). Church's debut novel is very well-written, with strong characters and a clear sense of location in his depiction of North Korea. I was really keen to see how the story developed and played out, and whether it could satisfactorily tie together all the disparate t...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Cameron rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not usually one for detective thrillers, but I did like this story. It took its time, wrapping up somewhat quickly near the end. The author takes time establishing character throughout most of the first half of the book, and the characters were, for me, what made this book good (the "mystery" itself wasn't too interesting).

We al know NK is a repressive society, but what we get from reading this book is in how many little, subtle ways it is, and what its citizens do to deal with that every da...more

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Jun 10, 2011 Dolly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Mystery fans

Shelves: 2011, china-chinese, czech-republic, finland, ireland-irish, korea-korean, military, mystery, france-french, russia, switzerland

This was a unique and interesting look into life in North Korea. I have often wondered what life was like there and it is such a closed society, I'm sure few people who live outside of it know. I don't know how accurately this book describes the society, but I imagine that it is closer to the truth than not.

I often find the oddest coincidences when I read. I picked this book to read in Khabarovsk, Russia, because we would be near North Korea. Parts of the book discussed Siberia, which makes up...more

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Dec 03, 2010 Vanessa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010

I'm going to start out with the best advice I can give you about reading this book: be patient. The story really gets going about 100 pages in after the main character, Inspector O, is sent on an odd assignment to photograph a car on a highway outside of Pyongyang at dawn, fails and is soon sent by his Boss to the countryside near the Chinese border to hide out from the cluster of high-level security operatives who descend on the modest police department and take an unusual interest in the car a...more I'm going to start out with the best advice I can give you about reading this book: be patient. The story really gets going about 100 pages in after the main character, Inspector O, is sent on an odd assignment to photograph a car on a highway outside of Pyongyang at dawn, fails and is soon sent by his Boss to the countryside near the Chinese border to hide out from the cluster of high-level security operatives who descend on the modest police department and take an unusual interest in the car and missing picture. Or is that the real reason? It's fairly confusing. Stick with it. The story really gets rolling and makes more sense after O returns to Pyongyang to investigate the titular corpse.

This is the first in a series about Inspector O.

As I mentioned, O is sent for reasons unknown to photograph a car on the highway outside of Pyongyang. But this being the crumbling republic of North Korea, the camera's battery is dead. He also has no tea because the Department won't provide him with a thermos and someone has just stolen the office tea kettle (poor O's futile quest for a cup of tea, as well as the abundance of sticky fingers in the DPRK, are themes throughout the book.)

There is of course more going on than meets the eye, this being the North Korea of Kim Jong Il (the story takes place around 2002) as well as a mystery novel. The mystery though is secondary to the author trying to capture the atmosphere of life in North Korea, one of the most enigmatic, Draconian, and paranoid governments going. It took me a while to warm up to Inspector O but eventually I did. He hates the party but he can't show it so he demonstrates it by "forgetting" to wear his badge with the picture of the Dear Leader. He tries to do his job but realizes ultimately it's futile. He is resigned to having his home and office searched and his phone tapped. Nevertheless, he's a good guy with an ultra-dry sense of humor that grows on you. All of the comparisons with Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko are fitting.

The story ultimately fits together beautifully although I can't say I totally understand everything (my deficiency in Asian history could be to blame or maybe the author intends that to be the point as O says he never expects his cases to be solved in the Western sense.) Despite being a little confused, I still really liked the book. James Church is supposedly a pseudonym for a former intelligence officer and he definitely seems to have a grasp of North Korea's geography and people. This is a good way to get a peak inside and feel immensely relieved that the entire country is not composed of Jong-il worshipping automatons. Although, in a way that is even more depressing.

I initially gave this book 4 stars because it's setting was so unusual but it hasn't aged well in my memory. 3 stars is my appropriate here.(less)

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Nov 07, 2010 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

James Church's four Inspector O novels have often been compared to Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko novels. Justifiably so: both feature conflicted, hard-boiled police detectives (owing a great deal to Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and John le Carre), living and working in Communist countries, solving crimes with dangerous political implications. The main difference is that Smith's novels take place mainly in the USSR of the 1970s-1990s, and Church's are set in present day North Korea. Nor...more

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Jun 16, 2010 J. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, asia

There are quite a few reasons that this shouldn't be a winner, not least that the plotlines equivocate and cross themselves, while the reader is left with twelve shaggy-dog threads to tie together in the end. That is, if the reader is only interested in making some kind of logical structure out of the plot.

But there are two main things working in favor of A Corpse In The Koryo, the simplest of which is that Mr Church happens to be a former intelligence officer with 'decades of experience in East...more

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Jan 09, 2011 Spuddie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

#1 Inspector O mystery, set in modern day North Korea, mostly in the capital Pyongyang, but O also travels out to several outlying areas. The story begins with him on a stakeout to take a picture of a car going by on a road in a rural area outside the city. Those are his orders, but of course the camera fails due to dead batteries and the story moves along to a tale of intrigue and espionage between one Ministry and another, sort of a Spy vs. Spy kind of thing with a friend of O's boss named Kan...more

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Aug 25, 2008 Gary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Red Noir

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 myste...more Red Noir

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.(less)

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Feb 28, 2009 David Camacho rated it 4 of 5 stars

A detective novel set in North Korea is what grabbed me about this book. The writing is about on par with Raymond Chandler. The plot involves police Inspector O attempting to figure out why the driver of an unmarked, unregistered car coming from the South Korean border was killed on the side of the road, while trying to avoid getting entangled in a conflict between military security and a state security investigations branch.
The narrative is, in part, a travelogue of a trip across North Korea,...more

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Dec 04, 2010 Gordon Howard rated it 4 of 5 stars

A mystery-detective novel in the very novel setting of North Korea. The protagonist is a North Korean police inspector, who becomes enmeshed in a very complicated, dangerous, and opaque set of circumstances involving two sets of higher ups. The story is very complex and convoluted, and that's the only reason it doesn't get five stars. The main strength of the book is its creation of the atmospherics of living and working in North Korea, and for that alone the book would be worth reading.

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About James Church

James Church is the pseudonym of the author of four detective novels featuring a North Korean policeman, "Inspector O".Church is identified on the back cover of his novels as "a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia". He grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the United States and was over 60 years old in 2009.His "Inspector O" novels have been well-received, being...more

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Books by James Church

The Man with the Baltic Stare (Inspector O, #4)

A Drop of Chinese Blood (Inspector O, #5)

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