Read it quick before North Korea decides you can't!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.
(3.5 of 5 stars)I can see why the reviews are all over the place for this book - it's definitely not your typical mystery, though the more I think on it, the more I wonder if that's not a misclassification anyway. Koryo is by any measure one weird hybrid of a book. With the intrigue and politics it's easy to think of John Le Carre, and the dark richness of the descriptions is definitely Raymond Chandler's noir all over, but then things get a bit harder to describe. It's more travelogue than police procedural, less a straight thriller novel than a meditation that just happens to have some exciting moments. And there's certainly no neat resolution to much of anything: good people die, and minor characters die, and the shadows and murky forces keep playing their games, undisturbed and still mostly incomprehensible to anyone not in the highest levels of power.Which means that it's hard to know where to start evaluating this book, too. In a normal mystery or police procedural, I'd wonder what the heck was going on with the plot here: The intrigue gets off to a nice early start, but then nothing much happens; for all the talk that something big is coming, that everything's about to change, there's nothing but traveling and tension until the 50% mark... and then a confused jumble of action, and finally a last-minute "this explains everything!" explanation (that really only answers about half the questions any sane person would have at that point) tucked away breathlessly in the last few pages, and then it just ends abruptly. With that said - where the plot feels frustratingly incomplete, the descriptions are beautiful, and easily clawed back an extra half-star from me for being by far the best parts of the book. The messy, half-seen world of politics and power struggles among North Korean party leadership is - surprisingly? - a natural match for the brooding noir atmosphere (extra props for the classic Korean poems at the start of each section, which are haunting and perfectly true to tone). Ditto, the culture and travelogue passages are fascinating in themselves, honest and colorful without ever turning kitschy or exoticizing - I would cheerfully read more of that, please!
What do You think about A Corpse In The Koryo (2006)?
My Review:“You never know what they mean until you hear what they don't say.” ― James Church, A Corpse in the KoryoWelcome to the city of Pyongyang -- the capital city of North Korea. In the beginning, we are introduced to Inspector O -- a member of the North Korean police force (and our protagonist). "A Corpse in the Koryo" was a very complex novel to grasp and thus, a challenging book to review. So bear with me, I shall try my best.Plot:To be quite frank here, I found the plot to be a bit messy, with several loose ends. Normally, this would be a turn off - however, if you take the setting into account I believe it makes a lot of sense to write the plot in the way James Church did. I believe the "messy" plot conveys to the readers, the difficulty of investigating in a country such as North Korea. Setting:The setting of this novel was North Korea, which is an attention grabber for this novel all in its own. I believe there is a widespread, morbid curiosity surrounding the DPRK. This is largely amounted to the fact that it is the most secretive, and politically isolated country in the world. With these factors in mind, I couldn't resist picking up this novel and checking it out.Characters:The only character I felt I could get a decent grasp on was Inspector O. I enjoyed O's surprising amount of rebellious spirit - such as 'forgetting' to wear his pin, which in a police state like NK, he is taking quite a risk. As for the other characters, I couldn't quite get a sense of them - I found them to be a bit flat, and one dimensional.Author:Another source of intrigue for "A Corpse in the Koryo" is that, the author - James Church - is supposedly a pseudonym for a former western intelligence officer. I hadn't known this when I had picked up the book - but it is definitely an interesting tidbit of info.Nitpicks:My biggest criticism of this book is that at the end of the book, I felt like I had missed bits of info along the way. I wasn't entirely sure if I had understood the plot correctly. While I previously stated that this was understandable due to the complicated nature of the book's setting, I felt the book left a bit to be desired. Ultimately, this book was not quite what I had expected. Whilst "A Corpse in the Koryo" was not a bad read, I would hesitate to call it a great one either. It is obvious that Church is a strong writer, it took a good portion of the book to figure out what was occurring. It is possible that I will, in future, check out the other books in the Inspector O series - just out of curiosity. My note to future readers - if you pick up this book, do not expect a 'traditional' mystery (you will be disappointed). This is more of a spy-vs-spy novel with a side of government cover up, so if that is what you love to read - go for it.My Rating: 3 out of 5
—Melissa
I agree with the general sentiments of most of the reviews on here.I liked a lot of things about 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, itself, ultimately resonated for me on any kind of a deep or overly satisfying level. I don't know how much of this is due to my unfamiliarity with the North Korean culture (i.e., perhaps those more familiar with that culture might understand or get more out of the (sparsely explained) story and its resolution). At the end of the day, I'm still not 100% sure I understood what happened (or why), and the explanations given at the very end by Kang didn't really help to clarify or illuminate or emotionally resolve things for me, either. While I liked the sparseness of the prose, I also got confused by Military Security, Intelligence, Police, etc. However, I do think that this writer is enormously talented, in many ways, and I am interested in reading other books in this series.(One other random thought -- I'm not sure I like the title of the book! The Corpse in the Koryo isn't introduced until about 1/2 through the book, and has virtually nothing to do with the main themes of the story).
—Lisa Sansone
This was one of those novels that plays with your head for a bit. Inspector O, a man of little importance in the Ministry of People's Security finds himself thrown into a case of smuggling, illicit dealing, a Western reporter, and a beautiful girl named Lena. But it's more than a tale of finding out whodunnit. There's little touches of unexpected beauty, classic Korean poetry, and a real sense of being there. If you like your thrillers to be tense and nervewracking, this will do quite nicely. This gets four stars and a recommeded from me. For the longer review, please go here"http://www.epinions.com/review/James_...
—Rebecca Huston
