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Hidden Moon: An Inspector O Novel |
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Hidden Moon: An Inspector O Novel |
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基本信息·出版社：Minotaur Books
·页码：304 页
·出版日期：2007年10月
·ISBN：0312352093
·International Standard Book Number：0312352093
·条形码：9780312352097
·EAN：9780312352097
·版本：1st
·装帧：精装
·正文语种：英语
·丛书名：Inspector O Novels
内容简介 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.
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)
作者简介 James Church (a pseudonym) is a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia.
专业书评 From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. The former U.S. intelligence agent writing as James Church offers a unique perspective on North Korea in his standout second Inspector O mystery, following 2006's acclaimed
A Corpse in the Koryo. Series hero O, an inspector with the ministry of public security, is determined to maintain some moral and professional standards while toiling in an inefficient bureaucracy where competing intelligence services spend significant time spying on each other to detect the slightest trace of ideological impurity. His assignment this time is a classic no-win: his superior directs him to investigate a bank robbery, an unheard-of crime in Pyongyang, but no one is cooperating, suggesting that the truth is not something the government actually wants discovered. O is further taxed when a visiting British dignitary's arrival apparently triggers an assassination plot that could have ramifications for the current regime. With wit and efficiency, Church masterfully evokes the challenges of enforcing the law in an authoritarian society and weds the intriguing atmosphere to a fast-moving and engaging plot.
(Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From BooklistFollowing up his exciting A Corpse in the Koryo (2006), which introduced the likable North Korean police officer Inspector O, Church (a former intelligence officer writing under a pseudonym) offers up a mystery involving a rarity in Korean society: a bank robbery. Men in silk stockings (also very rare) have held up the Gold Star Bank in broad daylight, and, frankly, the authorities have no idea how to handle it. So they give the case to Inspector O, hoping that his expertise with offbeat cases will help. Little do they or he expect the treachery that lies down the road. Like its predecessor, the novel relies heavily on its setting, which the author brings vividly to life, and on its characters, the witty, wily Inspector O and the various colleagues, witnesses, and suspects he encounters. While the first novel invited comparisons to Martin Cruz Smith and Robert Janes, this second in the series makes it clear no comparisons are necessary: this series stands on its own. Pitt, David
文摘 Excerpt
The afternoon lay strangled in a gloom of Chinese dust. Brown light, brown shadows twisted slowly over a naked riverbed. A kilometer or so beyond—distances were hard to judge against the dim, muddied horizon—a dirt path struggled up a hillside, pulling a reluctant village of broken, brown-roofed houses. A crumbling embankment crept by. A man’s head appeared. His blank eyes stared into the passing windows, then looked away, his face dusty, lungs and mouth and teeth and thoughts all gone to brown dust.
Suddenly, laughter broke out in the coach; a few passengers moved to get a better view. One woman, her voice too loud, shouted, “There!” From nowhere, a flash of color became the shiny red boots of a small girl, her hair flying behind, arms pumping, breathlessly leaping, soaring across a single patch of newly turned, black-furrowed earth. The girl waved, both hands above her head; the passengers clapped and knocked on the windows. The whistle sounded. For a moment, it pierced the shroud, and then, suddenly, it was gone. People returned to their reading, sleeping, drinking tea, anything to make the time pass. The train creaked around a bend; the red boots disappeared from view. One or two watched for another sign of spring, a forsythia bud or the faint feathered green of a distant willow. But there was nothing to see besides the wind, wandering through fields of rotting brown stubble. It was too soon. Even late March was too soon. And there was still too much damned dust in the air.
Turning from the window, I realized a man in the aisle was standing quite still, staring at me. He smiled absently when he caught my eye and nodded as if we were acquainted. For a moment, I thought he might sit down and begin a conversation, but he walked past and into the next car without a word. It was hard to tell if he had a limp or if it was just the coach swaying. I settled back to try to sleep, but the image of the riverbed star
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