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Detective Novel Is Inscrutable

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By AL HUTCHISON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 8, 2009

"Bamboo And Blood" by James Church (Thomas Dunne, $23.95)

There is no other fictional detective to whom a reader might fairly compare Inspector O, the creation of an author so mysterious you're unlikely to ever see his face in a photograph or find his life story in any biography. James Church isn't even the author's real name. All we are told about him is that he is "a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia."

If Inspector O is relatively immune to comparisons, it's no stretch to describe Church as a latter-day John LeCarre whose tales arise from the tensions between North Korea - of all places - and the Western democracies rather than LeCarre's exotic espionage adventures of the marvelous George Smiley (brought to life so well on the television screen years ago by Alec Guiness) that involved the Soviet Union and British intelligence services.

Inspector O is a based in the bleak North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and enjoys a positive relationship with his boss, the enigmatic Pak. We know his grandfather was a famous patriot who taught O all about wood (a recurring thread in Church's novels) and he is saddled with an ambitious brother whose agenda he doesn't trust.

Beyond that, the reader really doesn't get to know O all that well, but is invited to travel with him as he is assigned to curiously vague investigations in a remote (and seemingly abandoned) North Korean military base, to New York City (briefly) and to Switzerland, where the North Koreans are negotiating a missile treaty with the United States.

The details of the treaty are not important to the plot and are not disclosed. What is important is the cast of characters O encounters as he carries out his assignment in Geneva. He is never sure who is on his side, who isn't, and what might be motivating the several secretive and sinister people who suddenly show up, day or night, wherever he goes and more or less whisper in his ears.

Some are North Koreans, including one who blames O for an earlier investigation that went awry and left him with a mangled hand, but others are Israeli or Swiss. It's all very complicated, especially when one of these people is a drop-dead gorgeous young woman with a very protective father. O is often puzzled and so is the reader, but deliciously so.

Among the puzzles: What is his real mission in Geneva and why does it change? What about another investigation he was handed, altogether too casually for his liking, involving the death of a woman in Pakistan? How is that linked to the assignment in Switzerland? Somehow missiles appear to be involved, but how?
North Koreans are starving and their nation is near collapse. Times are truly terrible, and the government hopes to use that as a negotiating tool. The author seems to know what he's writing about.

Al Hutchison of Citrus County is a freelance writer.

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