A Corpse in the Koryo is a first novel, by James Church (a pseudonym). The author's previous career was, interestingly enough, as an intelligence officer.

The lead character, Inspector O, is a somewhat lowly police detective assigned to an early morning photo stakeout, somewhere in rural North Korea. After a short time, the mysterious car under observation flies by, and the inspector discovers too late that his camera battery is dead. But this scene setting is deceptive - the next view is of a secluded rooming house somewhere in Eastern Europe where our inspector is being interrogated about the scene we have just read, and he has just described. The action continues on several different levels - one the ongoing activities of Inspector O, including a murder investigation (the actual body in the Koryo), a brief interlude with a foreign lady whose ties to anyone is unclear, the inspector's complicated relationship with his father and that subplot of North Korean national identity(s), as well as the rooming house interview which interrupts other action intermittently.

His relationships with the other principal characters is especially well fleshed out - his supervisor, we feel, is his best friend; the Irish operative who interrogates him is, we sense, somehow an enemy; the people of his police force include several nepharious characters, but there is definitely a mist over the landscape... and Inspector O (and the reader) are challenged to clear it away.

There are segways of brilliant discovery that give the book an extra layer of involvement. The characters are very real life (although foreign) and the setting is definitely the communistic milieu of North Korea some time in the near past, so part of the texture of the book is the Asian environment, for intrigue and good old cops and robbers action.

I eagerly await James Church's next foray.