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Inspector O #4
The Man with the Baltic Stare
From James Church, the author of the critically acclaimed Inspector O series, comes The Man with the Baltic Stare--another riveting novel set in the mysterious world of North KoreaAutumn brings unwelcome news to Inspector he has been wrenched from retirement and ordered back to Pyongyang for a final assignment. The two Koreas, he learns, are now cooperating—very quietly—to maintain stability in the North. Stability requires that Inspector O lead an investigation into a crime of passion committed by the young man who has been selected as the best possible leader of a transition government. O is instructed to make sure that the case goes away. Remnants of the old regime, foreign powers, rival gangs—all want a piece of the action, and all make it clear that if O values his life, he will not get in their way. O isn't sure where his loyalties lie, and he doesn't have much time to figure out whether ‘tis better to be noble or be dead.
288 pages, ebook
First published August 10, 2010
20 people are currently reading
213 people want to read
About the author
James Church
7 books76 followersJames 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 noted by Asia specialists for offering "an unusually nuanced and detailed portrait" of North Korean society. A Korea Society panel praised the first book in the series for its realism and its ability to convey "the suffocating atmosphere of a totalitarian state". A panelist as well as The Independent's and the Washington Post's reviewers compared the protagonist to Arkady Renko, the Soviet chief inspector in Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park, for providing "a vivid window into a mysterious country".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
September 1, 2015
There is something delicious and pleasurable about these dark mystery/thrillers by James Church. The characters are all fuzzy around the edges - you never know all about them - who is on whose side. These books to me are like dark chocolate. A little bitter, but wonderful.
Inspector O is a wonderful character. Wonderfully sketched out with a great back story - but you still know very little about him. He is very politic, knows how to exist in such a closed society, but also manages to get justice in his own way.
I can't wait to see him again.
Inspector O is a wonderful character. Wonderfully sketched out with a great back story - but you still know very little about him. He is very politic, knows how to exist in such a closed society, but also manages to get justice in his own way.
I can't wait to see him again.
April 6, 2017
In the closing years of the past decade, beginning in 2008, North Korea began descending into chaos as its dictator, Kim Jong-Il, fell gravely ill. His youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, then only in his mid-twenties, began to emerge as the heir apparent, crowding aside not just his older brothers but the senior officials who wanted to end the Kim dynasty and seize power themselves. The outside world learned few of the details about the power struggle underway, but it was clearly ferocious and led to considerable bloodletting. One or two highly public executions surfaced in the news, but there were undoubtedly many more under wraps.
North Korea in chaos
In The Man with the Baltic Stare, James Church re-imagines these circumstances in the fourth of his detective novels featuring Inspector O. Church’s scenario — possibly based in great part on fact, as Church served the US government in Southeastern and Eastern Asia for many years — powerful outside forces struggled for dominance in alliance with different factions within the faltering North Korean government. South Korea, China, and Macao-based Chinese gangsters all clashed with one another, as much to prevent the others from coming out on top as to gain power themselves, resisted by those in the country’s government who weren’t allied with any of the outsiders. In fact, and this seems almost certainly to be true, no outsider wished to take on responsibility for running a desperately poor and backward country, as the cost might have been comparable to the hundreds of billions of dollars the West German government was forced to spend to integrate East Germany when reunification came in 1990.
Intrigue and confusion in a failing state
Unfortunately, Church doesn’t make this three-way (actually four-way) conflict clear until more than halfway through The Man with the Baltic Stare. The novel masquerades as a murder mystery. Inspector O, formerly the North Korean equivalent of a police detective, has been living in isolation on a mountaintop, having left the force under an agreement never to never to speak to anyone about the unsavory political events he’s witnessed in his career. In the first half of the book, he is mysteriously snatched from his mountain home and pressed into service by an obviously powerful South Korean major to investigate the murder of a highly placed North Korean official in a luxurious Macao hotel room. It’s unclear whether the major wants O to identify the killer or to cover up the incident. Strange, very strange.
The previous Inspector O novels consistently portray life in North Korea as uncertain, confusing, and rife with intrigue. Inspector O routinely finds that the origins of the mysteries he is investigating are hidden and that no one he encounters along the way is likely to be who he says he is or do what he has promised to do. This novel carries that theme of confusion to a new height. Reading the book is a maddening exercise: confusion undermines the suspense. However, it’s worthwhile as interesting speculation on what really took place in North Korea between 2008 and 2012, when the ascendancy of Kim Jong-Un became clear.
North Korea in chaos
In The Man with the Baltic Stare, James Church re-imagines these circumstances in the fourth of his detective novels featuring Inspector O. Church’s scenario — possibly based in great part on fact, as Church served the US government in Southeastern and Eastern Asia for many years — powerful outside forces struggled for dominance in alliance with different factions within the faltering North Korean government. South Korea, China, and Macao-based Chinese gangsters all clashed with one another, as much to prevent the others from coming out on top as to gain power themselves, resisted by those in the country’s government who weren’t allied with any of the outsiders. In fact, and this seems almost certainly to be true, no outsider wished to take on responsibility for running a desperately poor and backward country, as the cost might have been comparable to the hundreds of billions of dollars the West German government was forced to spend to integrate East Germany when reunification came in 1990.
Intrigue and confusion in a failing state
Unfortunately, Church doesn’t make this three-way (actually four-way) conflict clear until more than halfway through The Man with the Baltic Stare. The novel masquerades as a murder mystery. Inspector O, formerly the North Korean equivalent of a police detective, has been living in isolation on a mountaintop, having left the force under an agreement never to never to speak to anyone about the unsavory political events he’s witnessed in his career. In the first half of the book, he is mysteriously snatched from his mountain home and pressed into service by an obviously powerful South Korean major to investigate the murder of a highly placed North Korean official in a luxurious Macao hotel room. It’s unclear whether the major wants O to identify the killer or to cover up the incident. Strange, very strange.
The previous Inspector O novels consistently portray life in North Korea as uncertain, confusing, and rife with intrigue. Inspector O routinely finds that the origins of the mysteries he is investigating are hidden and that no one he encounters along the way is likely to be who he says he is or do what he has promised to do. This novel carries that theme of confusion to a new height. Reading the book is a maddening exercise: confusion undermines the suspense. However, it’s worthwhile as interesting speculation on what really took place in North Korea between 2008 and 2012, when the ascendancy of Kim Jong-Un became clear.
November 8, 2012
This was a weird one. Reading it was like a traffic accident...I couldn't take my eyes off it. I obviously found it interesting, because I continued to read it and finished it, but I'm still not quite sure what the hell happened. I'm unsure of what the main plot was, why anything that happened in the book happened, and the ending was deeply unsatisfying-yet I found it endlessly fascinating and I loved the characters. Weird.
October 22, 2015
I had read another book about the stories of Inspector O and had felt a bit icy. I couldn't well penetrate the character (or Church's writing). It was nice, interesting, but that's all. I read some comments about the present one and had reasonable doubts about starting to read it. But I did it and I'm happy I did. It was very interesting. You understand close to nothing, because Church keeps on hiding information, but tou are fully immersed in an almost surreal world. More than the plot, which eventually one can more or less feel, although not fully grasp, what matters is O and the other characters, but especially O. He has a way of looking at things which totally differs from what you might expect and he amuses you all the time. I was a bit puzzled by the dialogues and the general attitude of the characters. It's like Raymond Chandler in Pyongyang. I still don't know whether this is how these guys there talk to each other, even though one lerans at the end of the book that the author wrote the book in Macau and might have some insights. But what's the matter with reality? The whole story could be realistic in one of the millions of possible worlds, and unrealistic in all the rest. The thing is that O has got style, that O is much more than a professional inspector in a place where, by chance, one must know where you walk on, that fight for survival is the same anywhere you are.
I really enjoyed it.
I really enjoyed it.
May 23, 2013
Church FINALLY fixed his pacing problem with 'the Man with the Baltic Stare'. This novel was a lot better than Bamboo and Blood. It may even be better than his first one (although Corpse in the Koryo gets originality points). Anyway, it redeemed the Inspector O series for me.
Church is as strong a writer as Olen Steinhauer, just working a different geography. All the blurbing, however, about how he is the next le Carré is about 20+ amazing books premature. I don't think ANYONE will be the next le Carré. I'm not even sure if le Carré would be capable now of being the next le Carré.
But, head back to Church (no more le Carré backsliding today). I think this novel was more confident, less messy, and reminded me of why I started reading Church in the first place. I guess I'm going to have to read Johnson's Orphan Master's Son just to get North Korea out of my blood.
Church is as strong a writer as Olen Steinhauer, just working a different geography. All the blurbing, however, about how he is the next le Carré is about 20+ amazing books premature. I don't think ANYONE will be the next le Carré. I'm not even sure if le Carré would be capable now of being the next le Carré.
But, head back to Church (no more le Carré backsliding today). I think this novel was more confident, less messy, and reminded me of why I started reading Church in the first place. I guess I'm going to have to read Johnson's Orphan Master's Son just to get North Korea out of my blood.
August 27, 2018
James Church's fictional character, Inspector O continues to confuse, educate, enteratin, and frustrate me. This novel is perhaps the most unrealistic confusing one of the four I have read. And yet, the combination of intrigue with a look into a political system I know little about keeps me coming back for more. I'm not sure I know anyone else who would continue to read this series.
March 20, 2018
I am angry at the author. Very angry and also unhappy. He managed to spoil everything he accomplished with the first three books in the series. I won't insert true spoilers, only generic info that won't reveal anything crucial.
Inspector O is now 68 years old, retired in special conditions in 2011, a year before the official retirement. The idiocy is that, living on a mountaintop for five years, he's disconnected from the realities of whatever happens in North Korea. And no, he hasn't lost his fucking obsession with wood chips.
Now, the thing is that something started to happen in DPRK. As this book was written in 2010, with the events supposedly taking place in 2016, the author couldn't possibly have imagined that Kim Jong-il would die at the end of 2011, and that “the new leader” would be his second son. He also couldn't have thought that each and every time the Supreme Leader dies, there would be a food and electricity crisis—not as severe as the one described in the previous novel, i.e. after the death of Kim Il-sung, at least not at the food level; the most severe electricity deficiency actually took place sometime in 2012.
Back to what happens in the book: this is what outraged me to the utmost—much more than the absurdity of the excessively recluse live the retired inspector was supposed to have had. Well, let’s say there’s some transition in the works, a sort of opening initiated by the ageing Kim Jong-il.
The problem is that it couldn’t have happened this way and to such extent. Not ever. Not by any means. Nope. Not on your life. Not in this field of possibilities.
But this is the political part. How about the murder-cum-spy-story which should undoubtedly part of any novel featuring Inspector O?
Before you understand the political climate, you’d say everything is bollocks, rubbish, nonsense, bunkum, balderdash, hogwash, and pure crap at that. Why would anyone “revive” Inspector O, and why would anyone care about some things so much as to perform such an international ballet? Towards the end of Part II everything will become clear, yet the level of dissatisfaction I had with this story was immense.
In the process, the reader is told what exactly is the Investigations Department we encountered in the very first novel—it’s the party’s foreign intelligence arm.
A last criticism: I obviously don’t know anything about the Korean language, but I’m pretty sure it lacks the polysemy around whatever word is used for “tip”: “A tip, you know—a gratuity, service charge, payment in advance for errands to be run, a friendly barrier against unfavorable winds and life’s unexpected turns. See what I mean?”
I walked past him to the door, held it open, and jerked my head in the direction of the hallway. “I’ll give you a tip,” I said. “Don’t play with matches.”
Since I cannot rate it 2 stars and half, I picked an undeserved note of 3.
Inspector O is now 68 years old, retired in special conditions in 2011, a year before the official retirement. The idiocy is that, living on a mountaintop for five years, he's disconnected from the realities of whatever happens in North Korea. And no, he hasn't lost his fucking obsession with wood chips.
Now, the thing is that something started to happen in DPRK. As this book was written in 2010, with the events supposedly taking place in 2016, the author couldn't possibly have imagined that Kim Jong-il would die at the end of 2011, and that “the new leader” would be his second son. He also couldn't have thought that each and every time the Supreme Leader dies, there would be a food and electricity crisis—not as severe as the one described in the previous novel, i.e. after the death of Kim Il-sung, at least not at the food level; the most severe electricity deficiency actually took place sometime in 2012.
Back to what happens in the book: this is what outraged me to the utmost—much more than the absurdity of the excessively recluse live the retired inspector was supposed to have had. Well, let’s say there’s some transition in the works, a sort of opening initiated by the ageing Kim Jong-il.
The problem is that it couldn’t have happened this way and to such extent. Not ever. Not by any means. Nope. Not on your life. Not in this field of possibilities.
But this is the political part. How about the murder-cum-spy-story which should undoubtedly part of any novel featuring Inspector O?
Before you understand the political climate, you’d say everything is bollocks, rubbish, nonsense, bunkum, balderdash, hogwash, and pure crap at that. Why would anyone “revive” Inspector O, and why would anyone care about some things so much as to perform such an international ballet? Towards the end of Part II everything will become clear, yet the level of dissatisfaction I had with this story was immense.
In the process, the reader is told what exactly is the Investigations Department we encountered in the very first novel—it’s the party’s foreign intelligence arm.
A last criticism: I obviously don’t know anything about the Korean language, but I’m pretty sure it lacks the polysemy around whatever word is used for “tip”: “A tip, you know—a gratuity, service charge, payment in advance for errands to be run, a friendly barrier against unfavorable winds and life’s unexpected turns. See what I mean?”
I walked past him to the door, held it open, and jerked my head in the direction of the hallway. “I’ll give you a tip,” I said. “Don’t play with matches.”
Since I cannot rate it 2 stars and half, I picked an undeserved note of 3.
September 25, 2010
I was excited to notice the latest, book four, in the series; however, it’s down right bizarre, perplexing, absurd, and inscrutable. We don’t understand the relation of the title until page 214 or so. The reader never knows where we are headed in this book. O is summoned from his mountaintop exile to investigate a case that perhaps, shouldn’t be investigated. Powerful forces at work from both inside and outside the Hermit Kingdom striving for control of its future and O, who seeks the Middle Path, is being asked to choose. It’s a combination of Secret Agent meets Karate Kid with much fatalism and Tao-wax on, wax off or be whacked. Questions are never answered or answered with more incomprehensible replies or questions. O is abruptly dropped off from a car to walk to only God knows where. He gets on planes for reasons only known to those directing him and even those nominally in charge don’t seem to know. Is O bait? If anything the character and the author could be leaving us soon. Church leaves a cryptic reference in his introduction-last sentence. Is he dying or is North Korea? Interesting.
January 5, 2017
Inspector O remains as spikey and untrusting as ever. And well traveled. His mountaintop retreat is his home, or is it? The joy in reading, and in re-reading some pages, of these Inspector O novels is as much or more for his introspection, for the comments and stories unrelated to the mystery at hand. Highly recommended, The Man with the Baltic Stare and the Inspector O series. Do begin with the first book in the series, A Corpse in the Koryo. The books may be read out of order, but there is a natural progression to Inspector O that is well worth the journey.
August 6, 2016
This is the 4th in a series about Inspector O, a criminal investigator in North Korea. Everything there is political, and quite muddled. The author is supposed to be a diplomat with a lot of knowledge about North Korea. If the author's view of that country is correct, there is one inescapable fact: no one really knows what's happening there. If you've read the first 3 in the series, you might as well read this one.
July 11, 2015
Another breathless tale of confused courses of action, conflicting loyalties, elaborate deceptions and people and things certainly not being what they seem...
August 23, 2011
These are getting too weird.
June 18, 2020
With this behind me, I have one Inspector O left on the shelf. I'll have to explore to see if there are more out there. Certainly, they would be worthwhile. As with the previous titles and the present one, they will be carefully crafted, with many things implied more than said. Church's (pseudonym) writing is as the plots: carefully crafted with sly undertones. And let us not forget funny, sometimes laugh out loud funny, always amusing funny. Inspector O has a way with sarcasm and insult.
One final note: these are noir stories, dark and with almost absentminded violence. 'Two large men appeared, picked Li up by the arms, threw him off the cliff'. And we move on. Never another word about the large men. Tell it and move on.
Recommended.
One final note: these are noir stories, dark and with almost absentminded violence. 'Two large men appeared, picked Li up by the arms, threw him off the cliff'. And we move on. Never another word about the large men. Tell it and move on.
Recommended.
September 22, 2019
Much better than his previous effort, Bamboo and Blood, Church opens with a retired Inspector O, dragged back to service under vague and mysterious circumstances. This is par for the course for any regular readers of the series, where no order or no conversation is ever straightforward. However, this story veers in different directions than the previous three books, in the best possible way. While each book had plenty to say about the history, current state, and future of DPRK, this book (and Inspector O) confronts these issues more directly than ever before. Some shocking revelations are revealed, and the emotional payoff is well-earned.
January 1, 2022
As usual, I enjoyed reading this. And I think I understand this one - far more than "Bamboo and Blood". The "real history" references are clearer to me: a problem of succession in North Korea. Our dear Inspector O has been in retirement. He has been forcefully removed from that retirement, and appears to have a health problem, leading to many "life lessons" and some fairly metaphysical reflection throughout the book:
(p.207) "...the years don't pass, they are still around us."
(p.216) "When one hard thing meets another, you get nothing but sorrow."
(p.207) "...the years don't pass, they are still around us."
(p.216) "When one hard thing meets another, you get nothing but sorrow."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 1, 2019
Meh- started off fairly interesting then after the 1st part (1/3) it didnt capture my attention very much. I liked the personality of O (main character) but found the story line to be a bit disjointed. Another reviewer put it correctly- you don't really know much about the characters or what the main plot is so it leaves you unfulfilled. Perhaps I should have started with the first in the O series.
January 20, 2023
Another wonderfully written Inspector O novel by James Church. I usually start these the moment they arrive. Reading straight through over a couple of days, enjoying it, savoring it like a specially prepared meal. This is the fourth in the series, my fourth read, each one enjoyed. Based in North Korea, but with trips to other countries, then back, chasing the plot and story.
February 1, 2018
I had such high hopes! Fascinating setting, wry writing... thought it would be another Dr. Siri series. But alas, a chaotic story with too much talking and not enough action. I'll give the series one more try.
November 1, 2018
Set in North Korea but written before it was demonised. A simple crime procedural set in the background of the shifting power play. Nothing special, just well written, intriguing, slightly opaque, and very readable.
April 26, 2018
As much as I love this quirky series, volume 4 was slow going.
July 31, 2019
Another fascinating, convoluted story of Inspector O, life, and politics in North Korea
January 12, 2021
Inspector O is aging more gracefully than DI Rebus?
October 11, 2018
I started this series over Christmas (2017), and this was my summer (2018) installment. Church's novels focus on a (now-retired) North Korean police inspector who previously served in the North Korean intelligence service. If you enjoyed Martin Cruz Smith's novels about Soviet-era detective Arkady Renko, you just may enjoy this series. In the Man with the Baltic Stare, Inspector O leaves North Korea for the first time since prior to the first novel. This novel was clearly written with the transition from Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un in mind. Wikipedia says that Church's (his name is a pseudonym--the author served in the Western intelligence service) "Inspector O" novels have been well-received by Asia specialists for offering "an unusually nuanced and detailed portrait" of North Korean society. Other critics praise Church for his ability to convey "the suffocating atmosphere of a totalitarian state," and for providing "a vivid window into a mysterious country." He's not Solzhenitsyn (see my review of "In the First Circle," which I also read this summer), but these are definitely a worthwhile read. Book 5 is on my pile of library books to read in the next month or so.
January 18, 2012
This is my first time listening to the audio of this series. I am a great fan of Inspector O, and of James Church for imagining this character and his life. It is a truly unique mystery/spy series set in North Korea in the same way that Colin Cotterill’s Di. Siri Paiboun series takes a look at Laos in a different way. The fact that an old man is the center of each of these series gives the reader a long-range perspective and their sense of humor and justice. A young man would be confused and probably angry in countries as difficult to navigate as North Korea and Laos, so an older man has much to offer in terms of philosophy and history.
Part of the wonder of these series is the fact that they are each set in a remote locale in terms of international and social relations. We wonder, but can’t know much about how the populace lives and thinks. The joy of discovering familiar human wants and needs in a culture so distant is remarkably refreshing and reassuring. It makes us laugh all the harder at jokes poking fun at their own national idiosyncracies…after all, aren’t they letting us in on the joke? Of course, each of these books is written by a foreigner (American, British), but that must make it more accessible for those of us who will never travel to these places. The authors have a good sense of the contradictions and frustrations that us outsiders tend to find overwhelming, and reassure us that citizens of these countries also find these things confusing. They just find ways to carry on their lives in spite of the difficulties.
So, because I like the series so much, I am awfully disappointed in Blackstone Audio for not looking harder for an appropriate voice for the series. I’m sure Feodor Chin is a nice person and all that, but making the voice of a 70+ year old Korean spy sound like a 40-something American private eye from the 70s is really a distraction. His hearty voice bats slang with such American maleness that one cannot ignore any longer that this is just an old American spy writing in the voice of a Korean agent. When reading by oneself, a reader might ignore little inconsistencies and put one’s imagination to good use, but never does a reader comes to this series expecting an American private eye or point of view. Trying to make this series sound like a pulp mystery churned out annually by the chart-topping blockbuster novelists is a mistake…nay, a crime.
Part of the wonder of these series is the fact that they are each set in a remote locale in terms of international and social relations. We wonder, but can’t know much about how the populace lives and thinks. The joy of discovering familiar human wants and needs in a culture so distant is remarkably refreshing and reassuring. It makes us laugh all the harder at jokes poking fun at their own national idiosyncracies…after all, aren’t they letting us in on the joke? Of course, each of these books is written by a foreigner (American, British), but that must make it more accessible for those of us who will never travel to these places. The authors have a good sense of the contradictions and frustrations that us outsiders tend to find overwhelming, and reassure us that citizens of these countries also find these things confusing. They just find ways to carry on their lives in spite of the difficulties.
So, because I like the series so much, I am awfully disappointed in Blackstone Audio for not looking harder for an appropriate voice for the series. I’m sure Feodor Chin is a nice person and all that, but making the voice of a 70+ year old Korean spy sound like a 40-something American private eye from the 70s is really a distraction. His hearty voice bats slang with such American maleness that one cannot ignore any longer that this is just an old American spy writing in the voice of a Korean agent. When reading by oneself, a reader might ignore little inconsistencies and put one’s imagination to good use, but never does a reader comes to this series expecting an American private eye or point of view. Trying to make this series sound like a pulp mystery churned out annually by the chart-topping blockbuster novelists is a mistake…nay, a crime.
February 28, 2014
To say that this book is bizarre is to be making an understatement. To begin with, during the book at least three different characters mention that what is going on is Kafka-esque. That would be true if Kafka was an impressionist and we all know that he didn’t do impressions. That gives you an idea of what the book is like. Think of Kafka writing a book about Zen and the sound of one foot tapping on a sponge.
It takes at least half of the book before you (or me) realize that the book is set in the future. O says that he had lived on the top of the mountain for the last five years before he was called back to Pyongyang. But he also states that he didn’t go up onto the mountain until 2011 and that he was currently sixty-eight years old. So the book seems to be set between 2016 and 2020.
The book’s main story is that there is a succession problem caused by a plot to discredit the most realistic successor. All of the local countries, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan are involved in plots and counterplots. The two most active are China and South Korea.
Our friend Inspector O, somehow gets involuntarily involved with many of the plotters and ends up travelling to Macau and to Prague. Yes it’s that convoluted. Having read the book I’m still not sure if in the beginning of the next book, Inspector O comes walking out of the shower in a Dallas Hotel and says hi to Bobby Ewing. But I wouldn’t be surprise. Read it if you want to understand what happens next? Don’t bet on it.
Zeb Kantrowitz
June 15, 2012
North Korean police detective, Inspector O, has spent five years in exile on his mountain when he is coerced into returning to “investigate” a murder in Macao. As usual in this series, nothing is as it seems and, far from learning the truth of the murder, his task is to cover it up. The book is difficult to get into because most of the first third of it is taken up with the inspector being cranky. It mystifies me how a character can remain so enigmatic writing in the first person.
It is difficult to write reviews of any of the entries in the series because, although they have crimes and police, the objective of the investigators is not to solve the crime but to survive the investigation. The reason for reading the book is not the murder mystery, but to glimpse the plight of the North Koreans from their own perspective. They are a people who have made great sacrifices and suffered a great deal. O is faced with the questions of what it was all for and did it have any meaning at all. He is forced to consider whether there any prospect for a future that actually liberates the North Korean people.
It is difficult to write reviews of any of the entries in the series because, although they have crimes and police, the objective of the investigators is not to solve the crime but to survive the investigation. The reason for reading the book is not the murder mystery, but to glimpse the plight of the North Koreans from their own perspective. They are a people who have made great sacrifices and suffered a great deal. O is faced with the questions of what it was all for and did it have any meaning at all. He is forced to consider whether there any prospect for a future that actually liberates the North Korean people.
August 3, 2013
In The Man with the Baltic Stare James Church brings the wily but mystified Inspector O down from his mountaintop retreat and out of retirement with this story set in 2016. O is a wonderful character—part nourish detective, part good soldier Schweik, part a Kafka protagonist who would not be out of place on The Office (if you can imagine it set on North Korea). The idea is that by 2016 North Korea has now become so tenuous that the Chinese and South Koreans are both trying to take over the Japanese and Russians also jockeying for position. The plot itself was a little convoluted—too many villains, motives and betrayals and a bit of a rushed ending—but the political analysis is interesting and Inspector O holds the story together with his wry observations and insight. I’ve somehow read Church’s books out of sequence—the first, then the fourth--and now want to go back, catch up and find out how O ended up on the mountain top.
February 20, 2014
I thoroughly enjoyed the first three books in this series featuring Inspector O, in the unconventional mystery setting of North Korea. It was definitely a case of culture shock at first, although I loved the rather curmudgeonly, lateral-thinking O from the start. This book, which takes place several years after events in the third book, took me a very long time to get into. Inspector O had retired to a hermit-like life on top of a mountain, but several political factions were determined to un-retire him for some unknown purpose, and the first third of the book was very confusing and scattered. I very nearly gave up on it a couple of times but am glad I stuck with it, as I was eventually rewarded with a coherent and interesting mystery. If you enjoy books (particularly mysteries) set in exotic locales, I highly recommend this series!
January 19, 2012
My feelings about this book are as confused as the difference between a maze and a labyrinth.
A maze is a complex with many paths with different choices and directions. A labyrinth has also different choices of directions, but it is a single path leading to a center. A labyrinth is always leading to a center, but not a maze.
At first when I began the book I thought I had entered a maze as I tried to follow who was doing what, and where and especially why? There are North Koreans, South Koreans, Chinese, Tongs Russian women all pulling in different directions for different reasons. My head was spinning.
By the end I realized that there was a wobbly path leading to the center of this story and that is the faith of the North Koreans in North Korea regardless of what that area looks to us from our perspectives.
A maze is a complex with many paths with different choices and directions. A labyrinth has also different choices of directions, but it is a single path leading to a center. A labyrinth is always leading to a center, but not a maze.
At first when I began the book I thought I had entered a maze as I tried to follow who was doing what, and where and especially why? There are North Koreans, South Koreans, Chinese, Tongs Russian women all pulling in different directions for different reasons. My head was spinning.
By the end I realized that there was a wobbly path leading to the center of this story and that is the faith of the North Koreans in North Korea regardless of what that area looks to us from our perspectives.
January 16, 2017
Inspector O has been retired on a mountain top for 5 years when he is called back to Pyongyang for a special assignment - one that he doesn't want. The state of things has changed while he was gone - there are factions working for closer ties with South Korea, and factions opposing. Chinese forces are in the country to prevent a collapse, or perhaps to keep the south out.
The young man who is the potential next leader of the North seems to have committed a murder in Macao, killing a prostitute and wheeling her out of his hotel in a Vuitton wheeled bag. O is ordered to go there to make the crime disappear. Of course nothing is as it seems, and the young man has disappeared as well. So O has to navigate the conflicts between two sets of Koreans and two sets of Chinese without being shot, blown up or thrown over a cliff. It's Kafka meets John LeCarre once again.
The young man who is the potential next leader of the North seems to have committed a murder in Macao, killing a prostitute and wheeling her out of his hotel in a Vuitton wheeled bag. O is ordered to go there to make the crime disappear. Of course nothing is as it seems, and the young man has disappeared as well. So O has to navigate the conflicts between two sets of Koreans and two sets of Chinese without being shot, blown up or thrown over a cliff. It's Kafka meets John LeCarre once again.
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