The Man with the Baltic Stare: An Inspector O Novel
*Starred Review* Inspector O, the wily North Korean police detective, has retired to a mountaintop to shape wood with his grandfather's tools. It's really a kind of exile, though, as O was ordered to the mountain by the government. Even so, he accepts his new life. But when summoned back to Pyongyang, he discovers that the city has changed; food is plentiful, streets are well lit, and new construction is everywhere. And everyone he meets, even a hotel bellhop, seems to know things that O does not. In time, O learns that his new superior is a South Korean, and that a reunification of North and South is planned. O's assignment is to roil the waters of a murder investigation in Macau because the anointed leader of the new Korea is the prime suspect. But at every turn, O is threatened—by his superior, by gangsters from various countries that see opportunity in the reunification, and by a mysterious Chinese colonel. Even O's remarkable Buddhist-Taoist sangfroid is stretched to its limits. Many novelists cheerfully admit that writing fiction allows them to invent everything. Few have as much freedom as Church, because North Korea is so little known. Each Inspector O novel is a strange new trip through the looking glass, and this one is every bit as praiseworthy as its predecessors. --Thomas Gaughan