Inspector O Novels
6 primary works
Book 1
Sit on a quiet hillside at dawn among the wildflowers; take a picture of a car coming up a deserted highway from the south. Simple orders for Inspector O, until he realizes they have led him far, far off his department's turf and into a maelstrom of betrayal and death. North Korea's leaders are desperate to hunt down and eliminate anyone who knows too much about a series of decades-old kidnappings and murders - and Inspector O discovers too late he has been sent into the chaos.This is a world where nothing works as it should, where the crimes of the past haunt the present, and where even the shadows are real. A corpse in Pyongyang's main hotel - the Koryo - pulls Inspector O into a confrontation of bad choices between the devils he knows and those he doesn't want to meet. A blue button on the floor of a hotel closet, an ice blue Finnish lake, and desperate efforts by the North Korean leadership set Inspector O on a journey to the edge of a reality he almost can't survive.
Book 2
Inspector 0 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 wants action.0 must start investigating - and immediately - as various ministries demand action. Except, as usual, nothing is ever as it seems in North Korea. Before long, 0 has met a beautiful bank manager, a sharp club owner and the mysterious man in the brown hat, and they all have agendas - none of which involve 0 solving this robbery. But solve it he must, before the wrong ministry comes into power, and 0 is held accountable.
Book 3
It's the late 1990s, and a younger Inspector is working in Pyongyang as the North's nuclear missile program - and international relations are heating up. In Pakistan, the wife of a North Korean diplomat is found dead under suspicious circumstances. Inspector is assigned to the investigation with strict instructions to stay away from anything to do with the missile program. That proves impossible, though, when realizes the woman's death provides him an entry point into a larger conspiracy,Once again, 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.
Book 4
Autumn brings unwelcome news to Inspector O: 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.
Book 5
James Church's Inspector O novels have been hailed as "crackling good" (The Washington Post). Now Church - a former Western intelligence officer who pulls back the curtain on the hidden world of North Korea in a way that no one else can - comes roaring back with an unputdownable new novel. A Spanish factory near Barcelona is secretly producing - under the guise of a dumpling maker - a key machine for the production of nuclear weapons. Western intelligence has gotten wind of this and believes that the machine is meant for North Korea. It is deemed imperative either to disable the machine before it leaves the factory or intercept it. Inspector O is recruited by an old friend to take part in an operation to disrupt the plans for shipping the machine. The buyer of the machine has constructed an elaborate double blind story, making it appear as if the purchaser is a Japanese criminal organization acting on behalf of the North Koreans. Information has been carefully planted and events set up to lead Western intelligence operatives to that conclusion.
The feints include a flurry of murders in the northeast Chinese city of Yanji, on the border with North Korea, where O's nephew is the chief of State Security. Church's latest Inspector O novel full of suspense, is not one that you will be able to stop reading.
The feints include a flurry of murders in the northeast Chinese city of Yanji, on the border with North Korea, where O's nephew is the chief of State Security. Church's latest Inspector O novel full of suspense, is not one that you will be able to stop reading.
Book 5
James Church's "Inspector O" novels have been hailed as "crackling good" ("The Washington Post") and "tremendously clever" ("Tampa Tribune"), while Church himself has been embraced by critics as "the equal of le Carre" ("Publishers Weekly", starred). Now Church - a former Western intelligence officer who pulls back the curtain on the hidden world of North Korea in a way that no one else can - comes roaring back with an unputdownable new series featuring Inspector O's nephew, Bing, the director of state security in a region in northeast China bordering North Korea. When clues point to a connection between a beautiful woman's disappearance and Bing's sensitive assignment to bring an agent across the North Korean border, O reluctantly helps him navigate an increasingly complex and deadly maze. James Church has crafted a story with beautifully spare prose and layered descriptions of a country and a people he knows by heart.