Why a Booktrail?
1997 – Inspector O is an interesting character – A police inspector working in North Korea in the winter of ’97 when famine was rampant…
Bamboo and Blood
What you need to know before your trail
Famine is widespread and 1997 is proving to be the year when even staying alive is an achievement.
Inspector O works for the Ministry of Public Security and is tasked with playing host to an Israeli agent who has come to the city of Pyongyang. But then the wife of an North Korean diplomat in Pakistan is found to have died under suspicious circumstances, and O is told to investigate this. Given the secrecy in the country and its agencies at the time, he is told to investigate but not to look too closely. Certainly not mention missiles. But Inspector O cannot help but find out what he knows he shouldn’t.
The trail of the murderer takes him from the city to the dark and remote North Korean countryside. But soon, the trail will take him as far afield as New York and Geneva and all the while, the question of missiles looms large.
Travel Guide
North Korea may be noted for its secrecy and so a Police Inspector working for the Ministry of Public Security on a case of a diplomat’s wife who’s been killed in suspicious circumstances could well be a matter for national if not international security.
O’s grandfather often regretted the state of the country –
His lectures on the sad history of Korea – overrun, bullied, forced to keen – always filled me with rage at his self-pity. Now I was saying exactly the same thing.
Investigations had to be almost token gestures for fear that secrets and lies were revealed. Where famine is making most of the country hunger and unable to work properly, this fatigue is also amongst the leaders who want nothing to push them out of their reverie. Instructions from the “Investigate, but do not solve” school of international diplomacy are to be followed at all costs.
North Korea is painted as a closed and reclusive country, where the investigators are being investigated, the watchers watched and where there are spies in the most unlikely places.
Soon, O is pulled into a complex web of espionage and murder, where the players in this international game of chess may be Israeli, Swiss or otherwise
but in the secretive world of North Korean diplomacy and politics, there is a thin veil between reality and fiction.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Bamboo and Blood
Destination: New York City (NYC), North Korea, Switzerland, Pakistan
Departure Time: 1997
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