The Wandering Ghost

Praise for Martin Limón:

“It’s great to have these two mavericks back. . . . Mr. Limón writes with . . . wonderful, bleak humor, edged in pain, about GI life.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Limón’s crisp, clear storytelling opens a door to another world and leaves one hoping the next installment won’t be so long in arriving.”—The Baltimore Sun

“Limón has the military lingo and ambience down to a T. Plot, pacing, and plausibility are just about perfect.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer (editor’s choice)

“As usual, Limón paints a picture of Korea in the mid-1970s that is so detailed and richly atmospheric that the reader’s senses are flooded with the sounds, smells, and tastes of the place. Fans of the Sueño-Bascom series, who have been waiting eagerly for a new novel, can relax. It was well worth the wait.”—Booklist (starred review)

The only female MP assigned to a base in the DMZ is missing. Has she been abducted, killed, or, possibly, gone AWOL? Eighth Army cops George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, sent to find her, discover a murder that has been concealed, rampant black marketeering and corruption, crooked officers, rioting Korean civilians, and the wandering ghost of a schoolgirl run down by a speeding army truck. It is up to them to right egregious wrongs while being pursued by criminals who want to kill them.

Martin Limón is the author of four earlier books in the Sueño-Bascom series. His debut, Jade Lady Burning, was a New York Times Notable Book.

"The turbulent Korean peninsula provides the backdrop to this fine military mystery, the fifth (after 2005's The Door to Bitterness) to feature U.S. Army criminal investigation agents George Sueo and Ernie Bascom. A crack combat unit stationed near the strife-torn demilitarized zone proves strangely uncooperative when a military policewoman disappears. The missing soldier had made herself unpopular with her chain of command when she attempted to testify against two GIs who accidentally killed a Korean schoolgirl while speeding. As Sueo and Bascom dig past the obfuscation, they uncover an unsavory mix of black marketeering, sexual harassment, corruption, rape and murder, risking disgrace in their quest to find their fellow cop before it's too late. Limn, a veteran who spent 10 years stationed in the Republic of Korea, captures precisely the experience and atmosphere of the tension that exists between the American military and South Korean society, two vastly different worlds bound together only by realpolitik." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"The odds are slim that two police procedurals set in Korea will show up at the same time, but here is another one, and it's also a winner. 'The Wandering Ghost' is a military police procedural, with two U.S. 8th Army investigators in South Korea in the mid-1970s searching for Corp. Jill Matthewson, who has vanished. Is it foul play, or has the female officer, who is fed up with sexual and other harassment... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) at her base, gone AWOL and maybe even gone native? One report has her working in a high-toned Korean brothel.

The main attractions in this fifth of a series are the investigators, lawyerly George Sueno and impulsive Ernie Bascom. They are both plucky and good-humored, and they tiptoe around or cheerfully bulldoze army rules they consider silly. Neither is crazy about the Korean winter, which Bascom calls ''Nam on ice.' But unlike most of the other Americans they meet, the two develop a rapport with Korean people. Both are outraged over the death of a schoolgirl who was run over by a reckless G.I. The wandering ghost of the title is that of the girl, whose spirit has been deprived of both justice and a home.

As in 'Hidden Moon,' official depravity is rampant — though most of it here, depressingly, is American. Limon, like James Church, seems to know Korean culture intimately — and the language, too. In one passage, Sueno discusses Korean terms for different kinds of rain; some of the words are onomatopoetic. This is niche mystery writing that's abstruse as can be, but altogether engaging.

Richard Lipez writes the Donald Strachey private eye novels under the name Richard Stevenson."

Reviewed by Richard Lipez, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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