A Corpse in the Koryo — James Church

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 0 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.

Author James Church weaves a story with beautifully spare prose and layered descriptions of a country and a people he knows by heart after decades as an intelligence officer.