Bamboo and Blood

I picked up James Church's novel, Bamboo and Blood, because the cover looked like winter.

This was a strange book. On the back cover (I think) one of the blurbs compared it to film noir and detective stories with hardboiled detectives like Sam Spade. Some of the dialogue reminded me of books like The Maltese Falcon, but honestly it was more akin to watching a David Mamet movie - through frosted glass.

The book is set in North Korea, in winter, although a part of the "action" happens in Geneva, Switzerland. It's a cold and starving story, with not much action. Even though it was odd, I wanted to read it to the end and find out what happened. Each time I thought maybe I was understanding the story, another twist occurred.

One unexpected benefit to reading this book was that it made me very curious about North Korea, so I spent some time looking through atlasses and reading articles on the internet about North and South Korea.

If another "Detective O" story by James Church comes my way, I'm sure I'll read it - especially if it has an interesting cover.