The Joy Brigade by Martin Limón

First Line: Yellow floodlights loomed out of thick fog.

It's the early 1970s in South Korea. US military police officer George Sueño is being sent on a very important mission. Kim Il-Sung intends to reunite North and South Korea before he hands over control to his son. This means that North Korean forces are planning to cross the DMZ and overpower the South Korean government. Sueño's mission is to prevent this by sneaking into North Korea to obtain an ancient map that details a network of secret tunnels that runs beneath the DMZ. To do this, he must go undercover into the heart of Communist North Korea.

His mission-- almost impossible to begin with-- is further complicated due to his skepticism and to the fact that the keeper of the map is Doc Yong, a former lover who had to flee South Korea the year before. The plan rapidly begins to unravel. Rhee Mi-Sook, a leader of the North Korean secret police, is hot on Sueño's trail, and it's all his contact, Hero Kang, can do to keep them one step ahead. Things are looking bleak indeed when Sueño is captured. Is he going to survive long enough to find out what a group of women called the Joy Brigade has to do with this mission?

Limón is an expert angler because he hooked me immediately. There's no setting the scene or long explanations of what's going on. Sueño has started out on the mission on the first page, and he's scared to death. This character is no Superman. He's a normal guy who gets scared, doesn't like pain, and prefers not to take unnecessary risks. However, he's in the military, so he has to follow orders. At least he has an incentive named Doc Yong to keep him going-- not that he has much of an alternative since things begin to go wrong very quickly.

This author portrays Koreans with great sensitivity. On the run and hiding in the rural areas of a hostile country, Sueño finds no difference between the Koreans of the North and those of the South. The real difference lies in how the people of the North have been systematically brutalized by the government that's supposed to have their best interests at heart. Reading these books set in the 1970s will help any reader to understand the North Korea of today.

More than once Sueño has to place his trust in people who are his sworn enemies. More than once he has to put himself in danger in order to do what's right. Rhee Mi-Sook, the beautiful North Korean secret police officer who's tracking him down, is a complex and compelling character. Her government has twisted her into a brilliant sociopath, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of her in future books.

Is there torture and sex in this book? Yes, but none of it is graphic or gratuitous. Through it all Sueño must keep focused on his objective. He doesn't dwell on what happens. It's happened, and he must keep on going. Since he's the one telling the story and he doesn't want to dwell on pain or humiliation, we don't get buried in the details. Since I'm not a fan of pain or humiliation myself, my imagination worked just fine with what it was given, and I appreciated Limón's light and controlled touch.

I value this series for its neatly plotted action and intriguing mysteries. I value it for its portrayal of a wonderful people and their culture. But more than that, I value these books for the characters and their relationships with each other. George Sueño and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch would get along just fine because the two of them both believe "Everyone counts, or nobody counts."

The Joy Brigade by Martin Limón

ISBN: 9781616951481

Soho Crime  ©2012

Hardcover,  279 pages

Thriller, #8 George Sueño

Rating: A

Source: Publisher

Jade Lady Burning by Martin Limón

Title: Jade Lady Burning
Author: Martin Limón
ISBN: 9781569470206
Publisher: Soho Crime, 2003 (Originally published 1992.)
Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Genre: Police Procedural, #1 Sueño & Bascom mystery
Rating: A-
Source: Purchased at The Poisoned Pen.

First Line: Ernie and I finished the black-market case in Pusan, did a little celebrating, and caught the Blue Line night train back to Seoul.

It's not often that you'll see me reading books set in Asia during the Vietnam War era whose main characters are young men more concerned with having fun in the red light district than anything else. But in my quest to be a more complete armchair traveler, I've been branching out. I'd heard good things about Martin Limón's series from trusted sources, and I had the vague notion that these books were about more than two young men spending all their money on wine, women and song in Seoul. I was right.

The bizarre murder of a young Korean prostitute has the Eighth Army command spluttering and twitching. Although the investigation should have been left to the Korean police, the young woman was known to have many clients amongst the American servicemen stationed in and around Seoul. The Korean media would have a field day with this American angle, so the Eighth Army's criminal investigation division takes charge. Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom are put in charge of finding out who murdered the young woman.

Their investigation leads them to Itaewon, the section of Seoul known for alcohol, music and prostitution. It is a neighborhood with which the two are very familiar. Sueño is Hispanic, from East LA. He appreciates the housing, the regular meals, and the pay of Army life. He speaks some Korean and is often told that he's "too soft" on the natives. This is probably because he sees the country differently from most:

I loved Korea. It was a whole new world of different tastes and smells, and a different, more intense way of looking at life. People here didn't take eating and breathing for granted. They were fought for.

He also sees his job differently from most. He doesn't want to focus solely on black market cases, and "phone in" his results. He truly cares:

I owed something to Miss Pak Ok-suk and Mr. Watkins. Not because they were friends or relatives but just because they had been assigned to me: my responsibility. I'd be damned if I'd take the easy route and not do my best for them.

There's a lot to like about Sergeant George Sueño. On the other hand, I felt that his partner, Ernie Bascom, was greatly under-utilized almost to the point of being a non-entity. There was just enough information given about him to lead me to believe I might be looking at a prime crime fiction psychotic.

The pace of the book seemed very leisurely most of the time, but I didn't really mind because Limón had immersed me in a completely alien atmosphere, and I wanted to check everything out slowly. As the two investigators strolled through bars asking questions and sometimes accepting propositions from the prostitutes they talked to, I wasn't concerned with their morals. They were no different than tens of thousands of other young men finding themselves with money in their pockets and light years away from home.

What did concern me was the clipped, almost military flow of the language that transported me into the midst of an absorbing mystery in unfamiliar country-- a mystery populated with interesting people, in particular Sergeant George Sueño. I definitely want to continue with this series, one reason being that I have to find out if I'm right about Ernie Bascom!

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