James Church is the pseudonym of the author of five detective novels featuring a North Korean policeman, "Inspector O".

Church is identified on the back cover of his novels as "a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia". He grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the United States, and was over sixty years old in 2009.

His "Inspector O" novels have been well-received, being noted by Asia specialists for offering "an unusually nuanced and detailed portrait" of North Korean society. A Korea Society panel praised the first book in the series for its realism and its ability to convey "the suffocating atmosphere of a totalitarian state". A panelist as well as The Independent's and the reviewers at the Washington Post compared the protagonist to Arkady Renko, the Soviet chief inspector in Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park, for providing "a vivid window into a mysterious country"


"On the surface, A Corpse in the Koryo is a crackling good mystery novel, filled with unusual characters involved in a complex plot that keeps you guessing to the end."
---Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post

One of Publishers Weekly Top 100 Books of 2006
One of Booklist's Best Genre Fiction of 2006
One of the Chicago Tribune's best mystery/thrillers of 2006

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 decade's-old kidnappings and murders---and Inspector O 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.

". . . an outstanding crime novel. . . . a not-to-be-missed reading experience. "
---Library Journal (starred)

"Inspector O is completely believable and sympathetic . . . The writing is superb, too . . . richly layered and visually evocative."
---Booklist (starred)

". . . an impressive debut that calls to mind such mystery thrillers as Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park. . . ."
---Publishers Weekly (starred)



“Hidden Moon reads more like a spy novel by a Korean Kafka. Final word: Fascinating.” —Rocky Mountain News

In A Corpse in the Koryo, James Church introduced readers to one of the most unique detectives to appear on page in years---the elusive Inspector O. The stunning mystery was named one of the best mystery/thrillers of 2006 by the Chicago Tribune for its beautifully spare prose and layered descriptions of a terrain Church knows by heart.
And now the Inspector is back.

In Hidden Moon, Inspector O returns from a mission abroad to find his new police commander waiting at his office door. There has been a bank robbery---the first ever in Pyongyang---and the commander demands action, and quickly. But is this urgency for real? Somewhere, someone in the North Korean leadership doesn’t want Inspector O to complete his investigation. And why not? What if the robbery leads to the highest levels of the regime? What if power, not a need for cash, is the real reason behind the heist at the Gold Star Bank?
Given a choice, this isn’t a trail a detective in the Pyongyang police would want to follow all the way to the end, even a trail marked with monogrammed silk stockings. “I’m not sure I know where the bank is,” is O’s laconic observation as the warning bells go off in his head. A Scottish policeman sent to provide security for a visiting British official, a sultry Kazakh bank manager, and a mournful fellow detective all combine to put O in the middle of a spiderweb of conspiracies that becomes more tangled, and dangerous, the more he pulls on the threads.
Once again, as he did in A Corpse in the Koryo, James Church opens a window onto a society where nothing is quite as it seems. The story serves as the reader’s flashlight, illuminating a place that outsiders imagine is always dark and too far away to know. Church’s descriptions of the country and its people are spare and starkly beautiful; the dialogue is lean, every thought weighed and measured before it is spoken. Not a word is wasted, because in this place no one can afford to be misunderstood.

Praise for Hidden Moon:

“The book’s often sharp repartee is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler’s dialogue, while the corrupt North Korean bureaucracy provides an exotic but entirely convincing noir backdrop. . . . Like Marlowe and Spade before him, Inspector O navigates the shadows and, every now and then, finds truth in the half-light.” —*The Wall Street Journal

“[Hidden Moon] . . . is like nothing else I’ve ever read. Church creates an utterly convincing, internally consistent world of the absurd where orders mean the opposite of what they say and paperwork routinely gets routed to oblivion.” —Hallie Ephron, The Boston Globe*

“Church uses his years of intelligence work to excellent advantage here, delivering one duplicitous plot twist after another . . . the author’s affection for the landscape and people of Korea is abundantly evident. [A] stunning conclusion.” —*The Washington Post

"...the real pleasure of Hidden Moon is its conversations, loaded down with layers of secrecy and suspicion that surface words are meaningless in the face of buried intention. Thanks to Church, mystery readers are learning about the minds and hearts of North Koreans--and putting a human face on a world so far away." --The Baltimore Sun

Critical Acclaim for A Corpse in the Koryo:

“A Corpse in the Koryo is a crackling good mystery novel, filled with unusual characters involved in a complex plot that keeps you guessing to the end.” --Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post

*“The best unclassified account of how North Korea works and why it has survived . . . This novel should be required bedtime reading for President Bush and his national security team."

--Peter Hayes, executive director of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development

“A new offering that reminds you of why you started reading mysteries and thrillers in the first place.” --Chicago* Tribune

“What's perhaps most remarkable---and appealing---about A Corpse in the Koryo is the tremendously clever complexity (and deceptions) of the plot. The reader is left to marvel at the author's ability to keep his readers on their intellectual toes for almost three hundred pages. We can only hope that Church has many more novels up his sleeve.” --Tampa** Tribune

“An impressive debut that calls to mind such mystery thrillers as Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park.” --Publishers Weekly* (starred review)

“In Inspector O, the author has crafted a complex character with rough charm to spare, and in eternally static North Korea, he has a setting that will fascinate readers for sequels to come.” --Time magazine (Asia edition)



Church once again does a brilliant job of portraying the dysfunctional, paranoid society of modern North Korea in his third novel to feature Inspector O of the ministry of public security (after 2007's Hidden Moon). When a foreigner O has been assigned to watch turns out to be working for Israeli intelligence, O and his supervisor, Pak, come under the scrutiny of a rival security service. To complicate matters, Pak asks the inspector to investigate the murder of a North Korean diplomat's wife in Pakistan, but O is restricted to merely collecting facts about the dead woman. O's efforts to actually solve the crime lead to dangerous encounters with his country's special weapons program. While the espionage elements compel, the book's main strength, as with its predecessors, derives from the small details that enable the reader to imagine life in North Korea—and from O's struggles to maintain his principles and integrity. (Dec.)
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From Booklist

Starred Review It is brutal winter in North Korea, the first winter after the death of Beloved Leader. His son and successor is grieving, and the country’s survival is threatened by famine and infrastructure collapse. Even in Pyongyang, government employees are hungry and cold. Word of mouth from the countryside and their own experiences cause Inspector O and Chief Inspector Pak to fear that the nation has “fallen apart.” But even as the country lurches toward collapse, foreigners interested in guided missiles stream into North Korea. O is sent to Geneva, ostensibly to ensure that the head of a diplomatic delegation doesn’t defect. There, Swiss, Israeli, and North Korean agents alternately charm and menace him, and O doesn’t even know what his superiors really want of him. The sketch of the most secretive country in the world is as spare and elegant as a Japanese painting. The machinations and motivations of the unseen politicians who pull O’s strings can’t be fathomed. Pak, O’s politically astute superior, often speaks in what sound like Zen koans. O is left to rely on himself and the wisdom of his animist-woodworker grandfather for guidance. Bamboo and Blood, the third in this outstanding series, invites readers to take a step through the looking glass. Thoughtful crime fans will love what they find. --Thomas Gaughan



From James Church, the author of the critically acclaimed Inspector O series, comes The Man with the Baltic Stare--another riveting novel set in the mysterious world of North Korea

Autumn brings unwelcome news to Inspector O: he has been wrenched from retirement and ordered back to Pyongyang for a final assignment. The two Koreas, he learns, are now cooperating—very quietly—to maintain stability in the North. Stability requires that Inspector O lead an investigation into a crime of passion committed by the young man who has been selected as the best possible leader of a transition government. O is instructed to make sure that the case goes away. Remnants of the old regime, foreign powers, rival gangs—all want a piece of the action, and all make it clear that if O values his life, he will not get in their way. O isn’t sure where his loyalties lie, and he doesn’t have much time to figure out whether ‘tis better to be noble or be dead.

From Booklist

Starred Review Inspector O, the wily North Korean police detective, has retired to a mountaintop to shape wood with his grandfather's tools. It's really a kind of exile, though, as O was ordered to the mountain by the government. Even so, he accepts his new life. But when summoned back to Pyongyang, he discovers that the city has changed; food is plentiful, streets are well lit, and new construction is everywhere. And everyone he meets, even a hotel bellhop, seems to know things that O does not. In time, O learns that his new superior is a South Korean, and that a reunification of North and South is planned. O's assignment is to roil the waters of a murder investigation in Macau because the anointed leader of the new Korea is the prime suspect. But at every turn, O is threatened—by his superior, by gangsters from various countries that see opportunity in the reunification, and by a mysterious Chinese colonel. Even O's remarkable Buddhist-Taoist sangfroid is stretched to its limits. Many novelists cheerfully admit that writing fiction allows them to invent everything. Few have as much freedom as Church, because North Korea is so little known. Each Inspector O novel is a strange new trip through the looking glass, and this one is every bit as praiseworthy as its predecessors. --Thomas Gaughan

Review

Praise for The Man with the Baltic Stare:

“The central character is a Pyongyang police officer, the likeable Inspector O, who knows that in North Korea mysteries are never solved, just absorbed into larger mysteries…. Mr. Church keeps his own counsel, so it is not known how he comes by his information, but the scenic details and atmospherics suggest more than a passing acquaintance with the realities of life in North Korea.” --The Economist

“Church once again shows an extraordinary ability to bring that enigmatic country to life, a feat made even more impressive by the wholly plausible near-future setting. Satisfied readers will hail Church as the equal of le Carré.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Each Inspector O novel is a strange new trip through the looking glass, and this one is every bit as praiseworthy as its predecessors." --Booklist, starred review

“While publishers comb the fjords for the next Stieg Larsson, readers devoted to bleak international noir would do better to turn their attention from Northern Europe to Asia. North Korea, to be exact. The hero of The Man With the Baltic Stare, the fourth and perhaps last in a series of excellent crime novels following Inspector O, might not know how to use the cell phone he sometimes has to carry. But like Larsson's heroine, a petite Asperger-ish libertarian in the land of large blondes and big government, the self-contained Inspector O bucks the stereotypes that we associate with his country.” --Slate.com