Bamboo and Blood
The Inspector O Novels, Book 3
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Narrated by:
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Feodor Chin
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By:
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James Church
About this listen
The critically acclaimed A Corpse in the Koryo brought readers into the enigmatic workings of North Korean intelligence with the introduction of a new kind of detective—the mysterious Inspector O. In the follow-up, Hidden Moon, O threaded his way through the minefield of North Korean ministries into a larger conspiracy he was never supposed to touch.
Now the inspector returns.
In the winter of 1997, trying to stay alive during a famine that has devastated much of North Korea, Inspector O is ordered to play host to an Israeli agent who appears in Pyongyang. When the wife of a North Korean diplomat in Pakistan dies under suspicious circumstances, O is told to investigate—but with a curious proviso: Don’t look too closely at the details, and stay away from the question of missiles. O knows he can’t avoid uncovering what he is supposed to ignore on a trail that leads him from the dark, chilly rooms of Pyongyang to an abandoned secret facility deep in the countryside, guarded by a lonely general, and from the streets of New York to a bench beneath a horse chestnut tree on the shores of Lake Geneva, where the Inspector discovers he is up to his ears in missiles—and worse. Stalked by the past and wary of the future, O is convinced there is no one he can trust and no one he can’t suspect. Swiss intelligence wants him out of the country; someone else wants him dead.
Once again, James Church’s spare, lyrical prose guides listeners through an unfamiliar landscape of whispered words and shadows, a world wrapped in a level of mystery and complexity that few outsiders have experienced. With Inspector O, noir has a new home in North Korea, and James Church holds the keys.
©2008 James Church (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a young girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker becomes obsessed with finding her. Accustomed to dull chores in a childless household and hosting her husband’s wearisome business clients for dinner, Sarah suddenly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew, as her investigation reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead.
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A bit of a slog....
- By rhl60 on 01-26-24
By: Mick Herron
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Rosa
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Rabb
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In the last days of the First World War, socialist revolution swept across Germany, sending Kaiser Wilhelm into exile and transforming Berlin into a battleground. But for Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner and his young assistant, Hans Fichte, the revolution is a mere inconvenience. Four women from the slums of Berlin have turned up dead, all with identical markings etched into their backs, and Hoffner and Fichte have spent the better part of six weeks trying to crack the bizarre case.
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Imaginative Historical Thriller
- By Buzz on 03-12-11
By: Jonathan Rabb
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A Dangerous Road
- Smokey Dalton, Book 1
- By: Kris Nelscott
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Private Investigator Smokey Dalton works for Memphis, Tennessee’s black community. He has almost no interaction with the white hierarchy, even though they exist only blocks away. So he’s surprised the day a white woman walks into his Beale Street office. Laura Hathaway has sought him out because he’s a beneficiary in her mother’s will, and Laura wants to know why. So does Smokey. He’s never heard of the Hathaways, but his search will take him on a journey that will change everything he’s ever known.
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Interesting Slice of US History...but Ponderous
- By Rancher on 12-18-13
By: Kris Nelscott
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The Letter Writer
- A Novel
- By: Dan Fesperman
- Narrated by: David Bendena
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Who exactly is Danziger? He's a writer of letters for illiterate immigrants on Manhattan's Lower East Side - "a steadfast practitioner of concealing and forgetting" for his clients, and perhaps for himself: He hints at a much worldlier past. What and whoever he really is or has been, he has a seemingly boundless knowledge of the city and its denizens. And he knows much more than the mere identity of the floating corpse.
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Mobsters and Cops, NYC, 1942
- By RueRue on 07-22-16
By: Dan Fesperman
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The Man with a Load of Mischief
- A Richard Jury Novel, Book 1
- By: Martha Grimes
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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At the Man with a Load of Mischief, they found the dead body stuck in a keg of beer. At the Jack and Hammer, another body was stuck out on the beam of the pub’s sign, replacing the mechanical man who kept the time. Two pubs. Two murders. One Scotland Yard inspector called in to help. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Jury arrives in Long Piddleton and finds everyone in the postcard village looking outside of town for the killer - except for one Melrose Plant....
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Love this series, but FYI
- By DCinMI on 03-29-14
By: Martha Grimes
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Loot
- By: Aaron Elkins
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In April 1945, The Nazis, reeling and near defeat, frantically work to hide the huge store of art treasures that Hitler has looted from Europe. Truck convoys loaded with the cultural wealth of the Western world pour in an unending stream into the compound of the vast Altaussee salt mine high in the Austrian Alps. But with the Allies closing in, the vaunted efficiency of the Nazis has broken down. At Altaussee, all is tumult and confusion.
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This book was a wonderful example of why I normally avoid histfiction: too good, too gripping! Now I need to read Monuments Men!
- By Logophile on 08-01-24
By: Aaron Elkins
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A Deceptive Clarity
- A Chris Norgren Mystery
- By: Aaron Elkins
- Narrated by: Corey Snow
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Chris Norgren, museum curator and Renaissance art expert, heads to Berlin to assist in mounting a sensational exhibit: The Plundered Past - twenty priceless Old Masters looted by the Nazis, thought for decades to be lost forever, and only recently rediscovered. But things quickly get out of hand when Chris's patrician, fastidious boss, after smelling a forgery in the lot, turns up dead the very next day - on the steps of a dismal Frankfurt brothel, of all places.
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How great this art!
- By Mary B. Wheeler on 11-20-16
By: Aaron Elkins
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The Merlot Murders
- A Wine Country Mystery
- By: Ellen Crosby
- Narrated by: P. J. Davis-Oran
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Lucie Montgomery's semi-estranged brother, Eli, calls her in France to tell her that their father, Leland, has been killed in a hunting accident on the family's 500-acre Virginia vineyard. But the vineyard is now shabby and run-down and her siblings want to sell it. Then Lucie's godfather tells her Leland's death was no accident. With her greedy brother, hell-raising sister, and a seemingly cut-rate vintner hired by Leland just before he died, all the suspects are disturbingly close to home.
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Wine & history w/ your mystery!
- By Cracker1951 on 03-27-08
By: Ellen Crosby
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Ghost Station
- By: Dan Wells
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Original Recording
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Ghost Station is a tense thriller about espionage, cryptography, and paranoia, set in the earliest days of the Berlin Wall. Can Reed trust Longshore? His boss? His lover? Can he find the truth behind the lies - or will Berlin become ground zero for a world-ending war?
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Ghost Station pulls you in from the beginning
- By Kurt Petrey on 11-08-19
By: Dan Wells
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Alaska Wild: Books 1-3
- By: Paige Shelton
- Narrated by: Suzie Althens
- Length: 27 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The wilds are unforgiving, but Beth Rivers has already faced worse. Join her as she uncovers Alaska's mysteries and escapes into the wilderness in the first three books of the Alaska Wild series: Thin Ice, Cold Wind, and Dark Night.
By: Paige Shelton
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Winter in Madrid
- By: C. J. Sansom
- Narrated by: Gordon Gordon
- Length: 21 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Winter in Madrid is set just after the bloody Spanish Civil War, with World War II looming over Europe. Reluctantly, Harry Brett looks for an old schoolmate who's become a person of interest for British intelligence.
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realistic characters in historical context
- By Annie on 10-04-09
By: C. J. Sansom
What listeners say about Bamboo and Blood
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- itinerant
- 04-22-18
Chandler-esque
This book was very good, on the line-by-line level: it reads like it was written by Chandler, and it's read by someone who knows how to interpret that, yet with an Asian flair. The story, though . . . I never really figured out what this book was actually about. Chandler famously had the McGuffin . . . this book seems more like the travelogue of a North Korean who similarly never really knows what's going on. It's a very interesting and well-told and amusing travelogue, with all kinds of vague skulduggery going on, but really . . . what is at stake?
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- Darwin8u
- 05-21-13
Hard-Boiled, Koryŏ Noir Flop
James Church's third Inspector O novel just doesn't quite deliver the goods. It starts out fine, blending hard-boiled noir (Hammett/Chandler) with international political thriller (le Carré/Steinhauer) mixed with a bit/dash of Hemingway.
Where Hemingway was fixated on food, wine and women, Church fixates on lack of food, the cold and wood. It all works, if you can ignore the sloppy pacing that creeps into the end of the novel. The novel's first 3/4 seems fine, not exceptional, but interesting and not too overdone, but with about 70 pages left it seems like Church loses all interest in the project and decides it will take entirely too much time and work to weave the various narrative threads back, so he just leaves them, or cuts them off completely.
The end of the novel reminded me of the butchered Geneva plane trees that Inspector O was so upset by. It is hard to love something that hasn't been allowed to freely grow to its potential. As Inspector O says of the plane trees, "They might wish they were dead. No, they have been mangled. Their tops have been hacked off. They are maimed."
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15 people found this helpful