The Iron Sickle

Starred review from June 30, 2014
Limón brilliantly combines a procedural with a harrowing portrayal of the wounds of war in his ninth novel featuring U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom (after 2012’s The Joy Brigade). Sueño and Bascom, who are serving in South Korea in the 1970s, have developed a reputation for pursuing the truth without regard for the consequences. They must once again balance integrity with professional (and personal) survival in the case of a Korean man, who entered the Seoul compound that houses the office responsible for claims for reparations, compensation, and damages against units attached to United States Forces Korea and slit the throat of its civilian head, C. Winston Barretsford, with a sickle. Sueño’s fluency in Korean gives him an advantage in tracking the killer, even as his superiors try to divert the pair with other duties. The murderer, who left a bizarre totem, including wire and a dead rat, strikes again, upping the pressure on the partners to solve the case. The secret at the heart of the crimes is truly chilling, and Limón’s nuanced characters enhance a fast-paced, carefully crafted plot. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyons Literary.

August 1, 2014
The peacetime army offers a rich setting for crime fictionlife in a legendarily inflexible bureaucracyand Limn has exploited it superbly in his long-running series starring Sergeants George Sueo and Ernie Bascom, which takes place in Korea in the 1970s. This time the two CID officers face an unusually complex case. The head of the 8th Army Claims Office in Seoul, a unit that handles charges of wrongdoing by the army against Korean citizens, has been brutally murdered by an assailant wielding a lethal iron sickle. As Sueo and Bascom attempt to investigate, it quickly becomes clear that rival factions of the local police, as well as army higher-ups, want this one to be solved on their terms. That doesn't wash with the determinedly individualistic sergeants, who, like Martin Cruz Smith's Russian investigator Arkady Renko, also battling an inflexible bureaucracy, care more about the case at hand than the politics surrounding it. Limn builds suspense expertly while gradually shedding light on the atrocity behind the murder. This is a fine, character-driven tale, drenched in fascinating Korean War history and reflecting the author's firsthand knowledge of army life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)