GI Confidential

Starred review from August 19, 2019
A bank robbery, apparently by three American soldiers, kick-starts Limón’s stellar 14th mystery set in 1970s South Korea (after 2018’s The Line). Instead of assigning U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom to look into the case, the brass selects two brownnosers who can be trusted not to vigorously pursue the truth. Proof that Americans were involved could imperil support for ongoing military and financial aid to South Korea, viewed as an essential bulwark against Communist expansion in Asia. After a second bank is hit and one of its employees killed, Sueño and Bascom investigate, but they’re sidetracked when their superior gives precedence to a second sensitive inquiry. Gen. Abner Crabtree, in charge of all army divisions stationed along the demilitarized zone, is reported to have arranged for prostitutes to be transported to the DMZ for a high-level meeting involving South Korean generals. Limón does his usual outstanding job of combining clever plotting and period detail with sympathetic, flawed leads. This series shows no sign of losing momentum. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyons Literary.

September 1, 2019
In 1970s South Korea, a pair of righteous U.S. military cops team up with a crusading reporter to bust a prostitution ring and solve a string of bank robberies. A trio of daring American soldiers is targeting South Korean banks. The aptly nicknamed Sgt. Strange gets two-fisted Criminal Investigation Division agents Ernie Bascom and George Sueño (Line, 2018, etc.) interested in the case, which the Army's higher-ups seem to want to sweep under the rug. In short order, they learn that the two assigned agents, a pair of brown-nosers named Burrows and Slabem, are engaged in a coverup to keep suspicion from falling on the Americans. This raises the righteous ire of Sueño, who narrates in a punchy first person. When the next robbery leaves a teller dead, Bascom and Sueño take over the investigation. Details of the robberies appear in the local Overseas Observer, amping up the pressure to solve the case. So before they do anything else, Bascom and Sueño decide to look for Katie Byrd Worthington, the dogged reporter who broke the story. She eludes them for a while, but they finally pin her down at the Dragon Goddess Tea House. Fearing arrest and deportation, she displays an incriminating picture of the duo as protection. Once they gain her trust, she tells them about a prostitution ring exploiting South Korean girls and run by a powerful American general. Even as they agree to help her interrogate him, Sueño wonders if he'll be able to marry Yong In-Ja, the Korean "business girl" with whom he has fallen in love. Sueño and Bascom's lively 14th investigation is long on action, gritty dialogue, and period authenticity.

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October 15, 2019
George Sue�o and Ernie Bascom, the U.S. Army MPs who follow a case wherever it leads, are angering the brass again, in this fourteenth episode in the acclaimed series set in South Korea. It's the mid-1970s, and the Americans could be starting to wear out their welcome in South Korea, especially if, as it appears, a rash of bank robberies in Seoul are the work of U.S. soldiers. The army wants to sweep the robberies under its ample bureaucratic rug, but Sue�o and Bascom keep digging. Compounding the situation, the pair can't seem to shake a persistent tabloid reporter, Katie Byrd Worthington, who's on the trail of a story implicating American officers in sex trafficking and possible treason; Katie wants the MPs' help, and, despite their best efforts to resist, they find themselves trapped into complying with the intrepid journalist's request. Like punky reporter Susan Ward in Chelsea Cain's Archie Sheridan and Gretchen Lowell novels, Katie Byrd lights up every scene she's in, a perfect foil for our hard-slogging MPs. Remarkably, Lim�n always finds ways to keep the energy high in this long-running and consistently rich series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)