The Atrium

In part one of my post on mystery fiction I told you about GRPL's newest selection of books with foreign settings. Each story is set on a different continent. I decided to save the longest list for last. These books all have Asian settings.

Eye of Jade
by Diane Wei Liang
Setting: China

Welcome to the world of Mei Wang, Beijing's first successful female detective (a career choice that is illegal in China). Wang has been hired to find a valuable Han dynasty jade seal that was looted from the Luoyang Museum during the Cultural Revolution, and is currently for sale on the black market. This is the first novel in what looks like a promising series.

Hidden Moon
by James Church
Setting: North Korea

This is the second Inspector O novel and it begins with a bank heist and snowballs into a conspiracy. I read the first book, A Corpse in the Koryo, and thought the author did an excellent job creating a sense of place. And while I've never been to North Korea, the characters and settings in the book were exactly how I imagined them to be from news reports I've read and photos I've seen.

Prayer of the Dragon
by Eliot Pattison
Setting: Tibet

Take two mutilated corpses, add one comatose Navajo stranger, stir in a Beijing investigator with two sidekick sleuthing monks, and you have a not-so-typical mystery. This is the fifth Investigator Shan novel, and the author has won the Edgar (the Oscar among mystery authors) for previous work.

Red Mandarin Dress
by Qiu Xiaolong
Setting: China

Shanghai is the setting for China's first serial killer in this fifth Inspector Chen novel in which the killer wraps his victims in a symbol of greed and decadence.

Tokyo Year Zero
by David Peace
Setting: Japan

As the bodies of young women turn up in post-WWII Tokyo, Inspector Minami must navigate among the bomb-ravaged city, its starving citizens, and not-so-kind occupiers to find the murderer. This is British author Peace's first mystery set in Japan.

The Wandering Ghost
by Martin Limon
Setting: South Korea

U.S. military investigative team George Sueno and Ernie Brascom have their work cut out for them in this mystery set in the Korean demilitarized zone. The inspectors must find a missing female MP who would have testified against two GIs involved in the accidental death of a Korean girl. This is the fifth book in a series.