Jade Lady Burning by
Martin Limon
pbk out January 98
(Serpent's Tail)
at £7.99
Downtown Seoul, South Korea. There are not too many crime novels set in Korea, so that alone is one up to Mr Limón. The badly burned body of a young prostitute is found in Itaewon, a district mainly devoted to the less elevated desires of the American Eighth Army. The body has been butchered in a particularly grisly fashion, one that Sergeant George Sueño, one of the two investigating officers sent by the Army to nail the culprit and head off any political backlash, recognises as particularly offensive to Koreans. Actually it is particularly offensive to most people (though not dwelt on) but Korean mores are a key point in this never less than fascinating book.
The casually sexist Sueño (it is the mid-70’s) is an uncommonly interesting character. Of Mexican origin, once a foster child and a high school drop-out, he ‘gets enthusiastic about books and things’ but he knows enough about himself to know that he is no better than the bar-girls he both investigates and frequents. He knows Korea. And he loves truth. So when the investigation he conducts with his partner the monosyllabic Vietnam veteran Ernie Bascom heads off in some unanticipated directions amongst both Army and Korean hierarchies, he’s ready to see it through to its unexpected and personally risky end.
Seduced by a misleading review from the New York Times (faithfully reproduced here) I first read Jade Lady Burning in its (New York 1992) Soho Press version a few years back. It is not ‘searing in its intensity’; nor does it achieve ‘the stature of literature’ (whatever that may mean). Limón tells his story in the matter-of-fact, though effective manner, entirely consistent with both his own background as an Eighth Army veteran (this is his first novel), and that of the narrator, the complex Sueño. The prose is straightforward, the plot is good, even though a knowledge of Korean mores, a little unfairly, is key to the solution of the mystery. His weakest point is dialogue, which is often bland. But Limón more than compensates with his quietly moving, sympathetic evocation of life as lived by women on the lower rungs of the Korean economic ladder.
Jade Lady Burning by
Martin Limon