Sergeants Sueño and Bascom

Early one rainy morning, the head of the US Eighth Army Claims Office in Seoul, South Korea, is brutally murdered by a Korean man in a trench coat carrying a small iron sickle hidden in his sleeve. The attack was a complete surprise, carefully planned and clinically executed. How did this unidentified Korean civilian get into the tightly controlled base? And why attack the claims officer? Is there an unsettled grudge, a claim of damages that was rejected by the Army? Against orders, CID agents Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom start investigating. Somehow, each person they speak to has not yet been interviewed. The Eighth Army isn't great at solving cases, but they aren't that bad either. As George and Ernie continue their search, they begin to suspect that not everyone wants the case solved.

The tenth book in the critically acclaimed Ernie Bascom and George SueNo series set in South Korea in the 1970s. South Korea, 1974: A young Korean woman is found strangled to death on the frozen banks of the Sonyu River with only a carefully calligraphed poem on her person. Sergeants George SueNo and Ernie Bascom, agents in the US 8th Army CID, are called in by the formidable KNP detective Gil Kwon-up to investigate. As they begin to investigate, George and Ernie come into direct contact with the US Army's 2nd Infantry Division, a disciplined and often brutal force that won't stand for outside officers questioning its men. But George and Ernie aren't exactly known for going out of their way to avoid stepping on US Army toes, and this is no exception. A pair of likable protagonists who often discover and expose crime within their own ranks. A rarity in fiction that looks closely at daily life in 1970s South Korea, with American troops stationed there in the wake of the war.

Three American GIs have gone missing in different South Korean cities. Sergeants George Sueno and Ernie Bascom, agents for the Army CID, link the disappearances to a woman locally rumored to be a gumiho, a legendary nine-thousand-tailed fox disguised as a woman. George suspects that the woman is no mythical creature, but a wealthy kidnapper who's good at covering her tracks. Scrambling to stay one step ahead of a psychotic mastermind, George realizes he will have to risk his life to discover the whereabouts of his fellow countrymen.

The Korean Demilitarized Zone, 1970s: A battered corpse is found a few feet north of the line dividing North and South Korea. When 8th Army CID Agents George Sueno and Ernie Bascom are ordered by superiors to pull the body to South Korean side, they have no idea of the international conflict the action will spark. Before war breaks out, they must discover who killed Corporal Noh Jong-bae, a young Korean civilian augmented to the US Army who had few enemies. But the murderer could be from either side of the DMZ, and if it turns out to be North Korea, how can two US military agents interrogate witnesses? What George and Ernie discover gets them pulled off the case, but they continue to look into Corporal Noh's death against orders, fearing they've put the wrong man behind bars.

US Army CID agents George Sueno and Ernie Bascom become entangled with a push tabloid reporter as they investigate a series of violent bank robberies throughout South Korea. South Korea, 1970s: A rash of armed robberies at local Korean banks doesn't concern the American military-until a fatality occurs, and proof surfaces that US soldiers are behind the crimes. The case has been assigned to CID Agents Jake Burrows and Felix Slabem, but they certainly won't do anything that might make 8th United States Army look bad. So Sergeants George Sueno and Ernie Bascom have decided to step in and investigate the robberies-and murder-themselves. George and Ernie have their own problems to worry about, namely one Katie Byrd Worthington, a pesky reporter for the Overseas Observer-an unsanctioned English-language tabloid that has found strong roots in South Korea. Katie has published a story that implicates Army higher-ups in both sex trafficking and treason, and the pressure is on for the CID to disprove her claims. But what if they aren't false? As George and Ernie dig deeper into the case, they find themselves the targets of a very unflattering publicity campaign, but perhaps also something much more dangerous.

Tasked with covering up a tabloid report about high-ranking officers, US Army CID Agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom discover a dark web of systemic issues that have potentially fatal consequences. South Korea, 1970s: Sergeant First Class Cecil B. Harvey, a senior NCO in charge of 8th Army's classified documents, has long been a friend (willing or unwilling) to Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom. So, when he goes missing with a top-secret document that even a glance at could get an officer court-martialed, Sueño and Bascom take it upon themselves to find him. Meanwhile, Overseas Observer reporter Katie Byrd Worthington is back to make life difficult for top Army brass. When she lands in a Korean jail cell, Sueño and Bascom are sent to get her out, and negotiate against the publication of an incriminating story about the mistreatment of women in the military that could land important officials in hot water.

Twenty years ago Martin Limón published his first mystery featuring Sergeant George Sueño, a young Mexican American army detective stationed on the US Eighth Army base in South Korea in the early 1970s, the heart of the Cold War. George and his investigating partner, the rowdy and short-fused Sergeant Ernie Bascom, are assigned cases in which the Eighth Army has come into conflict with local Korean law enforcement-often incidents in which American soldiers, who are not known for being on their best behavior in their Asian host country, have committed a crime. Sueño's job is partially to solve crimes but mostly to cover top brass' backside and make sure the US Army doesn't look bad. Thoughtful, observant George, who is conversant in Korean, constantly faces difficult choices about whether to follow his orders or his conscience. After eight critically acclaimed novels comes this collection of Limón's award-winning short stories featuring sergeants Sueño and Bascom. The stories have been published over the last twenty years in a variety of magazines, mostly in Alfred Hitchcock, but have never before been available in book form. This volume is sure to attract both critical attention and appeal to collectors and is a must-have for literary mystery readers.