The Nine-Tailed Fox

Starred review from August 21, 2017
The disappearance of three American soldiers serving in 1970s South Korea kick-starts Limón’s outstanding 12th mystery featuring U.S. Army CID agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom (after 2016’s Ping Pong Heart). The missing men were all reliable, hadn’t shown any signs of stress, and didn’t have access to classified information that would have made them appealing targets for North Korean intelligence. Despite the urgency of the assignment to find the men, Sueño and Bascom run into bureaucratic obstacles and also find themselves diverted from pursuing clues to dealing with an unauthorized refrigerator delivery—an absurdity that will remind readers of the TV series M.A.S.H. They eventually get a promising lead, but it’s one that they hesitate to share with their superiors—that the case may be connected with the myth of the gumiho, a fox transformed into a shape-shifting lustful woman by the gods. Clever plotting and superior characterizations lift this suspenseful, atmospheric installment. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyons Literary.

September 15, 2017
In 1974, army CID agents Sueno and Bascom (Ping Pong Heart, 2016) are assigned by the 8th Army chief of staff to investigate the disappearances of three enlisted men from three different U.S. bases in Korea. Absent a war, soldiers simply don't disappear. The Korean government is equally alarmed. Korea needs U.S. military mightand dollarsto sustain itself. In Pusan, they learn that one of the soldiers had assaulted a young Korean woman he impregnated and that he was last seen in the company of an expensively dressed older woman. Later, they learn of the gumiho, a mythical nine-tailed fox that survived for a thousand years and was permitted to turn into a woman. Joined by the formidable Mr. Kill of the Korean National Police, Sueno and Bascom soon find themselves menaced by the Chinese Sea Dragon Triad and inadvertently caught up in a bureaucratic war between officers' wives over the nascent Korean women's movement. As always, Limon brews a fine mix of Cold War world affairs, army life, and Korean society and culture.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)