He's written three books featuring CID officers George Sueno
and Ernie
Bascom -- SLICKY BOYS, JADE LADY BURNING, and BUDDHA'S MONEY.
I've read
the first one, liked it reasonably well, but maybe more for
the fact
that I spent 13 months (minus a few weeks in a different
Asian country)
right smack in the Itaewon section of Seoul back in 1968-69.
The
majority of the ambience is correct. I have a number of
stories about
that experience -- drunken Turks on the UN peacekeepering
force throwing
an offending (equally drunken) black US soldier under a
moving kim-chi
bus; kiting around after curfew with a pair of Brits whose
jeep was
fortunate enough to bear diplomatic license plates; watchin a
group of
slumming officers and their wives/girlfriends get hooked up
with a
well-known (and accepted) Korean transvestite in one of the
bars Limon
mentions, and letting the scenario play out until one of the
(drunken,
slumming) officers started kissing the Korean big time on the
dance
floor. Grinning ear to ear, I whispered over to them, "Um...
you
probably ought to know. That girl isn't exactly a girl." The
look on
their faces was priceless. As they pulled the guy off the
dance floor
and exited the bar in disgust, half the occupants were
laughing so hard
their OB beer bottles rolled off the table and broke.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was a
unique set
of times. Limon does a pretty good job recapturing it.
... Reed
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