Not a great book.

BUT the most insight I’ve ever gotten into the weird world of North Korea.

Star of the North opens in 1998, when a Korean American teenager is kidnapped from a South Korean beach by North Korean operatives.

Twelve years later, her brilliant twin sister, Jenna, is still searching for her, and ends up on the radar of the CIA. When evidence that her sister may still be alive in North Korea comes to light, Jenna will do anything possible to rescue her–including undertaking a daring mission into the heart of the regime.

… braided together with two other narrative threads.

In one, a North Korean peasant woman finds a forbidden international aid balloon and uses the valuables inside to launch a dangerously lucrative black-market business.

In the other, a high-ranking North Korean official discovers, to his horror, that he may be descended from a traitor, a fact that could mean his death if it is revealed. …

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• Memory Man (2015)
• The Last Mile (2016)
• The Fix (2017)
• The Fallen (2018)
• Redemption (2019)

The 5th book in the series was best so far, for me.

Amos Decker is the obese genius with perfect memory.

In this one, our hero returns ‘home‘ to Burlington, Ohio, where his wife, Cassie, daughter, Molly and brother in law, Johnny, were killed.

He is there to commemorate what would have been Molly’s 14th birthday.

Unexpectedly, the first killer Decker ever put behind bars turns up. Released from prison because of terminal cancer.

It’s his dying wish that Decker clear his name.

Fifty Grand was the title of an Ernest Hemmingway short story.

In this Fifty Grand, Mercado, the heroine, is a hot-shot Cuban cop who has fluked a visa to Mexico City so that she can travel from there, via a coyote road, to the Colorado town of Fairview.

Mercado is on a mission to avenge her father’s death in a hit-and-run accident; also to find evidence that he didn’t mean to abandon her on the eve of her all-important 15th birthday.

She poses as an illegal worker at an upscale Ski Resort. Something like Telluride.

McKinty writes no bad books.

But I enjoyed this stand alone book least of those I’ve read.

“B” Is for Burglar is the second novel in Sue Grafton‘s “Alphabet” series of mystery novels and features Kinsey Millhone, a private eye based in Santa Teresa, California.

Kinsey is hired by Beverly Danziger to locate her missing sister, Elaine Boldt.

Like the first book, it’s an easy, breezy read. Entertaining. And actually includes more twist and turns than I would have expected.

Recommended.

Excellent and entertaining. Fascinating and original plot. 2005.

Brilliant cop from northern Ireland gets hooked on Heroin. His life in ruins.

Denver, Colorado: a pretty, clever young girl working for an environmental charity, Victoria Patawasti is sleeping peacefully, unaware that she has barely an hour to live.

As her killer slips into her apartment and draws a revolver in the darkness, Alex Lawson wakes up in Belfast. Twenty-four, sickly, and struggling to kick his heroin habit after a disastrous six-month stint in the drug squad of the Northern Ireland police force, Alex badly needs a chance to get back on track.

Victoria was his high school love, and when he finds out she has been murdered, he volunteers to help Victoria’s family hunt down the killer.

But once in Colorado, Alex has a fight on his hands: wanted by both the Colorado cops and the Ulster police, and uncovering corruption at the highest levels of government, he can solve the case only if he manages to stay alive.

All the author’s books are excellent. He’s known for his Sean Duffy series.

This book runs very much in parallel with Sean Duffy. McKinty is trying to have Alex Lawson appear in a Duffy novel.

I really like the setting of this 2020 book – Spokane in the early 1900s.

The author is from Spokane.

Homeless workers, railway tramps and union organizers.

A mix of real and fictional characters makes it more entertaining.

Rye Dolan and his older brother, Gig. Orphaned and penniless. Trying to make their way.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a teenage, pregnant firebrand western Joan of Arc. She’s based on an actual historical character.  A founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women’s rights, birth control, and women’s suffrage.

Ursula the Great, a striptease artist who sings in a cage with a cougar.

The bad guys: mine owners, violent police, unsympathetic judges and conservative newspaper editors.

It’s not all that well written. But the story does keep moving.