Star of the North: D.B. John

This is a thriller that mostly takes place in North Korea. The story revolves around a Korean American woman whose sister went missing when she was spending her gap year in South Korea. Twelve years after her twin sister's disappearance, Jenna Williams is an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and specializes in the North Korean regime. She is recruited by the CIA, where she is offered the possibility of finding out what really happened to her sister. Two other featured characters are a highly placed official in North Korea who goes to the US for a diplomatic mission, and an older peasant woman who is living and barely surviving in a North Korean penal colony. 

When I purchased this book, I thought it was spy fiction, although I may have been most interested because it was set in North Korea. Booklist does categorize it under Spy/Espionage, but on Goodreads that category was not used. The book could qualify as related to spy fiction; the CIA is definitely involved. Jenna is training as a CIA operative. But the book is closer to a political thriller. As with any thriller, there are events and outcomes that seem unrealistic. However, for the most part I was convinced everything that happened in the book could have happened.

There are no unrealistic happy endings, and things were not all tied up at the end... but the story ended with an optimistic outlook for the future, in some ways. 

The author did a lot of research for this book. At the end there is an Author's Note that provides background for a lot of events that were covered in the novel. 

Star of the North is an amazing book. The characters are all very well done, and it was a compelling read. I learned so much about North Korea from this book, and it left me wanting to know more about that country and its history, although I imagine that any reading on that subject will be mostly depressing. 

Please check out these resources: Two reviews, one at Staircase Wit and one at Mrs. Peabody Investigates. And an extract at Dead Good Books.

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Publisher:  Crown, 2018
Length:      400 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Setting:      North Korea, US
Genre:       Political Thriller
Source:      On my TBR since 2018.

The Manchurian Candidate: Richard Condon

The Manchurian Candidate focuses on two characters. Raymond Shaw returns from the Korean War a hero, awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. His former commanding officer, Ben Marco, also returns from the conflict, and visits with Raymond in his apartment for two weeks. During that visit, he begins to experience nightmares and vague memories that he cannot explain.

Raymond Shaw has never been likable. He is haughty, self-centered, and doesn't have friends. Even now as a war hero, he is not likable but he is well-known and connected. He is the stepson of a influential and unprincipled senator, Johnny Iselin. Raymond hates his stepfather and has a very unhappy, uncomfortable relationship with his mother, who is only interested in using him to elevate her husband to higher office. The portraits that Condon paints of the senator and Raymond's mother are very convincing and very scary.

Ben Marco is an intelligence officer, and he knows that there is something wrong with his memory of the events that led to Raymond's medal. Even Raymond has that feeling, that his memories are not real. But neither is aware that they have been brainwashed or that Raymond is a sleeper agent, who can be triggered to carry out any crime that his handlers desire. (This is revealed early in the novel.)

The Manchurian Candidate is a political thriller about a very serious subject, but its black humor provides relief from the tension. The narrative style is not smooth, but the story is entertaining.  In many cases, Condon picks up on a subject, like the Medal of Honor and what it means, and goes off on an essay on that subject. I did not mind those lengthy asides at all. The story is very much of its time, but it also reminds of the political situations we live with now.

This is another book, like The Big Sleep, where my reaction was greatly affected by having seen the 1962 movie adaptation first, and having viewed it many times. The book might have been more confusing to me if I had not experienced the movie first; the story is very complex. As it was, because the 1962 movie and the book are so closely aligned, it was like visiting an old friend but getting more of the story than I had heard before. The book does give the reader more background on both the events and the setting, and the characters are more fleshed out.

The adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate directed by John Frankenheimer is a Cold War thriller filmed in black and white. As mentioned before, it adheres to the events of the novel very closely. This and Seven Days in May, also directed by Frankenheimer, are two of my favorite movies. Frank Sinatra does a beautiful job playing Marco, and Laurence Harvey plays the sleeper agent Raymond Shaw. Angela Lansbury plays Raymond's mother, and James Gregory is the Senator. I especially enjoyed Janet Leigh as Marco's girl friend, Rosie. The way they meet and their relationship is almost identical to the way it is handled in the novel, although her role is reduced in the movie.

The edition of the book I read is a movie tie-in edition for the 2004 adaptation, starring Denzel Washington as Marco and Liev Schreiber as Raymond. I have seen that movie and I liked it OK but it does not compare favorably to the 1962 adaptation. It is updated to use the Gulf War as the conflict as opposed to the Korean War.


This is my submission for the book of 1959 for the Crimes of the Century meme for this month, hosted by Rich at Past Offences. See also Rich's review from 2016.

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Publisher:  Pocket Star Books, 2004. Orig. pub. 1959.
Length:     358 pages
Format:     Paperback
Setting:     US
Genre:      Political Thriller
Source:     I purchased this book.