War Women is set in Korea, 20 years after the Korean War. Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom are members of the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of the 8th Army, headquartered outside of Seoul. As the book, narrated by Sergeant Sueño, opens Sueño and Bascom learn that Sergeant Cecil Harvey, the man responsible for the 8th Army's classified documents, is missing along with one of the documents. The brass haven’t been informed yet and as Harvey (called Strange by the pair) has often been a source of information for the investigators they take it upon themselves to locate him. What they stumble upon is a North Korean spy ring.
In the meantime, Katie Byrd
Worthington, a reporter for the Overseas
Observer introduced earlier in the series, is back and once again making
life difficult for top Army brass. When she is arrested by the Korean National
Police for causing a disturbance, Sueño and Bascom are tasked with freeing her
and getting her to agree not to publish a photograph she has taken of the 8th Army’s
chief of staff in a rather compromising situation. She agrees and all are happy
until her story about the sexual abuse of a female army unit’s members makes the headlines. This time Sueño and Bascom are ordered to take the reporter to
wherever the female unit is operating to interview the women. What they find there is very disturbing.
The two plot lines run parallel through most of the book and intersect only at the end.
The characters Sueño and Bascom couldn’t be
more different and conversations between the pair read like a comedy routine
and serve to help relieve the heaviness of the subject matter.
3.86 stars on Goodreads, 4.5 on
Amazon
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