Tiger's Tail

I served with the U.S. Army a couple of years in Camp Casey, and Gus Lee does a masterful job of describing the bleakness and sadness of Camp Casey and Tongduchon near the Korean DMZ.....also of describing the ever-present threat from North Korea. The "speed bump" analogy was used a lot by those of us who were stationed in Casey. While in Korea, sure would have been nice to have met someone like Jackson Hu-Chin Kan. Following Jackson's adventures through the Seoul to Tongduchon corrider was a thrilling experience - also brought back a lot of memories. The chilling filth and terrible conditions in the Korean prison was, no doubt, accurately described.....even nightmarish. The storyline was very interesting, and provided some insight regarding the current and ongoing threat to South Korea and our troops in South Korea. Bravo, Gus Lee!

Having read mysteries for 30 years I quickly get bored with most of the genre these days and now find myself searching the mystery bookshelves for foreign translations and those not "fitting the mold." Finding Gus Lee's Tiger's Tail has been a delightful venture into Korea's mountainous DMZ and a very strange world of misfits, sadists, and good guys. Lee bounced from the present to his past in a single line that sometimes sent me backtracking and rereading to catch the wit of his metaphors, but I found that delightful as the writing was not the "same old thing." It all seemed pretty horrible and his characters were definitely bigger than life with steroids. Jackson Kan found his buddy and I still had a 100 pages to go as his "mission" kept expanding. I found both the mystery of the Tiger's Tail and the succinct humorous phraseology a really good read that was different than all the others.