Showing results by author "Martin Limon" in All Categories

Sixteen delightful holiday short stories by some of your favorite Soho crime authors! This captivating collection of short mysteries and crime capers - which features New York Times best-selling authors, Crime Writers Association Gold and Diamond Dagger winners, and Edgar Award nominees - contains laughs aplenty, the most hardboiled of holiday noir, and heartwarming reminders of the spirit of the season.

South Korea, 1970s: Sergeant First Class Cecil B. Harvey, a senior NCO in charge of Eighth Army’s classified documents, has long been a friend (willing or unwilling) to Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom. So when he goes missing with a top-secret document that even a glance at could get an officer court-martialed, Sueño and Bascom take it upon themselves to find him. Meanwhile, Overseas Observer reporter Katie Byrd Worthington is back to make life difficult for top army brass. When she lands in a Korean jail cell, Sueño and Bascom are sent to get her out.

Three American GIs have gone missing in different South Korean cities. Sergeants George Sueno and Ernie Bascom, agents for the Army CID, link the disappearances to a woman locally rumored to be a gumiho, a legendary 9000-tailed fox disguised as a woman. George suspects that the woman is no mythical creature, but a wealthy kidnapper who's good at covering her tracks. Scrambling to stay one step ahead of a psychotic mastermind, George realizes he will have to risk his life to discover the whereabouts of his fellow countrymen.

South Korea, 1974: A young Korean woman is found strangled to death on the frozen banks of the Sonyu River with only a carefully calligraphed poem on her person. Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, agents in the US Eighth Army CID, are called in by the formidable KNP detective Gil Kwon-up to investigate. As they begin to investigate, George and Ernie come into direct contact with the US Army's Second Infantry Division, a disciplined and often brutal force.

The attack was a complete surprise, carefully planned and clinically executed. How did this unidentified Korean civilian get into the tightly controlled base? And why attack the claims officer? Is there an unsettled grudge, a claim of damages that was rejected by the Army? Against orders, CID agents Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom start investigating. Somehow, each person they speak to has not yet been interviewed.

Twenty years ago Martin Limón published his first mystery featuring Sergeant George Sueño, a young Mexican American army detective stationed on the US Eighth Army base in South Korea in the early 1970s, the heart of the Cold War. George and his investigating partner, the rowdy and short-fused Sergeant Ernie Bascom, are assigned cases in which the Eighth Army has come into conflict with local Korean law enforcement - often incidents in which American soldiers, who are not known for being on their best behavior in their Asian host country, have committed a crime.

On a crowded train from Pusan to Seoul, the brutal rape of a young mother sparks rage on the powder-keg peninsula of Korea, pitting Koreans against Americans and the 8th Army brass against the truth. Eyewitness accounts indicate the culprit was most likely a U.S. serviceman, but by the time Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, U.S. Army investigators, are called in, the rapist has disappeared and anti-American fervor in this proud Asian country is threatening to explode.

South Korea, 1970s: A rash of armed robberies at local Korean banks doesn't concern the American military - until a fatality occurs, and proof surfaces that US soldiers are behind the crimes. The case has been assigned to CID Agents Jake Burrows and Felix Slabem, but they certainly won't do anything that might make 8th United States Army look bad. So Sergeants George Sueno and Ernie Bascom have decided to step in and investigate the robberies - and murder - themselves.

The Korean Demilitarized Zone, 1970s: A battered corpse is found a few feet north of the line dividing North and South Korea. When Eighth Army CID Agents George Sueno and Ernie Bascom are ordered by superiors to pull the body to the South Korean side, they have no idea of the international conflict the action will spark.