A Sergeants Sueño and Bascom Novel Series

Tasked with covering up a tabloid report about high-ranking officers, US Army CID Agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom discover a dark web of systemic issues that have potentially fatal consequences.

South Korea, 1970s: Sergeant First Class Cecil B. Harvey, a senior NCO in charge of 8th 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—and negotiate against the publication of an incriminating story about the mistreatment of women in the military that could land important officials in hot water. But what they learn will make it hard for them to stay silent.

Tasked with covering up a tabloid report about high-ranking officers, US Army CID Agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom discover a dark web of systemic issues that have potentially fatal consequences.

South Korea, 1970s: Sergeant First Class Cecil B. Harvey, a senior NCO in charge of 8th 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—and negotiate against the publication of an incriminating story about the mistreatment of women in the military that could land important officials in hot water. But what they learn will make it hard for them to stay silent.

US Army CID Agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom become entangled with a pushy tabloid reporter as they investigate a series of violent bank robberies throughout South Korea.
 
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 Sueño and Ernie Bascom have decided to step in and investigate the robberies—and murder—themselves.
 
George and Ernie have their own problems to worry about, namely Katie Byrd Worthington, a pesky reporter for the Overseas Observer—an unsanctioned English-language tabloid that has found strong roots in South Korea. Katie has published a story that implicates Army higher-ups in both sex trafficking and treason, and the pressure is on for the CID to disprove her claims. But what if they aren’t false? As George and Ernie dig deeper into the case, they find themselves the targets of a very unflattering publicity campaign, but perhaps also something much more dangerous.

George Sueño and Ernie Bascom return for their thirteenth outing, which takes them from Seoul to the DMZ in their most politically charged murder case yet.

The Korean Demilitarized Zone, 1970s: A battered corpse is found a few feet north of the line dividing North and South Korea. When 8th Army CID Agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom pull the body to the South Korean side on orders from their superiors, they have no idea of the international conflict their action will spark. Before war breaks out, they must discover who killed Corporal Noh Jong-bei, a young Korean soldier working with the US Army.
 
The murderer could be on either side of the DMZ. But without cooperation between the governments involved, how can two US military agents interrogate North Korean witnesses? What George and Ernie discover gets them pulled off the case, but fearing they’ve put the wrong man behind bars, they disobey orders in an attempt to discover the truth.

Martin Limón’s series set in 1970s South Korea, an era of heightened Korean sociopolitical tension, pits Army CID agents Sueño and Bascom against a mysterious woman who may be the leader of a gang—or a thousand-year-old creature.

Three American GIs have gone missing in different South Korean cities. Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, agents for the Army CID, link the disappearances to a woman locally rumored to be a gumiho, a legendary thousand-year-old nine-tailed fox disguised as a woman. George suspects that the woman is no mythical creature, but a criminal who’s good at covering her tracks.

Meanwhile, George and Ernie are caught in a power struggle between two high-ranking women in the 8th Army. Scrambling to appease his boss and 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. US Army CID Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom are assigned an underwhelming case of petty theft: Major Frederick M. Schulz has accused Miss Jo Kyong-ja, an Itaewon bar girl, of stealing twenty-five thousand won from him—a sum equaling less than fifty US dollars. After two very divergent accounts of what happened, Miss Jo is attacked, and Schulz is found hacked to death only days later. Did tensions simply escalate to the point of murder?

Looking into other motives for Schulz’s death, George and Ernie discover that the major was investigating the 501st Military Intelligence Battalion: the Army’s counterintelligence arm, solely dedicated to tracking North Korean spies. The division is rife with suspects, but it’s dangerous to speak out against them in a period of Cold War finger-pointing. As George and Ernie go head-to-head with the battalion’s powerful, intimidating commander, Lance Blood, they learn that messing with the 501st can have very personal consequences.

How much can murder buy on the black market in 1974 South Korea?

South Korea, 1970s: A young Korean woman dressed in a traditional chima-jeogori is found strangled to death on the frozen banks of the Sonyu River with only a carefully calligraphed poem in her sleeve. George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, sergeants in the US 8th Army CID, are called in by the formidable KNP detective Gil Kwon-up to investigate. George and Ernie’s job is to liaise with Korean law enforcement on matters that may involve or implicate 8th Army American servicemen.

But as they learn about the case, George and Ernie realize this isn’t their jurisdiction—the nearby village of Sonyu-ri is occupied by the US Army’s 2nd Infantry Division, a disciplined and often brutal force that won’t stand for outside officers questioning its men. All that George and Ernie are able to glean before being kicked out of town is that they are close to the truth—and that a mysterious smuggler, known locally as “the Ville Rat,” holds the key to the woman’s murder.

Luckily, the pair is officially assigned another investigation in the area, which allows them to continue nosing around for answers. They are to elucidate the circumstances of a shooting incident between a young African American private and his white supervising chief. Racial tensions run high, and George and Ernie must tread carefully to solve both cases. But they aren’t exactly known for going out of their way to avoid stepping on US Army toes, and this is no exception.

When a U.S. Army Claims officer stationed in South Korea is murdered in grisly fashion the roustabout duo of George Sueño and Ernie Bascom go against orders to track a calculating killer.

Early one rainy morning, the head of the 8th United States Army Claims Office in Seoul, South Korea, is brutally murdered by a Korean man in a trench coat with a small iron sickle hidden in his sleeve. The attack is a complete surprise, carefully planned and clinically executed.  How did this unidentified Korean civilian get onto the tightly controlled US Army base? And why attack the claims officer—is there an unsettled grudge, a claim of damages that was rejected by the US Army?
 
Against orders, CID agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom start to investigate. Somehow, no one they speak to has been interviewed yet. The 8th Army isn’t great at solving cases, but they aren’t usually this bad, either. George and Ernie begin to suspect that someone doesn’t want the case solved.

Martin Limón proves once again why he is hailed by his peers as one of the greatest military writers of his time.

In this pulse-racing ninth adventure, Sergeant George Sueño heads north of Korea’s DMZ on a mission to prevent war between the Communist North and the American-allied South.
 
Seoul, early 1970s: US Army Sergeant George Sueño is on a mission of extreme importance to the South Korean government, as well as the US Army. Kim Il-Sung has vowed to reunite North and South Korea into one country before he hands control of the government over to his son, which means North Korea is planning to cross the DMZ and overpower the American-allied South Korean government. Sueño’s mission is to prevent this by sneaking into North Korea and obtaining an ancient map detailing the network of secret tunnels that run underneath the DMZ. To do so, he will have to go undercover and infiltrate the North Korean Communist inner sanctum.
 
Aware of the often dubious nature of the US Military’s tactics, Sueño is skeptical about his assignment. But he has other things on his mind. The keeper of the map is Doc Yong, a former lover of Sueño’s who was forced to flee South Korea the year before—and she has a son. Before they can be happily reunited, the plan falls to pieces, and Sueño is captured. Can he rely on the enigmatic Hero Kang, his sole contact in the hostile country? Will the lovely Rhee Mi-Sook, the leader of the North Korean secret police, be too much to handle? And who are the mysterious group of women known as the Joy Brigade?

Sergeants Sueño and Bascom team up with the formidable Korean detective Mr. Kill to catch a killer. 
On a crowded train from Pusan to Seoul, the brutal rape of a young mother by a US serviceman sparks rage on the powder-keg peninsula of Korea. By the time Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, US Army investigators, are called in, the rapist has disappeared and anti-American fervor in this proud Asian country is threatening to explode. George and Ernie set off a frantic search for a killer that introduces them to a ruthless Korean homicide investigator known to anyone foolish enough to cross him as Mr. Kill.

The sixth Sergeant George Sueño investigation

A Korean fortune-teller is haunted by a long-dead American soldier who wants his bones found and buried. A Latino soldier and the underage daughter of a white American officer are missing. Several notorious Korean gangsters who own bars in Itaewon—Seoul’s red light district—have been killed. American military police officers George Sueño and Ernie Bascom must dig deep into the bloody history of Itaewon in order to find out who killed the dead soldier, who’s taking revenge on the gang lords, and where to find the missing girl.

“Easily the best military mysteries in print today.” —Lee Child 

Corporal Jill Matthewson, the only female military police officer assigned to Camp Casey in the Korean Demilitarized Zone, is missing. US 8th Army CID agent Sergeant George Sueño and his partner, Ernie Bascom, are dispatched to locate her. They find that criminal activity abounds at Camp Casey, from black marketeering to murder. The investigation brings them face-toface with crooked officers, Korean civilians rioting over the death of one of their own, a schoolgirl run down by a speeding army truck, and her ghost, which has been seen wandering the premises.

The fourth Sergeant George Sueño Investigation

Seoul, 1970s: As North Korea menaces and Vietnam burns, US 8th Army CID agent Sergeant George Sueño and his partner, Ernie Bascom, weave through back alleys and bordellos, trying to tip the scales of justice back in the right direction. This time, they’re not just pursuing criminals—they’re chasing themselves. Homicidal thieves have gotten hold of George’s badge and are using it to trick their victims for just long enough to strike—with his gun. The army wants the equipment accounted for, and the ID and weapon recovered. George and Ernie want to salvage their reputation, such as it is—and to stop the cold-blooded killings being committed in their names.

This grisly, terrifying thriller follows CID Agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom across the Korean Peninsula in their search for a lost artifact

South Korea, 1970s: Retired Army officer Herman Burkowicz has quite a lucrative setup smuggling rare Korean artifacts. But then his nine-year-old foster daughter, Mi-ja, is abducted, and her kidnappers demand a ransom Burkowicz doesn’t have: a priceless jade skull from the age of Genghis Khan. Sueño and Bascom—more accustomed to chasing felons and black marketeers in the back alleys of Itaewon than ancient treasures—go in over their heads as they agree to search for the skull, a journey that will lead them to a crime that threatens the fragile peace between South Korea and the US Army units living on its Korean soil.

The second Sergeant George Sueño investigation, follow-up to the New York Times Notable Jade Lady Burning

The Slicky Boys rule the back alleys of 1970s Seoul. They can kill a man in a thousand gruesome ways. And you’ll never even see them coming. In order to combat the poverty facing South Korea, they sneak onto well-stocked American military compounds to steal, murder anyone in their way, and vanish. US Army Sergeant George Sueño and his partner, Ernie Bascom, take on the perilous mission of infiltrating this underground criminal syndicate when an innocent favor for an Itaewon bar girl leads to murder.