This was a very intense psychological thriller taking place in South Korea. The author, Y0u-Jeong Jeong initially trained and worked as a nurse. She is now considered South Korea's leading writer of psychological crime and thriller fiction and is often compared to Stephen King and Raymond Chandler.
The novel starts out with this sentence: "The smell of blood awoke me." It goes on to tell how 25-year-old Yu-Jin wakes up to discover his mother dead lying in a pool of blood. Yu-Jin suffers from seizures so he can't recall anything that occurred although he himself is covered in blood. So what happened? The novel goes on to tell of Yu-Jin's quest to try to find out what really happened that night. He soon discovers that another murder of a young woman occurred close by on that same night and as he ponders these gruesome events, his memory slowly returns. This leads him to events that occurred in his past including the death of his brother and father ten years earlier. The novel builds up to a rather shocking conclusion.
I found this one to be quite compelling reminding me somewhat of a Hitchcock movie. The novel was translated from Korean and the sentence structure was definitely rendered in an Asian tone. It was told in the first person from Yu-Jin's point of view and the author takes the reader into a rather tortured mind. A very good suspense novel that I would recommend.
The novel starts out with this sentence: "The smell of blood awoke me." It goes on to tell how 25-year-old Yu-Jin wakes up to discover his mother dead lying in a pool of blood. Yu-Jin suffers from seizures so he can't recall anything that occurred although he himself is covered in blood. So what happened? The novel goes on to tell of Yu-Jin's quest to try to find out what really happened that night. He soon discovers that another murder of a young woman occurred close by on that same night and as he ponders these gruesome events, his memory slowly returns. This leads him to events that occurred in his past including the death of his brother and father ten years earlier. The novel builds up to a rather shocking conclusion.
I found this one to be quite compelling reminding me somewhat of a Hitchcock movie. The novel was translated from Korean and the sentence structure was definitely rendered in an Asian tone. It was told in the first person from Yu-Jin's point of view and the author takes the reader into a rather tortured mind. A very good suspense novel that I would recommend.
