The Shaman's Daughter

"Koppisch's thrilling first novel is a taut, pulsating, crime drama as well as a detailed work of historical fiction!"
It's August 1950. The corrupt, crime-ridden city of Pusan is surrounded by the Communist North Korean People's Army and completely cut off. Jimmy Hong is a young investigator struggling to make a name for himself finding missing persons, etc. while stuck in the city and trying to make the best out of the desperate living conditions caused by the siege. One morning, two fishermen find the body of a sixteen-year-old girl washed up on the bank of the Nakdong River. The only clue to her identity is a pendant with a strange symbol. Hong, having lost his own unborn daughter when his pregnant wife died of cholera several years earlier, becomes obsessed with finding the girl's killer. With little to work with and operating in a city that may be overrun at any moment, Hong is in over his head...and about to cross paths with a dangerous man from his past.