The Commander

Publishers Weekly

Davis's fourth novel is a chilling murder mystery set in Song-tan, South Korea, where racism, danger and corruption abound. Former air force criminal investigator Maj. Burt Webber is now a civilian living with his wife, Chung-hee, helping her run a jewelry store in the seedy bar district near a U.S. air base. He has resigned from the air force in disgust after a flap with his general over his own marriage to a foreign national. When a local bar girl is brutally murdered in a ritzy apartment, Burt's old pal, Col. Ray Johnson, asks him to help solve the crime. Strings are pulled to get him back on the job, but none of his superiors' assurances add up and he is not even sure who he is working for. Burt and his new partner, Lt. Susan Torres, a tough military cop, work closely with Sammy, a Korean police detective who has learned most of his English from American action movies. They believe that American and Korean officials want the case solved, but there's a stink of cover-up and conspiracy after all, who really cares about another dead bar girl? Even Ray lies through his teeth, and it takes a while for Burt to realize he's been had. The truth is, nobody wants the murder solved, and Burt is just an expendable patsy in a game of geopolitics where saving face and promoting business are most important. Davis (The Colonel) combines convincing police procedure with plenty of head-scratching clues, twists and dead ends. His portrayal of South Korean culture is vivid and revealing, a superb backdrop for a bona fide thriller. Agent, Karen Solem. (July) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A fourth military thriller from Davis (The Colonel, 2001, etc.), this about a military criminal investigation that turns on a dead woman and a military cover-up. Nelson DeMille opened up this territory in The General's Daughter, and while The Commander lacks that novel's background density and rounded characters, Davis speeds his plot with more hooks, twists, and turns per chapter than DeMille would dream of. Major Burton Webber, former chief of the Osan Air Base Office of Special Investigations in South Korea, resigned his commission after 15 years' service when Lieutenant General Harry Muller turned down his strongly deserved promotion for reasons Burt saw as racist. Burt is married to Chung-hee, a Korean educated in the American South and still carrying a southern accent, and she was never accepted by officers' wives on the base. So Burt goes to work in the jewelry store Chung-hee inherited from her father in Song-tan, a town near the base. Only a month later, Ambassador Gregson demands that Commander Muller hire Burt on a special commission to investigate the murder of a bar-girl in Song-tan's red-light district. Against his will, Burt is talked into accepting a $7,000 monthly retainer from the air base. Why? Because he's hustled by former best friend Colonel Roy Johnson. Evidence points to an American murderer, and if that's true it must be covered up to preserve the peace. Burt is joined in his investigation by a jazzy but brilliant Korean detective, who must cover up if the perp turns out to be Korean, and by Lieutenant Susan Torres, the base's tough-talking but dogged investigator. The procedural gets bloody with the corpse of the bar-girl, slit open from pelvis to sternum with atwo-month fetus removed. At heart, though, the deeper tale lies in the mores of the Koreans. Davis, himself the son of an American ambassador and a Chinese mother, has a cultural advantage in telling this story. Jet-fueled.