LOVE SONGS FROM A SHALLOW GRAVE, by Colin Cotterill. SOHO Crime, 2010, 326 pp., $25 (hardcover)
International news agencies that pride themselves on their astute investigative journalism regularly admit that their reports about events in secretive North Korea tend to be cautiously worded mixtures of well-worn facts and informed guesswork.
Novels, on the other hand, aren't bound by the same constraints. Conventional potboilers portray the denizens of the People's Democratic Republic as goose-stepping fanatics with Kim Il Sung badges on their threadbare lapels, who screech hostile epithets across the 38th Parallel and will eagerly inform on a compatriot who consumes one grain of rice over the allotted ration.