GI CONFIDENTIAL

In 1970s South Korea, a pair of righteous U.S. military cops team up with a crusading reporter to bust a prostitution ring and solve a string of bank robberies.

A trio of daring American soldiers is targeting South Korean banks. The aptly nicknamed Sgt. Strange gets two-fisted Criminal Investigation Division agents Ernie Bascom and George Sueño (Line, 2018, etc.) interested in the case, which the Army's higher-ups seem to want to sweep under the rug. In short order, they learn that the two assigned agents, a pair of brown-nosers named Burrows and Slabem, are engaged in a coverup to keep suspicion from falling on the Americans. This raises the righteous ire of Sueño, who narrates in a punchy first person. When the next robbery leaves a teller dead, Bascom and Sueño take over the investigation. Details of the robberies appear in the local Overseas Observer, amping up the pressure to solve the case. So before they do anything else, Bascom and Sueño decide to look for Katie Byrd Worthington, the dogged reporter who broke the story. She eludes them for a while, but they finally pin her down at the Dragon Goddess Tea House. Fearing arrest and deportation, she displays an incriminating picture of the duo as protection. Once they gain her trust, she tells them about a prostitution ring exploiting South Korean girls and run by a powerful American general. Even as they agree to help her interrogate him, Sueño wonders if he’ll be able to marry Yong In-Ja, the Korean “business girl” with whom he has fallen in love.

Sueño and Bascom’s lively 14th investigation is long on action, gritty dialogue, and period authenticity.