Blaine Harden’s latest nonfiction, “King of Spies: The Dark Reign of America’s Spymaster in Korea,” is not just an investigative biography of the most important intelligence operative before, during and after the Korean War; it also dramatizes a dark time in American history that helps to explain North Korea’s ongoing fear of the United States’ military based on events that are rarely discussed and hardly known.

Harden will read from and sign his new thriller at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 9, at Vashon Bookshop.

Major Donald Nichols, according to Harden, was a king of spies who played an outsized role in the Korean War.

By providing the U.S. Air Force with most of its targets in North Korea, Nichols enabled the relentless bombing and napalming of North Korean cities, a story the Kim family uses to stoke American hatred to this day. His almost familial relationship with President Syngman Rhee, the founding leader of South Korea, sheds new light on the conflicts on the Korean Peninsula and on high-level lies and cover-ups that have lasted for nearly a half century.