From Publishers Weekly
"The past isn't dead, it isn't even past," said William Faulkner about the American South. That goes double for the former Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1998, at the start of this chilling, accomplished espionage novel, the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague decides to pick up a wanted Serbian general, Andric. As a quid pro quo, the French want Pero Matek, a Croatian war criminal from WWII, lifted from Bosnia, where he has become a minor capo. Calvin Pine, from the tribunal, travels to Berlin to contact Vlado Petric, a Bosnian emigre and former Sarajevo detective. Taking leave of his wife and daughter, Vlado is debriefed at The Hague, then sent with Pine to post-conflict Sarajevo. Vlado has a secret: some acquaintances of his in Berlin had recently murdered a Serbian war criminal, Popovic, and Vlado helped them dispose of the corpse. At the tribunal, a sinister American named Harkness has been referring enigmatically to Popovic's "disappearance." In Sarajevo, Pine reveals the real reason Vlado was chosen to set up Matek-unbeknownst to Vlado, his late father was an associate of Matek's during WWII. The setup fails; Matek escapes. Following Matek to Italy, Vlado and Pine rendezvous with a former American army intelligence agent, Robert Fordham, who is edgily paranoid. Fordham claims there's a deep connection between the Croats and American intelligence. Just how deep becomes clear as the pair close in on Matek. This tight, intelligent thriller by the author of the well-received Lie in the Dark chillingly describes a world in which justice is always a negotiation between highly compromised alternatives, and history burdens every player-except for the executioners.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
This highly intelligent thriller opens with the discovery of a Nazi bunker, accidentally uncovered while foundations are being laid for the new, united Berlin. It's an excellent device for reminding us that, in Europe, the past lies close to the surface. Vlado Petric (first seen in
Lie in the Dark [1999]) is a Bosnian cop who stayed on the job during the fighting in Sarajevo, then blew the whistle on local corruption and escaped to join his family in Berlin, where he's spent the last five years working in construction. An American investigator for the International War Crimes Tribunal recruits Vlado to return home and help snare a war criminal--not from the Balkan genocide, but from World War II. The twists are dizzying as Vlado is drawn into a "wilderness of mirrors" that involves secret identities, stolen Croatian gold, and, ultimately, his own family. This is both a grown-up yarn, where small decisions can have unforeseen consequences, and a modern one that reflects the complicated reality of international justice and diplomacy (in one scene, the Tribunal investigator has to check out and return his sidearm). Fesperman was a newspaper correspondent in Berlin during the former Yugoslavia's civil war, and his expertise shows on every page. Very fine.
Keir GraffCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
