Lie in the Dark [Paperback]

What is the point of investigating a single death when your city and your country is being killed around you? For Fesperman's Sarajevo sleuth Investigator Petric part of the answer is that being a homicide cop keeps him out of the army and out of the front line in the hills a few miles away and in the city instead where he can at least phone the wife and child he has sent to safety. Another part of the answer is the simple bad attitude that he shares with most other heroes of noir detective fiction, a feeling that the job has to be done no matter how many toes he treads on. The corpse shot at close range and left to look like a sniper's victim is that of a senior figure in the security service, a man who used the local gangs to save the city from the Serbs and then turned on them when they got ambitious. Petric finds himself fed information by people who use him and threaten him--secret policemen, gangsters, whores, foreign journalists and black marketeers. This is a powerful and ingenious thriller drawn from last year's headlines but as timely today. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘A début novel of immense power’ The Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A portrait of Sarajevo at war, telling of freelance gangsters, guilty bystanders, drop-in correspondents, bureaucrats frightened for their jobs and their lives, and of one man in deadly pursuit of the wrong people in the worst places.

"A debut novel of immense power" - The Times
Investigator Petric makes his living from the dead. Lately business has been slow, what with the siege around Sarajevo. Condoned killing has displaced the crime of passion; his services with the civil police as a homicide investigator have been less in demand. Unluckily one premeditated death does land on the detective's desk. It is no abused lover or a distant sniper's victim but a government official - the chief of the interior ministry's police - shot dead at close range. In a thriller that recalls the first excitement of Martin Cruz Smith's Moscow and the Vienna of Graham Greene's The Third Man, author Dan Fesperman brilliantly renders the fragmented society and underworld of Sarajevo at war - the freelancing gangsters, guilty bystanders, drop-in correspondents, the bureaucrats frightened for their jobs and very lives - and he weaves through this torn cityscape one man's desperate, deadly pursuit of the wrong people in the worst places.

"A debut novel of immense power" - The Times

"One of the best books I have read for a long time" - Sunday Telegraph

"A haunting ice-cool novel - The Third Man meets Gorly Park. Stunning" - Daily Mirror

"Doubly authentic and immensely readable" - Critics Choice - Daily Mail

"An unflinching portrait of ethnic conflict and corruption firmly in the territory of Graham Greene and John Le Carre" - Val McDermid - Manchester Evening News

"A powerful, atmospheric novel. Part Third Man, part Le Carre, Lie in the Dark is a thriller to rival Gorky Park and a crime novel that echoes Miss Smilla." - CrimeTime

"A quite astonishing first novel which injects the reader into the heart of the darkness which was Sarajevo at the height of the Yugoslav conflict. Reading this book is like being there. If Fesperman had taken me any closer to the action I'd be demanding a flak jacket. At the book's core is a police detective, a man who must deal with the conflict while never wholly understanding it, who must investigate one meaningful murder while those around him seem inured to daily slaughter. This is a humane and moving book, a great crime novel. A great novel, period." Ian Rankin

Investigator Petric makes his living from the dead. Lately business has been slow, what with the siege around Sarajevo. Condoned killing has displaced the crime of passion; his services with the civil police as a homicide investigator have been less in demand. Unluckily one premeditated death does land on the detective's desk. It is no abused lover or a distant sniper's victim but a government official - the chief of the interior ministry's police - shot dead at close range. In a thriller that recalls the Vienna of Graham Greene's The Third Man, Dan Fesperman brilliantly renders the fragmented society and underworld of Sarajevo at war - the freelancing gangsters, guilty bystanders, drop-in correspondents, the bureaucrats frightened for their jobs and very lives - and through this torn cityscape he weaves one man's desperate, deadly pursuit of the wrong people in the worst places. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

is a reporter for the Baltimore Sun and worked in its Berlin bureau during the years of civil war in former Yugoslavia, as well as in Afghanistan during the recent conflict for the paper. His first novel, Lie in the Dark, won the CWA John Creasey award for best first crime novel in 1999 and his second novel, The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, won the 2003 CWA Steel Dagger for Thriller of the Year. His new novel, The Warlord's Son is published by Bantam Press. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.