The Small Boat of Great Sorrows - Softcover

Dan-fesperman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552150231 ISBN 13: 9780552150231

Publisher: Transworld Pub, 2004

Synopsis

Vlado Petric, former detective in war-torn Sarajevo, has left his beloved homeland to join his wife and daughter in Germany, where he scratches a meagre living among the dust of former conflicts on the building sites of the new Berlin. Returning home one evening, he finds an enigmatic American investigator waiting for him in the small apartment he now shares with his wife and daughter. The investigator, Calvin Pine, works for the International War Crimes Tribunal, and he tells Petric that they want him to go to The Hague. It doesn't take Petric long to accept, especially when Pine tells him they are after a big fish: one of the men who they think is responsible for the terrible massacre of Srebrenica. What Petric doesn't know is that he is also being used as bait to lure into the open a murderer from the previous generation; a man whose activities in the Second World War makes the current generation of killers look like amateurs. As Petric travels from modern-day Germany, through the ruins of Bosnia, to the peaceful hills of southern Italy where bitter, unresolved tensions still crackle beneath the surface, the stakes become all too personal. And he soon finds that investigating the mysteries of the past can be every bit as dangerous as finding his way through the war zones of the present.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Deft and gripping. . . . Impeccably written and ably plotted. . . . The action is more or less nonstop." --The New York Times Books Review

"A literary thriller with historical persepctive. . . . A relentlessly crackling mystery and adventure tale. . . Fesperson's prose is vivid, almost breakneck in pace. . . . His descriptions of people and places are crisp, precise and memorable." --The Baltimore Sun

"A modern-day Odyssey that leads its hero through the harrowing Kafkaesque lanscapes of postwar Bosnia and post-Cold War Europe . . . A literary detective novel that thrills as much as it evokes admiration for the prose." --The Charlotte Observer

"A keep-'em-guessing plot, littered with hidden treasures, international intrigue, lusty old Croatian thugs, and late-night crypt openings." --Entertainment Weekly

"A wonderful book. . . . Timely, thoughtful and vividly written." - The Seattle Times

"A new standard for war-based thrillers." - The Los Angeles Times
"A dark and morally complex novel." - The Daily Telegraph

"A haunting sense of place and enough twists and turns to make the reader giddy. . . . This is not an ordinary thriller and this is enforced by the precision and the quality of the writing. Fesperman's . . . first-hand experience of war reporting and exhaustive research shine through." - The Birmingham Post

"[An] ambitious, morally complex thriller." - The Observer

"Fesperman tells his atmospheric tale with great elegance . . . [and] a sharp analytical curiosity." - The Guardian

"[A] fine follow-up to the equally fine Lie in the Dark." - The Orlando Sentinel

"A well-paced tale of deceit, manipulation and double-crossing." - The Spectator

From the Inside Flap:

In Dan Fesperman's highly praised Lie in the Dark ("A quite astonishing first novel"—Ian Rankin), we met Vlado Petric, a homicide detective in Sarajevo, a war-torn place where life itself had little worth.
Now, five years later, Petric has escaped to join his wife and daughter in Berlin, and is scratching out a meager but stable existence at a construction site. So when he's recruited by Calvin Pine—an enigmatic American investigator for the war crimes tribunal at The Hague—to join a search mission back in the ruins of his homeland, he finds it hard to resist. They're seeking a general responsible for the massacre at Srebrenica, but Petric is also being offered as bait to lure another suspect whose activities in World War II make the current generation of killers look like amateurs. Getting hotter on a trail that eventually leads across Europe, Petric soon finds that great political powers make unsavory alliances, and that investigating the mysteries of the past can be as dangerous as navigating the war zones of the present.

A gripping novel about legends and lies, about great deceptions and personal truths, The Small Boat of Great Sorrows is a galvanizing detective novel in a vein that brilliantly transcends the genre.

About this edition

• Publisher: Transworld Pub
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0552150231
• ISBN 13: 9780552150231
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464