The Wolf of Sarajevo

March 7, 2016
The Balkans provide the setting for Palmer’s meticulously crafted third international thriller (after 2015’s Secrets of State). State department employee Eric Petrosian is working in the American embassy in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, when he’s assigned to assist European Union official Annika Sondergaard, who’s attempting to implement a new peace plan intended to keep the country from slipping back into civil war. Eric teams with an ex-lover he hasn’t seen in 20 years, CIA agent Sarah Gold, who wants his help figuring out why Zoran Dimitrovic, the leader of a right-wing political party, is under the control of the mysterious Marko Barcelona, who wants to plunge Bosnia back into conflict. Several subplots, one involving a researcher back at CIA headquarters and another about a priest who tends bees at a monastery add interest when the plot threatens to bog down in the labyrinthine politics of the region. Palmer’s 25 years in the U.S. Foreign Service serve him well in this suspenseful, briskly paced novel. Author tour. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency.

March 15, 2016
A suspenseful Balkans thriller by the author of The American Mission (2014). Twenty years after the Bosnian War, Eric Petrosian works for the U.S. State Department and is assigned to advise the ambassador to Bosnia. He couldn't stop the murders of his friend Meho Alimerovic and thousands of other men and boys in Srebrenica during that conflict, and he still feels guilty. Now, in this complex story, a second war is on the verge of breaking out in a country that's haunted by ghosts and toe tags. European Union diplomat Annika Sondergaard has a plan to stop this war before it starts, and Eric works to help her. Smart and humane, Eric is intensely aware of the genocide that has already occurred in the Balkans, one of the "great civilizational fault lines." On the other side are men like the sociopath Marko Barcelona, who knows that "money is power and power is money." Marko possesses a secret videotape showing the now politically powerful Zoran Dimitrovic shooting men in the back of the head in 1995--so Marko controls Zoran. Marko used to be "a worm...feeding on the droppings of his betters" but prefers being a wolf to a worm and a king to a wolf. And there is Darko Lukic, a talented sniper who loves to shoot children and pregnant women--and never misses, even from 2 kilometers away. He is "the god of death" for whom "killing from a distance was an act of worship." Time is running out for Eric to save Darko's next target, Annika, whose peace plan is the last, best chance to avoid another war. Well-written, exciting, and fast-paced fiction by a diplomat with deep knowledge of the Balkans.

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April 1, 2016

Eric Petrosian returns to Bosnia 20 years after his stint there as a journalist during the Bosnian War of the 1990s. He is now a diplomat, helping to implement the Sondergaard Plan, a new compact for the future of the region. However, there are elements at work that seek to slide the Balkans back into a devastating conflict. Partnering with Sarah Gold, a CIA field officer and his former lover, Eric embarks on a high-stakes search to stop an assassination and identify the shadowy figure who is pulling the strings behind the rise of unrest. Will he and Sarah be in time to avert another disaster, or will they have to watch as violence once again reigns supreme? VERDICT Drawing on his own experiences working for the U.S. embassy in Belgrade in 1993, Palmer (Secrets of State) has written a fast-paced, action-packed, well-plotted thriller that will more than satisfy espionage fiction fans. Although creating believable and possible real-life scenarios is a strong suit of the author's, his stint in Serbia during the worst of the conflict lends extra credibility, despite the stereotyped characters.--Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO

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