The Small Boat of Great Sorrows: A Novel (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Vlado Petric, a former homicide detective in Sarajevo, is now living in exile, and making a meagre living working at a Berlin construction site, when an American investigator for the International War Crimes Tribunal recruits him to return home on a mission. The assignment sounds simple enough. He is to help capture an aging Nazi collaborator who has become a war profiteer. But nothing is simple in the Balkans: Petric is also being used as bait to lure his quarry into the open, and when the operation goes sour he is drawn across Europe into a dangerous labyrinth of secret identities, stolen gold, and horrifying discoveries about his own family's past. Intelligent and suspenseful, The Small Boat of Great Sorrows brings together chilling crimes, the lies people live and the cold facts of international politics into a masterful, electrifying thriller. From the Trade Paperback edition. The widely acclaimed author of Winter Work brings together chilling crimes, the lies people live and the cold facts of international politics into a “deft and gripping [thriller]. Impeccably written and ably plotted.... The action is more or less nonstop.” ( The New York Times Books Review ). Vlado Petric, a former homicide detective in Sarajevo, is now living in exile, and making a meagre living working at a Berlin construction site, when an American investigator for the International War Crimes Tribunal recruits him to return home on a mission. The assignment sounds simple enough. He is to help capture an aging Nazi collaborator who has become a war profiteer. But nothing is simple in the Balkans: Petric is also being used as bait to lure his quarry into the open, and when the operation goes sour he is drawn across Europe into a dangerous labyrinth of secret identities, stolen gold, and horrifying discoveries about his own family’s past. After leaving his homeland in Bosnia, investigator Vlado Petric finds himself embroiled in proceedings of the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague and suspects that he is being used as bait to draw out mass murderers from World War II