ABOUT THE BOOK

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.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"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

"A debut novel of immense power" - Paul Connolly, 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 Gorky Park. Stunning" - Daily Mirror

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

ESSENTIAL TRIVIA

Lie in the Dark was winner of the John Creasey Award for the Best First Crime Novel 1999