The Wolf of Sarajevo

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. [em]Author tour. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (May) [/em]