Killing Pilgrim

Mattich's excellent second Balkan thriller is less darkly humored than the first, Zagreb Cowboy, but richer in moral complexities. It's August 1991, the beginning of the end of days for Yugoslavia. Croatia and Slovenia have declared very shaky independence from the crumbling Yugoslav state, and Marko della Torre of the UDBA (Yugoslav secret police) is packing up his office for a transfer to the military. Not knowing who he's really working for in these confused times, Marko gets entangled in an assassination plot set up by a dangerous nationalist leader and led by Rebecca Vees, an icy CIA operative who is as beautiful and treacherous as the Balkan landscape. The target is a former top-level UDBA hit man known as "the Montenegrin," who's responsible for the murder of Sweden's prime minister Olof Palme; he's now retired and devoted to the caring of his disabled daughter. The sardonic tone carries over from the first book, entirely appropriate when loyalties are nonexistent and truly terrible people are carving up the remains of the country. Mattich has beautifully hit his stride. Agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. (Dec.)