In a city where death from mortars, bombs, and sniper fire has become routine, Inspector Vlado Petric works as a homicide detective. Despite ridicule from friends, who liken him to a plumber fixing leaky faucets in the midst of a flood, he doggedly investigates the crimes that thrive in war and in peace: spurned lovers shooting one another, drunks stabbed over the last drop in a bottle, gamblers beaten for not paying their debts. Petric dreams of getting a case that really matters, one that will not only counteract the debilitating combination of fear and boredom of living in a besieged city, but will somehow justify his very existence. The possibility of such a case coming his way becomes less likely when, early in the war, the Interior Ministry creates its own police unit to cover high-profile cases. Then one night Petric literally stumbles upon the body that will mark the turning point in his career. The murder victim is Esmir Vitas, the chief of the Interior Ministry's special police. Eager to prove to the U.N.--which is monitoring every move made in Sarajevo--that the new government is above reproach and worthy of international support, the Interior Ministry designates Petric as an independent investigator. In an inquiry that takes him from the enclaves of Sarajevo's flourishing black market to the most-bombed out sections of the city to an outpost of guerrilla soldiers in the surrounding hills, Petric uncovers a web of dangerous secrets and unthinkable betrayals.

In Lie in the Dark Dan Fesperman brings to life the grim, chaotic atmosphere of Sarajevo, the private tragedies of its war-weary citizens, and the corruption that feeds on desperation and despair with an immediacy that echoes the best works of Graham Greene and John Le Carré. In a world where the innocent fare no better than the guilty, he presents a hero forced to redefine his own beliefs about right and wrong in order to survive.