Marko della Torre

Yugoslavia, 1991. The State is crumbling, and in the midst of the political chaos secret policeman Marko della Torre has been working both sides of the law but somewhere along the way he's crossed the line. When a corrupt cop called Strumbic helps three hired Bosnian thugs to hunt him down and kill him, della Torre makes a run for it through Croatia, Italy, and finally to London, where hell take Strumbic for all he's worth. A page-turning thriller shot through with black humor and razor-sharp dialogue, Zagreb Cowboy is the spectacular debut novel in a taut new crime fiction series.

The third installment in Alen Mattich's highly addictive Marko della Torre series. Autumn 1991. Civil war has broken out in Yugoslavia with Croatia's declaration of independence, and former secret policeman Marko della Torre is set adrift. Department VI, the internal investigations unit, is now in a state of paralysis as Belgrade struggles to maintain its hold as the regions centre of power. When the body of a young woman, identified as American agent Rebecca Vees, washes up on the shores of Italy, della Torre is summoned by U.S. authorities. He is the last person to have seen Rebecca alive. Her two colleagues have also been found shot dead on an island in Croatia, and della Torre is coerced into locating the man they think is responsible: the corrupt and unscrupulous Zagreb cop, Julius Strumbi. Forced to navigate Yugoslavia's bloody civil war in order to track Strumbi's whereabouts, della Torre has to decide whether he will warn his old friend or give him up to the Americans to save himself. In The Heart of Hell, Alen Mattich delivers a powerful political thriller that depicts the horrors and machinations of the Yugoslav civil war and the humanity of those who survive it.