Overview
A Spine-Chilling Thriller Set in a City under Seige
In The Monkey House, Sarajevo is a city besieged by the atrocities of war. Stadium walls that once shook with the roar of Olympic crowds have since collapsed under the screams of artillery. Police Superintendent Rosso and the ragtag remains of his Sarajevo police force, however, remain dedicated to preserving what is left of the city's civil order. In their Sisyphean quest to uphold the law, one of their key informants is mysteriously murdered in a narcotics-infected Serb apartment complex called the "Monkey House." If the homicide is proven to be the work of Sarajevo's notorious crime boss, Luka, solving the case could break the black marketeer's grip on the city. But bringing Luka to justice could also drastically change the course of this relentless war and quite possibly lead to the fall of Sarajevo.
For Rosso, a Croat whose Serbian wife is losing a battle with alcoholism and whose Muslim goddaughter may be having an affair with Luka, this case has become a life mission, not only to defeat a formidable enemy and to save his family and city, but also to redeem his own dark and bloody legacy. In The Monkey House the stakes are high for solving a wartime murder, and a young, cocky American journalist named Branson Flett is there to report it all.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Wartorn Sarajevo provides the setting for this gripping, atmospheric thriller in the tradition of le Carr and Cruz Smith's Gorky Park. Police superintendent Rosso, a Croat and Sarajevo's "top cop," returns home from Zagreb to learn of a recent murder his ill-equipped, understaffed detective squad hasn't even bothered to investigate: of a Serbian dentistand sometime police informantfound dead in her bathtub. Luka, a dangerous warlord and black marketeer, is Rosso's top suspect, but Rosso's authority is mostly a memory of peacetime, while Luka's troops are active throughout the city. Nor can Rosso expect much help from the citizenrywhat is one more murder in a city engulfed by violence and death? Rosso's Serbian wife suggests he drop the matter as she hides in a haze of alcoholism and fear. Their Muslim goddaughter, Tanjawho may be having an affair with Lukaalso urges caution. But Rosso must stand against this rampant amorality, for very personal reasons, for his family and for his homeland. Fullerton, a Reuters reporter, steers clear of trying to explain the Bosnian conflict. Instead, he brings it to life through the hardships and dangers his characters accept as daily routinejust as, in this engaging and timely first novel, he dramatizes personal relationships every bit as thorny as the politics that have ravaged a once beautiful land. Author tour. (Aug.)Library Journal
In a fiction debut touted as the first thriller about the war in Bosnia, journalist Fullerton introduces Sarajevo Police Superintendant Russo, a Croat investigating the death of a Serb informant as the city explodes around him.Mary Carroll
In a bathtub in a high-rise building in Sarajevo--dubbed the Monkey House because most of its residents are Serbians and Bosnian Serbs--lies the body of a murdered woman. Zeljka Bukovac was Serbian, a dentist, an addict, and a police informer. Inspector Rosso, Croat, son of a notorious Ustashe war criminal, pushes to find Bukovac's murderer amid the never-ending slaughter of innocents in his beloved city and soon confronts a worthy adversary: the bully and black marketeer whose power rests on his access to weapons that the Bosnians desperately need. Journalist Fullerton, now with Reuters, covered the former Yugoslavia's conflicts for several years; his portrait of daily life in devastated Sarajevo is full of vivid, telling details. "The Monkey House" is an involving yarn, but it also conveys a reality much nonfiction from Bosnia misses: the ordinary, decent people of this multicultural nation are intensely aware of ethnicity, but only those brainwashed by demagogues--and those with something to gain--use ethnic differences to justify hatred and violence. A powerful, timely first novel.Kirkus Reviews
An impressive if bleak first novel from Reuters correspondent Fullerton, whose protagonist is an existential detective under fire from all quarters during the early winter of 1993 in war-torn Sarajevo.Tipped off that one of his department's informants has been killed, Police Superintendent Rosso braves the perilous streets of a city under siege to find the young woman's mutilated corpse in a largely unscathed apartment building known as The Monkey House. Although the Bosnian capital is still controlled by Croats, Serb snipers and artillerymen in the heights above the city have made it a living hell for what's left of the cold, hungry, and shell- shocked populace; municipal services are a memory; there's neither law nor order anywhere. Despite the odds against him, Rosso (a Croat with a sense of duty made the keener by remembrances of a long-dead father who was a Nazi collaborator) is grimly bent on solving the brutal murder. Although warned off by his beloved goddaughter Tanja, who's keeping company with Luka, the head of a local crime syndicate, he stubbornly persists. With a little help from Branston Flett, an American journalist who views Sarajevo's ethnic strife as a career-advancement opportunity, and with 11th- hour assistance from his political masters, Rosso gathers enough evidence to arrest Luka and have his armed and dangerous subordinates drafted into front-line units beyond the urban Gehenna. Shortly after the hardcase dealer in contraband is taken into custody, however, the Serbs (whom he supplies with ordnance) abduct Flett, precipitating a world-class flap in Western chancelleries and in the UN's peacekeeping command. In order to recover the kidnapped reporter, Rosso is invited to make what could prove an ultimate sacrifice. The honorable police officer's self- determined, if ambiguous, fate is of a piece with what has been revealed of his character over his four-day pursuit of justice.
A first-rate debut thriller, with harrowing detail showing the limits of a memorable man and his ruined city.