Kismet (Kayankaya)

It all began with a favour. Kayankaya and Slibulsky were only trying to protect their friend Romario from his protectors, men who were demanding hard cash for the service. It ended with two bodies on the floor of Romario's restaurant, their faces covered in ghostly white make up. Kayankaya is determined to track down their identity, when he realises that he himself is being pursued by a faceless but utterly ruthless criminal gang. A new element has broken into the established order of Frankfurt gangland: Croatian nationalists, battle hardened from the wars in their homeland. And when Kayankaya rescues the teenage Bosnian, Leila, from what purports to be a refugee hostel, the stakes get even higher.

Kismet is a brilliant novel about organised crime, the fallout from the Balkan wars, and the madness of nationalism from one of Europe's finest crime writers.