The War Reporter by Martin Fletcher; St. Martin’s Press © 2015; ISBN 978-1-250-07002-9; 306 pages, $25.99.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—Set in Sarajevo (Bosnia) during the siege, and in Belgrade (Serbia) ten years afterwards, this novel tells of television journalist Tom Layne briefly encountering Serbian General Ratko Mladic near the former war-torn city and trying in the latter city to film a documentary about why Mladic, accused of being a war criminal, seemed immune from capture. (Beyond the time frame of the book, Mladic indeed was captured and turned over to the International Court in The Hague for trial.)
We are given to believe, by indirect reference, that Layne is Jewish, a second-generation Holocaust survivor, but it is left to our speculation how this may have motivated his dogged quest to find Mladic, or failing that, to explain what international powers might be protecting him, and why.
So, this is a Jewish book only by inference. In the main, it deals with the adrenalin rushes that come when TV journalists capture on camera a “good story” such as the pain of parents separated by the siege from their young child. A “good story” also might be officials, whose identities are masked, suggesting on camera that Mladic is being protected from capture by an international conspiracy extending far beyond the former Yugoslavia’s borders.
Amid it all, the unmarried Layne suffers the loss of a younger colleague, Nick, whom he considers almost like a son. Additionally, he falls in love with Nina, his “fixer,” a half-Muslim Bosnian woman, who helps arrange and interprets his interviews.
Nina at times is transfixed and attracted by Tom’s apparent sensitivity, and at other times is repulsed and infuriated by the casualness with which television journalists reduce human tragedy to such issues as lighting, camera angles, and sound quality. With her country bleeding, and members of her own family dying, Nina considers Tom an exasperating enigma. Which is the real Tom, the caring, gentle man, who can cry over an abandoned child? Or the hard-bitten one, who can gloat over a secretly recorded interview that might resuscitate his career?
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com