A Dark Day in the White City (The Balkan Trilogy Book 1)

A Brutal Hunt Through a Fractured Belgrade

In a city gripped by unrest and shadowed by foreign power, one man moves with purpose—and leaves devastation in his wake. Orlovi, among the most feared figures in Belgrade, is searching for something stolen from him by the woman he once loved. What that item is remains unknown, but its importance drives him deeper into a violent, unraveling city.

Wherever Orlovi goes, bodies follow—each murder carried out with chilling precision. Detectives Kostic and Ristic trail him across Belgrade, certain they’ve found their culprit. Yet the brutality of the crimes doesn’t align with the man they thought they knew. As their investigation deepens, doubts emerge, and the truth begins to shift.

Haunted by memories and driven by obsession, Orlovi’s search leads him through old alliances, buried secrets, and a past tied to both justice and darkness. As tensions escalate and paths converge, a confrontation looms—one that will expose long-hidden truths and reshape everything.

Set against a backdrop of political instability and personal betrayal, A Dark Day in the White City is a gripping start to the Balkan Trilogy—blending psychological tension, mystery, and noir atmosphere into a relentless pursuit of truth.

Start reading A Dark Day in the White City today and uncover what lies beneath the surface.

Excerpt from the book

SHORTLY AFTER THE patient came under our care, he told us about a recurring dream that had been troubling his sleep of late. In the dream, he has just returned home after a long absence. Why he was away or where he had been, he has no idea whatsoever. His overriding emotion, the only thing occupying his mind, is to be reunited with his fiancée. But no matter how loud he shouts, or how hard he searches the apartment, he cannot locate her anywhere.

Returning to the main living space, he sits on the settee and resolves to wait patiently for her to return. Why he didn’t simply pick up the telephone and call her—the most logical course of action in the circumstances—he was at a genuine loss to answer.

After only the briefest of interludes, he hears soft, pitiful moaning and scratching noises coming from the wardrobe directly in front of him. Getting to his feet, he walks over to the wardrobe and opens the door. Huddled in the far corner, her face awash with tears, strands of damp, sweat-tangled hair plastered to her face, her arms wrapped around her knees as she slowly rocks back and forth, is his fiancée.

Deeply troubled by such a shocking discovery, he gently coaxes her out of her hiding place, picks her up, and carries her over to the settee. But when he whispers soft words of reassurance, and asks her exactly what happened, she doesn’t respond.

At first, he presumes that she is still too shaken up by whatever misfortune had befallen her. It’s only as he openly encourages her to speak that he realises that the tongue has been ripped from her mouth.

At this point in the dream, the patient always jolts bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat and panting for breath.

Naturally, we could draw on many case studies (primarily Freudian) to try and explain why this disturbing dream sequence kept playing out in the patient’s subconscious mind—perhaps his fiancée had been guilty of lying to him in the past. Understandably hurt by the betrayal, he never wanted to hear any more untruths or deceitful words exit her mouth again.

Alternatively, perhaps she was in possession of certain information that the patient was desperate to learn but, for whatever reason, she was unable or unwilling to reveal it to him.

The hypotheses could, of course, go on and on. But no matter how many different theories we suggested, the patient dismissed them all out of hand. Whether that was because they were too close to the truth and it made him feel uncomfortable, or whether (as he stated time and again) he saw no hidden meanings in dreams, just speculative theorising, we are yet to ascertain.