New Book Alert: Something for Bebe by Neil A. White; Intricate Suspenseful Thriller About War Crimes and Revenge During and After The Bosnian War

 New Book Alert: Something for Bebe by Neil A. White; Intricate Suspenseful Thriller About War Crimes and Revenge During and After The Bosnian War

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: The Bosnian War was a conflict that lasted from 1992-1995 and involved the countries of former Yugoslavia. After the Eastern bloc collapsed, various ethnic groups such as the Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) warred against each other in the country now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ethnic cleansing occurred as Bosniaks and Bosnians Croats were forced to flee their homes or were exiled by the Army of the Republika and Serb paramilitaries. Methods included killing of civilians, rape, torture, destruction of civilian, public and cultural property, looting and pillaging, and relocations of various populations. Between 700,000 and 1,000,000 Bosniaks were removed from their homes by Serbian forces. Several people including Serbian politicians, soldiers, and officials were eventually tried by the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. As with many violent conflicts, Bosnia and Herzegovina is still trying to recover from those terrible days.

The Bosnian War is the backdrop for Something for Bebe by Neil A. White, an intricate and suspenseful thriller about long awaited revenge during and after the Bosnian War. It tells the story of an American journalist who vows to destroy the men who ruined his wife and her family's lives.

Veteran widowed journalist, Elliot Kruger is dying and he has something important to do before he shuffles off this mortal coil. He mails one note to four different men telling them that they may not know him but he knows them, that he is their conscience, and that he is coming for them. He then sends some information to Madison "Maddy" Holt, his young fellow journalist and protegee to research the story on what he is planning to do. Finally, he travels to former Yugoslavia to see justice done up close and personal with Maddy, the CIA, Serbian forces, and other interested and violent parties close behind.

Something for Bebe is a novel that is a thrilling chase and an engaging mystery rolled into one. Maddy and her friend, Grant Stanhope, travel to the former Yugoslavia to piece together the various questions of Elliot's past and why he traveled such a long distance to see justice done. They are constantly aware that they are being monitored and are chased out of hotel rooms by suspicious characters. Many characters are killed in graphic ways. One in particular is found in a men's room with entrails, blood, and organs around him, a sign that not only someone wanted this character dead but to suffer before their death. 

Calls and messages to Grant's mother, who works for the State Department, reveal that this case has higher stakes than Elliot's one man revenge. Many of the higher ups in Europe and the United States don't mind playing the people under them like chess pieces and it shows. There are also other characters whose motives are a complete surprise adding further twists to the storyline.

The highlight of the book are the chapters that are set in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the past and present. As Elliot searches for his old enemies and Maddy and Grant search for Elliot, the Reader learns the story of Elliot's late wife, Berina "Bebe" Berberovic. The chapters reveal her as a Bosniak woman who was forced to watch as her neighbors were exiled, family members are killed or separated from her, and she is imprisoned. During her imprisonment, she is tortured and raped. It is a truly gripping and heartbreaking account of a woman being made to suffer because she is Muslim in a country that is violently prejudiced against them. Bebe's story is just one example of the many who suffered through those horrendous war years.

The Bosnia and Herzegovina described in the novel's present is still coming to terms with this violent past. Many of the characters that Maddy, Elliot, and Grant encounter have selective amnesia in not wanting to recall those days. They want to retain a small fraction of peace in which they were deprived from nearly 30 years ago. A whole generation has been born and matured since those days and only have ruined buildings and villages containing a smaller populace to tell them. This is a populace that will not and cannot remember those days.

Unfortunately, some of the perpetrators have gone unpunished. While some were made examples of during the tribunals, others escaped to other countries using pseudonyms. One of the more sadistic characters is arrogant enough to practically hide out in plain sight, still believing in his old prejudices and is willing to look for political allies to enable him to continue the work that he started during the War. He is a truly vile being and it is not a great loss in hoping that justice, in the form of Elliot, comes calling.

Something for Bebe is an exciting and heartbreaking account of war and revenge revealing that sometimes, retribution can wait but it does happen.