Small world

The three Croatian crime writers whose names I have recently discovered (Goran Tribuson, Pavao Pavlicic and Jurica Pavicic) have done much writing of other kinds: science fiction, journalism, film criticism and, if I remember correctly, non-crime novels. I guessed that this was one by-product of their membership in a small group. Since they write in a language not widely read, perhaps these men have to be versatile if they want to make a living writing.

Then I received another charming piece of evidence that Croatian writers are part of a tightly knit community. The owner of the Internet parlor that I made the Dalmatian Coast headquarters of Detectives Beyond Borders not only was acquainted with Pavicic's work, he knew Pavicic himself. God forbid I should spend more than, say, forty-five minutes a day blogging while on vacation, but that place left me with a good feeling about Split. The owner and staff played good music -- Jimi Hendrix, just enough Grateful Dead to avoid making me sick, and, best of all, Brazil's Caetano Veloso.

I asked the owner if Veloso had ever played in Split. No, he said, "This is the end of the world."

I hope he gets the opportunity to see Veloso one day and also to achieve his real dream: to see Neil Young. For now, though, Split is just fine as the smallish, lively, gorgeously situated, historically rich city that it is.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Goran Tribuson
Pavao Pavličić
Jurica Pavičić

Crime zone Croatia

Lars at Krimi-Couch adds the name of Jurica Pavicic to the list of Croatian crime writers. A quick and dirty search turns up this on Pavicic:

On December 7th 1991 home of Mihajlo Zec, well-to-do Zagreb butcher and ethnic Serb, was visited by a group of reserve policeman. In those days such visits usually ended with people being taken away only to be found executed. Zec apparently tried to escape and was killed. His wife Marija and 12-year old daughter Aleksandra were taken in a police vehicle and later executed. The perpetrators were relatively quickly arrested and admitted the killings during interrogation. But due to procedural screw-up their confessions were invalid and whole criminal case was dropped. Instead of receiving prison sentences, the killers later received military decorations and pensions. The killings later served as inspiration for Ovce od gipsa, novel by Jurica Pavicic, later adapted into controversial movie Svjedoci.

This has overtones of Dario Fo's play Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and it suggests once again that I was too hasty to assume that no Croatian crime writers had written about life in their own war zone of the 1990s.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Jurica Pavičić