Sarajevo, Best friends Frito and Bannerman roll into town, still in search of the fortune they missed out on in the dot-com years. For a while it seems that soaking up reconstruction money isn't the worst plan ever. But then they both meet Clare, a prosecutor with the international war crimes tribunal, and they both realise she is the best person they've has ever met, and that they can't both have her as much as they would, ideally, like.
Meanwhile the city is overrun by black marketeers, poker hustlers, intelligence officers, and expat hedonists all high on Dayton money. By the time Frito and Bannerman have started bounty hunting men accused of war crimes, their lives have taken on all the risk - but very little of the money - that they'd bargained for Winner of the Betty Trask Award. Pretty well the first thing Bannerman did after moving to Sarajevo was fall in love with his best friend's girlfriend.
No, worse: his only friend's only girlfriend. His best friend was Frito, a big surly mother with a ton of money, Disinhibited Personality Disorder, and a knack for girls -- none of whom, perhaps as a result, had ever interested him long-term.
But he'd been looking for the one that would. He'd heard about this amazing thing love, had been trying to score some for years now -- he'd painted a target on every girl he met and shot himself out of a cannon at them, but none ever withstood the impact. Until that autumn of Frito was down in Sarajevo on business when he finally met someone.
He kept it quiet for a few months, behaving a bit odd admittedly, commuting back and forth across Europe to see her, until one bleak afternoon back in London, in the dregs of that year, he finally faced up to the responsibilities that true love demanded.
