Belgrade Noir

The track record of Detective Miodrag Mika Golubjev in 1941 was as follows. He solved two murders-for-hire at the open market, one particularly cruel family homicide in the home of a former upper-class Belgrade family in the Dedinje quarter, and the murder of an old lady on Krunska Street, committed by an insane provincial student on the basis of some philosophical ideas. His feats during the first year of the German occupation included catching two arsonists, a woman who’d committed infanticide, one pedophile, and one pillager.

“He was lucky,” his colleagues gossiped when he was promoted and assigned the most difficult case in 1942. “It will rain on his parade,” jabbered less successful detectives from the crime division, and it appears that — at least at first — they were right.

The following article that ran in the local paper Opštinske Novine attests to this: