As a long-time reader of thrillers and mystery novels, Marty MacDaid has always been drawn to international conspiracies, compelling characters and morally murky situations. Travelling extensively through the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, an idea slowly formed of a fictional laketown named Beltova, a place that drew a little bit on everywhere he had been, but that could stand in for any nation embattled by border disputes, local corruption, predatory international interests and clueless British and American tourists. Led by the reluctant detective Aleksandr Melik, Murder in Beltova is Marty MacDaid's debut novel and the first in the Melik series. A prequel, entitled Melik's Game, is slated for September.