Excerpt from The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The first would-be assassin was a twenty-eight-year-old named Muhamed Mehmedbašic´. As the motorcade rolled past him at a stately pace, however, he lost his nerve. He later claimed that a nearby police officer had spooked him, and he worried that he might put the entire mission in jeopardy if he failed to hit his target. Minutes later, the car approached Nedeljko Čabrinović, a nineteen-year-old who had a compelling reason not to fear the long-term repercussions of his actions: he was dying of tuberculosis—a condition that was incurable in 1914.

Čabrinović broke the detonator of a grenade against a lamppost and hurled it at the archduke's car. Lojka spotted the bomb flying through the air and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. It's unclear whether the bomb bounced off the folded roof of the convertible or the archduke himself batted it away. Regardless, the bomb exploded underneath the third car in the procession, injuring several members of the imperial entourage and sending shrapnel flying into the crowd of spectators lining the street.

As chaos broke out, Čabrinović pushed his way through the crowd. He swallowed the cyanide powder as he fled, then jumped over the parapet into the Miljacka River to ensure a swift death. Unfortunately, the cyanide powder was of inferior quality; it seared his throat and stomach lining but didn't kill him. To add insult to injury, the river had largely dried up in the summer heat, leaving Čabrinović vomiting on the sandy riverbank. The failed assassin was soon accosted by a shopkeeper, an armed barber, and two police officers.

As an angry mob descended on Čabrinović, the archduke insisted on stopping the procession so he could check on his friends, who had sustained minor injuries in the explosion. After a short delay, he urged the motorcade forward: "Come on. That fellow is clearly insane; let us proceed with our programme." The Gräf & Stift continued on through the streets of Sarajevo, but the remaining assassins along the parade route lost heart, enabling the motorcade to arrive safely at the city hall minutes later.

A splinter had cut Sophie's cheek, but otherwise the royal couple was unharmed. The mayor, too nervous to improvise, began delivering an ill-timed speech. "All of the citizens of the capital city of Sarajevo find that their souls are filled with happiness," he said to the archduke and his wife, "and they most enthusiastically greet Your Highness's most illustrious visit with the most cordial of welcomes…" To this, the archduke exploded with anger, thundering away at the officials there to greet him: "I come here as your guest and you people greet me with bombs!" After a moment, Ferdinand collected his composure and delivered his own speech from prepared notes that were now splattered with the blood of an injured officer from the third car.

After the ceremonial exchanges, the archduke met with officials to discuss his schedule. It was then that Ferdinand decided to skip his afternoon engagements so that he and his wife could go straight to the hospital to visit those who had been wounded in the bombing. When a member of the archduke's staff warned that this could be dangerous, Oskar Potiorek, the governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, barked, "Do you think Sarajevo is full of assassins?" Everyone's patience was wearing thin.

Along with the governor, the archduke and duchess stepped back into the convertible. Lojka twisted the key in the ignition. In the confusion, nobody notified the drivers of the motorcade that they should take an alternative route to the hospital, and so the cars set off in the same direction that they had come. As a result, the first car turned onto Franz Joseph Street, which was on the original parade route leading to the National Museum that the archduke was scheduled to visit in the afternoon. Lojka followed. It was then that Potiorek realized the error. "This is the wrong way!" he shouted. "We are supposed to take the Appel Quay." Lojka rolled to a stop in order to shift gears. Unbeknownst to him, he had unwittingly presented the archduke as a stationary target to the one man in the crowd who was still determined to kill him.

Excerpted from The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris. Copyright © 2022 by Lindsey Fitzharris. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.