Entanglement (Polish State Prosecutor Szacki Investigates)
If you are looking for a hard-nosed European police procedural, put Miloszewski’s Entanglement high on your list. The setting is modern-day Warsaw, but the atmosphere at times is as gray and bleak as that of a cold war spy thriller. The protagonist, however, isn’t Richard Widmark in a trench coat; rather, it’s the spiffy-dressing prosecutor Teo Szacki. Prematurely gray at 35, Szacki is confronted by a corpse with a shish-kabob skewer in his eye. The body was discovered in a wing of a Catholic church that was rented out for an avant garde psychotherapy session in which participants act out traumatic events in their lives. The therapist conducting the session, as well as the members of the group, are middle-class folk with no untoward pasts. But Warsaw is a city with a past. The secret police may be out of power, but they are by no means incapable of looking out for themselves. Szacki, though not above bending the moral code in his favor, is a no-nonsense cop. He puts lawbreakers away, never mindthe extenuating circumstances. Is he up to taking on the old secret police? The answer Miloszewski gives is wholly realistic if a bit disappointing to those who would like a Hollywood ending (but ever so satisfying to the rest of us). --Steve Glassman