Review by Booklist Review
Bone-weary cops who carry the world's sorrows on their slumping shoulders are familiar figures in mystery fiction, but there is nothing hackneyed about Lieutenant Boruvka of the Prague police. The plight of this mournful detective, to whom "each murder victim seemed like a tragically unfinished novel," never feels like a literary device. Watching Boruvka struggle with the Communist bureaucracy in six stories set just before and after the "Prague Spring" of 1968, we share the burden of solving crimes in a society where the truth is usually something to be avoided. Whether the problem at hand involves a skeleton unearthed from a building site or the apparent suicide of an insignificant chanteuse, Boruvka battles his Party-member superiors with an ingratiating mix of cynicism and quiet cunning. Forced to take a personal stand in the last story, his action becomes not an abstract sacrifice for honor, but the piercing cry of an individual man who can't take it any longer. That the Iron Curtain isn't quite so impenetrable these days may have more to do with the unsung Lieutenant Boruvkas than it does with the policies of any politician. --Bill Ott
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Unlike its lighthearted predecessor, Sins for Father Knox , Skvorecky's latest collection of detective stories is less concerned with style than with a grittily realistic tone. In a poignant introduction, the author notes that he wanted to examine the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia through the eyes of a ``simple man''; in this he succeeds admirably, his sly instruction on recent history taking second place to the sprightly energy of these five atmospheric tales. Loosely based on real murder cases, they take irrepressible Czech lieutenant Boruvka from his modest beginning as an investigator of missing persons through the tumultuous events of 1968 and their aftermath. In ``Miss Peskova Regrets'' a Communist Party bigwig gives a young dancer LSD, then tries to make her subsequent death appear a suicide; such disparate clues as a four-leaf clover and a saucepan of boiled-over milk figure in the characteristically elegant solution. ``Strange Archaeology,'' ostensibly about a grisly homicide, provides a hilarious view of Prague's disastrous housing shortage. In ``Ornament in the Grass,'' Boruvka must decide whether two mischievous teenagers were murdered by trigger-happy invading Soviets or the cynical home army. Least compelling is the melodramatic ``Pirates,'' in which a Czech emigre attempts to smuggle a little girl into the West. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
These five mystery tales by an acclaimed Czech emigre writer feature the melancholy Prague detective of The Mournful Demeanor of Lieutenant Boruvka ( LJ 8/87) and Sins for Father Knox (LJ 2/1/89). Engaging, well written , and witty, they also offer chilling glimpses of life in Czechoslovakia around the time of the Soviet invasion. When the trails of murders of several young girls lead to people with political connections (a son of a high official involved with illegal drugs, a trucking company party secretary running a theft ring, a bank manager with years of party service, and a Soviet soldier), the cases are hushed up. To avenge his growing sense of outrage, Boruvka lets the man responsible for the death of a fanatical secret police informer escape out of the country, ending behind bars himself. Recommended.-- Marie Bednar, Pennsylvania State Univ. Libs., University Park (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
More somber than the mystery puzzles and parodies in previous Boruvka books (The Mournful Demeanor of Lieutenant Boruvka, Sins for Father Knox), these five longish stories are set in the mid-1960's Prague of internal upheaval and Soviet suppression. In all of them, with varying degrees of explicitness, middle-aged cop Boruvka finds himself thwarted or weighed down by the powers-that-be. In ""Miss Peskova Regrets,"" Boruvka connects a dancer's ""suicide"" to a Party bigwig's drag-and-sex parties--but is blackmailed into silence (because of his own extramarital impropriety). The least political story, ""Strange Archaeology,"" features that always-intriguing premise: the discovery of a skeleton that leads to the solution of a bygone murder. The Soviet presence comes into the foreground in ""Ornament in the Grass""--with the (officially) unsolved killing of two teen-age girls who like it) flirt, tease, and frustrate randy soldiers. ""Humbug,"" about the murder of a candy-company employee, brings together factory politics, anti-Semitism, and institutionalized corruption. And ""Pirates"" is double-layered in issues: the killing of an old man (a probable secret-police agent) seems at first to be the work of his neighbor, a well-known dissident: but Boruvka eventually realizes that the case involves the derring-do of an American pilot who illicitly airlifts Czechs to the West. Boruvka is glummer than ever here, especially since his daughter (already an unwed mum) is involved in a politically ill-starred romance with an American. But Skvorecky shrewdly balances the angst with dry humor, fetching character-details, and crisp narration--making this a darkly entertaining, if somewhat stark, addition to an unusual series. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
