... dark – and darkly humorous – European crime fiction at its best... (Reader Dad Blog)
Rage is a book by Poland’s number one crime writer, Zygmunt Miłoszewski, which has been released just yesterday in English. It became one of the bestselling books in
Polish literary history when it came out last year.
Zygmunt Miłoszewski is the biggest name in
Polish crime fiction, his addictive, gritty novels have been compared to the
Scandinavian crime masters. The first two novels Prosecutor Szacki series (A
Gain of Truth and Entanglement) have been made into films and
BBC Radio 4 are currently in the process of dramatizing Grain of Truth for
radio. His books have been translated into over 13 different languages.
Here’s a special excerpt for you,
readers of FLY HIGH!
Chapter Two
For a while Szacki was lost. He
remembered Olsztyn’s Warszawska Avenue as a wide road leading out of town past
the university, but it turned out to have an uglier sister—a short extension
lined with scruffy little tenements right next to the Old Town. He had to turn
left by Jan’s Bridge. The hospital was located opposite something that called
itself the “regional beer center.”
He showed the guard his ID and found a
parking spot between the buildings. This had once been the German garrison
hospital, probably of lesser importance, as the buildings of immortal red brick
looked much smaller and more modest than the neo-Gothic blocks of the city
hospital. Part of it looked neglected, and part had been renovated, with a
modern interior that was nicely integrated with the German architecture. The
place had the atmosphere of a building site, arising from the fact that
Olsztyn’s university medical faculty had only been up and running for a few
years. In a short time a squalid military hospital had been transformed into a
clinical marvel. Szacki had been to see Żenia’s mother here last year and had
realized that on the whole it had quite a human dimension, compared with the
various medical monstrosities he had seen in his career. That had been during a
hot spring, when the chestnut trees were flowering among the buildings, and the
old brick walls exuded a pleasant chill.
A chill was the last thing he needed now. He
did up his coat and quickly walked across to the only square building,
exceptionally coated in white plaster. It crossed his mind that if the man was
called Frankenstein, he was sure to look normal and behave naturally. It would
be a nice change after all the crazy pathologists he had met. Besides, he was a
university lecturer, and not some weirdo cutting up corpses all day long. He
had to be normal—he taught kids, didn’t he?
A vain hope.
Professor Ludwik Frankenstein, D.Sc., was
waiting for him at the top of the stairs, by the entrance to the anatomy
department. Well, well—he’d done everything he possibly could to make himself
look like a mad scientist. He stood straight as a reed, tall and thin, with the
long, aristocratic, classically handsome face of the only good German officer
in an American war movie. He had a steely gaze, a straight nose, as if drawn
with a set square, a short, fair beard trimmed like Lenin’s, round glasses in
very thin wire frames, and a bizarre medical gown with a mandarin collar and a
row of buttons down each side like an officer’s greatcoat. To complete the
image, all he needed was a pipe with a long stem, and some amputated hands
protruding from the pockets of his gown.
“Frankenstein,” he said in greeting.
The only thing missing was a clap of
thunder.
“Once this was the hospital
canteen,” he explained to Szacki, as he led the way through the lab.
“I see,” said Szacki, noticing some small
paper plates with the remains of cake and empty champagne bottles lined up
against the wall. “So buildings don’t change their habits.”
Soon after, Frankenstein opened a door and
they entered the dissection room, without doubt the most modern Szacki had ever
seen. There was a chrome-plated table, equipped with all the essential
instruments for dissection, as well as video cameras, lamps, and a powerful
hoist. He probably couldn’t deal with the smell of the corpse, but perhaps at
least he wouldn’t have to toss all his clothes in the washing machine after the
autopsy.
There were several rows of high chairs
towering around the table—this was not just a dissection room, but also a lecture
hall.
“Here,” said Frankenstein in a low voice,
“we strip death of its mysteries.”
The professor’s solemn words would have
sounded dignified, except that in this temple of death there were more empty
champagne bottles standing on the windowsills, balloons were free floating
against the ceiling, set in motion by the fan, and colored streamers were hanging
from the surgical lights. Szacki passed no comment on this evidence of a party,
or on the scientist’s words. He looked at the bones of yesterday’s German laid
out on the table. At first glance the skeleton looked complete. Szacki stuck
his hands in his coat pockets and tightly crossed his fingers. The scientist
had a weird name and looked like a madman, but he might just be a normal guy
with an unusual appearance. Down to earth, solid, pleasant.
“This table,” said the professor, stroking
the chrome surface, “is to a corpse what a Bugatti Veyron is to a seventy-year-old
playboy. It’s hard to imagine a better combination.”
A vain hope.
Szacki uncrossed his fingers, swallowed a
comment on whether in that case he should apologize for only providing old
bones, and got to the point: “So what’s the issue?”
“You, as a prosecutor, are sure to know the
basics of biology, the pseudoscientific version of it that is enough for
criminal investigation. How many years does it take for a man to become a
skeleton?”
“About ten, depending on the circumstances,”
Szacki replied calmly, though he felt rising irritation. “But to be in this
state, with no tissue, no cartilage, sinew, or hair takes at least thirty. Even
bearing in mind that corpses decompose faster in the open air than in water,
and much faster than when buried.”
“Very good. There are various minor factors,
but in our climate, left to itself, a corpse needs a minimum of two or three
decades to reach this state. That’s what I was thinking as I laid our rascal
out. I also thought the skeleton was complete enough for me to use it as a
jigsaw puzzle: I toss various pieces into bags, and the students have to put
them together against the clock. I was ready to make the missing pieces
myself.” He adjusted his glasses and smiled apologetically. “A little creative
hobby of mine.”
Szacki realized where this argument was
leading.
“But there are no pieces missing.”
“Exactly. That’s what got me thinking—it’s a
mystery. This corpse has been lying there for dozens of years, but not a single
bone has gone missing. No rat took even one?”
Szacki shrugged.
“In an enclosed structure made of reinforced
concrete.”
“That occurred to me, but I called some
friends who take an interest in the history of Olsztyn . . . Are
you from Olsztyn?”
“No.”
“I thought not. We’ll return to that. So I
called my friends, and they told me it was an ordinary air-raid shelter, a
cellar. So it wasn’t hermetically sealed, it had washing facilities, plumbing,
ventilation. You could say anything about it, but not that it was an enclosed
structure. Which means that rats, fighting for food, should have scattered
those remains into all four corners. Why didn’t they?”
Szacki just stared.
“The body has its secrets.” Frankenstein
lowered his voice, so nobody could have been in any doubt that he was about to
betray one of them. “Did you know that we have taste receptors in the lungs, as
well as on the tongue?”
“I do now.”
“And they’re for bitter tastes! The alveoli
react to bitter flavors. Which means that the ultimate remedy for asthma may
not be some miraculously manufactured substance but something basic, as long as
it’s bitter. I don’t envy the guy who discovered that. The pharmaceutical
companies have probably put a price on his head by now.”
“Professor, please . . .”
“To the point. But one more fact to take
home with you: The cervix has taste receptors too. In its turn, it likes a
sweet flavor. Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that to give
them vitality, the spermatozoa travel along on a base of fructose?”
Szacki decided the best defense against a
madman was attack.
“Curious,” Szacki said, imitating
Frankenstein’s tone. “Maybe in that case you’d like to go into business
producing huge chocolate vibrators? Your knowledge of human anatomy would be
indispensable.”
Frankenstein adjusted his glasses.
“I’ll give it some thought. But let’s get
back to the bones.” He folded his hands behind his back and strolled around the
table. “Here was an enigma, the key to which was this very corpse. So I set
about examining it. At first I hadn’t noticed—”
“Is it a man or a woman?”
“A man, of course. I hadn’t noticed, because
sometimes even as a result of decomposition, the phalanges in the toes do not
separate but remain stuck together by thin joint capsules and degeneration.
Have a look.” He picked up a single bone and tossed it in Szacki’s direction.
Szacki caught it without a second thought;
he had seen worse corpses than the professor had.
It was two small bones, one about two inches
long, the other shorter, joined together by a thin layer of white transparent
cartilage.
“Don’t you see anything surprising?”
“The joint hasn’t decomposed.”
“Try moving those bones.”
He tried, and to his amazement, he could
bend them. There couldn’t possibly be any working joints in a corpse that had
been rotting for decades.
“And now try to separate them.”
A gentle pull was all it took; in one hand
he was holding the shorter bone, which ended in a small metal plate with a hole
in it, like the washer that goes under a nut. The longer bone still had its
cartilage, tipped with a half-inch square bolt.
“What is it?”
“It’s a silicone endoprosthesis for a
metatarsophalangeal joint, also known as a floating endoprosthesis, a modern
solution in the field of joint prostheses. A surgical way of dealing with a
condition known as stiff big toe. Extremely irritating for sportsmen. And for
women, because they can’t walk in high heels. Judging by his cranial sutures,
this man was about fifty. So neither a woman nor a sportsman. He probably liked
to look after himself.”
Szacki’s brain was working at full throttle.
“Does it have a serial number?”
“Normal ones, yes, silicone ones, no. But
there’s only one center in Warsaw where they make these things—they specialize
in foot surgery. One of my former students is making a fortune there because
there are women who are prepared to pay the price of a car for the perfect
anatomical products to go with their high-heeled shoes. I called him out of
curiosity.”
“And?”
“So far he has only ever implanted one
prosthesis of this kind and size. For a patient from Olsztyn. Who was very much
counting on this operation because he loved going for long walks about his
beloved Warmia. And how do you find life in Olsztyn?”
“It’s a great place,” muttered Szacki.
He needed names and details.
Frankenstein beamed and straightened up, as
if about to get a medal from the Führer.
“I quite agree. Do you know that we have
eleven lakes within the city limits? Eleven!”
“Did he say when the operation took place?”
asked Szacki, thinking that if the corpse were five or seven years old, the
case wouldn’t be very fresh, but would still involve a mystery.
“Two weeks ago. Ten days ago the patient
walked out of the clinic and drove home. November fifteenth, to be exact. He
was greatly looking forward to his Saturday walk.”
“That’s impossible,” said Szacki, staring at
the bones he was holding, from a foot that had apparently been strolling about
the Warmian forest just over a week ago. He joined them together and tried
bending them again—the artificial joint worked perfectly.
Frankenstein handed him a small sheet of
paper.
“The patient’s details.”
Piotr Najman, resident of Stawiguda. Born in
1963, turned fifty a week ago. Or would have.
Book Blurb
A skeleton has been discovered in
a sealed bunker in the idyllic Polish city of Olsztyn. It’s probably a relic
from the German occupation, another reminder of Olsztyn’s tangled historical
identity. Famous prosecutor Teodor Szacki is called to the scene and soon
discovers the remains are, in fact, quite fresh. The flesh has been chemically
removed.
Szacki questions the dead man’s
wife. Her answers are unhelpful yet he knows she’s hiding something. Then
another victim surfaces—a violent husband, alive but maimed—giving rise to a
theory: someone is targeting domestic abusers. Upright and occasionally
misogynistic, Szacki is forced to reassess his perceptions of morality and
justice.
Fast-paced, addictive and
spine-chilling, Rage has been hailed for its sensitive portrayal of
domestic abuse by women’s groups in Poland and serves to make the reader
question: what kind of rage can drive a man to kill?
About the author: Zygmunt Miłoszewski
Zygmunt Miłoszewski is the one of the world’s best-known contemporary Polish writers,
whose work is compared with that of the Scandinavian masters of the crime
genre. The translation rights to his books have been sold for publication in
thirteen different languages (including the UK). The first two novels in the
Prosecutor Szacki series have been made into films. He is the only author to
date to have won The High Calibre Award for the Best Polish Crime Novel twice
(2007 and 2012). The most prestigious of his many other international awards
are the Polityka Passport in the literature category, which he won in 2015 for Rage,
and two nominations to the French Prix du Polar Européen (2014 and 2015) for
the Best European Crime Novel. Zygmunt is also involved in writing Polish TV
drama, The Prosecutor.
The Szacki Trilogy
Rage is the third book in the Szacki trilogy, which was designed
as three stand-alone novels, connected only by their protagonist, Prosecutor
Teodor Szacki. All three examine different Polish cities and three different
social issues, important for both Poland and Europe. Entanglement is
set in Warsaw and explores the troubled cultural complexities caused
by the disappearance of the Iron Curtain. A Grain of Truth dissects
anti-Semitism and xenophobia in provincial Sandomierz, a picturesque medieval
town.
Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translator)
Antonia is a full-time translator
of Polish literature, and twice winner of the Found in Translation award. She
has translated works by several of Poland’s leading contemporary
novelists and authors of reportage. She also translates crime fiction by
Zygmunt Miłoszewski, poetry, essays, and books for children. She is a mentor
for the BCLT’s Emerging Translators’ Mentorship Programme, and Co-Chair of the
UK Translators Association.
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