Zofia Turbotyńska’s favourite pastimes are organising her university professor husband’s career, hiring and firing housemaids and taking a keen interest in Cracow society. Though once engaging, these trifles now leave her wanting so she decides to plan a charity raffle and takes herself off to Helcel House. Helcel House is a retirement home run by nuns and houses people from all classes including a countess and a baroness. As she starts planning her raffle, Mrs Mohr, one of the residents goes missing. Zofia asked herself, ‘How can a frail old lady simply vanish without any trace?’ and takes it upon herself to find the disappearing old woman. Her investigation leads her into a dark world of revenge, hatred and murder.....so much more thrilling than firing housemaids. 

Mrs Mohr Goes Missing is an entertaining and enjoyable book though in parts it felt as if the story was swallowed up by the descriptive historical backdrop. However I did learn a little about Cracow in the late 1800’s so it wasn’t completely unwelcome. I did like the main characters very much, Zofia is a snob but her dogged determination and sense of right throughout the story endeared her to me. Her husband Ignacy is a man of habit, he reads the same newspaper, in the same chair, at the same time every day whilst telling Zofia about his day at work over supper - I found him delightful. 

I think that the translation could have been better but I’m not sure if that would have made the novel any more interesting. 

Thank you to Oneworld Publications and NetGalley who provided this book to me in exchange for my unbiased review.

A quirky historical mystery with the unusual setting of turn of the century Poland, I was both amused and educated by this book.
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I had the chance to read a preview copy of the book thanks to NetGalley and the publishers.

A very charming novel set in Poland in the late 19th century.  Zofia is a bit of a social climber and fancies herself a detective so, when an elderly lady goes missing from the local convent, she charges herself with the task of getting to the bottom of the mystery.  She encounters more than she bargains for.  This is a funny, spirited book as well as being poignant at times.  A very good mystery read.

Translated Polish historical fiction and a murder mystery with a female amateur detective plus an incredible cover – just my cup of tea. Thanks to NetGalley and Oneworld for my arc – this book is now available to buy.

Before I even looked at the content as such, I was already all for reading this book as there isn’t nearly enough translated fiction out there. The book has been supported by the European Council as well as the publishers and it is part of Oneworld’s fab translated fiction catalogue, which you can find here. Mrs Mohr has been translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

So Milena, what is the book actually about, I hear you say: This is the first amateur detective mission for Zofia Turbotynska, a 38-year-old, middle-class, married woman living in Cracow in 1893. Always wanting to improve her social standing and determined to relieve her boredom, she becomes involved in a charity project connecting her with the nearby Helcel House, a new retirement home run by nuns. Zofia is pulled into (or rather, she actively involves herself in) the hunt for the murderer of one of the old ladies there (Mrs Mohr of the title) and of course, there is more death to follow. Zofia, reminiscent of Miss Marple, discovers that her talent and passion lies in detective work.

I enjoyed…
The setting is a fresh take on  Golden Age crime themed mysteries: Although I know a fair bit about Golden Age crime, I know very little indeed about Poland’s history and next to nothing about Krakow itself. I really appreciated the preface with a very brief description of that period in Polish history. I thought it incredibly interesting to see what was going on elsewhere in Europe in Victorian times i.e. Emperor Franz Joseph Habsburg, ruler of Austria-Hungary. Plus, the entire book has that almost indefinable East Europeanness that I adore in books – I am very much drawn to fiction set in these parts.

So, without going into a history lecture, I will keep it brief and say that Krakow was a melting pot of diverse ethnicities, languages, cultures and religions. It was a place of divided loyalties, those loyal to Austria and nationalists increasingly longing for independence. Like so many other countries, it was also a place of inequality in terms of gender and the class system. All of this becomes apparent, mostly in a dry humoured, digestible fashion that reminded me of other Victorian narratives focusing on witty social commentary. This isn’t a book to challenge, it is a light read but the awareness is very much there and to be honest, I just really enjoyed the snarkiness and often witty commentary.

The sheer quirkiness of the narrative and especially the main character of Zofia: I will be honest and say that at first, I couldn’t connect with Zofia; she felt rather two-dimensional and was just incredibly unlikable. But I gave her a chance and as the story progressed, there were some glimpses into her character that showed the potential of a much more complex character. She may hide that side of herself well but there is definitely something intriguing about her below her bourgeois surface. Zofia is definitely a force of nature and I admired that in what was very much a man’s world. She uses the tools available to her, playing the social system to get to the complicated truth of her case. The fact that she hides it all from her professor husband and her work is never publicly acknowledged, illustrates perfectly the double life she leads in order to find herself. I also loved the chemistry between Zofia and her two sidekicks, her cook Franciszka and the wonderful nun, Sister Alojza at Helcel House. She by no means sees them as equals, there is much superiority and naive thinking on Zofia’s part, but nevertheless, these women unite and use their intelligence and skills to solve the mystery together.

It could have been better…

The overplaying of stereotypes and the often too obvious nod to the Golden Age of crime fiction: Whilst I read the book as a humorous ode to Golden Age crime, sometimes it felt too over the top, it borrowed too much, and this affected the story’s originality.  A lot of the characters were types too, with very little depth apart from their function within the plot or to support the social/political statements being made. I thought this was a shame.

Too many internal monologues: Sophia has a lot of internal conversations where she keeps retelling the story so far, trying to work out what has happened and where this will lead her. It felt pretty repetitive at times. And she never reaches any conclusions or even hints of conclusions but then suddenly at the end, she knows everything. For me, this made  both the flow and coherence of the narrative disjointed.

The highlighting of Cracow’s Jewish inhabitants: I’ll be honest and say I didn’t understand what the authors (incidentally, the pen name Maryla Szymiczkowa is pseudonym for the writers Jacek Dehnel and Piotr Tarczynski)  were trying to achieve with Zofia’s haphazard way of regularly and noticeably pointing out which characters were Jewish. This didn’t seem to go anywhere and felt odd. The preface tells us that a quarter of the city’s population was Jewish, but most were not assimilated and led separate lives, even those assimilated into society were treated as second class citizens. I felt that an opportunity to explore this was missed.

The translation of the local/national accents/dialects: It felt too much of a caricature. As a reader and translator, I think that such things are rarely done well and often choosing to leave the accent to the reader’s imagination is a more effective option. When dialect is done well it can add a valuable layer of meaning, but this was not the case here. Again, I wasn’t quite sure whether there is an element of  parody to the dialect – if so, I can see why it’s there, but it still didn’t work for me.

So, overall…
It is the first book in a series, and I think there was enough there to hook me and for me to hope that the things I wasn’t too impressed with will be developed and straightened out as the series continues. I will certainly give book 2 a go when it is translated. And I hope the next cover is just as wonderful 😊

The thing with humour is that you either share the humour and find the amusing tidbits funny or you don't and then the whole book becomes annoying. Sadly, I just did not find it amusing at all, but that's not really anyone's fault and does not make this a bad book. It just was not right for me.

I picked this book up mainly for the reason that it's written by a Polish author and playing in 19th century Poland.
I liked the rough around the edges main character Zofia and enjoyed her investigation into the murders, but it was noticable that the translation felt a bit off sometimes. I'm not usually one to read much of the mystery genre, but wanted to give this a shot.

I can definitely recommend this to anybody interested in historical murder mysteries with an interesting female nain character.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with an eARC.

This is a translated historical mystery from Maryla Szymiczkowa, a refreshing take in its historical European setting on the classic age of golden crime with a structure that echoes the likes of Christie, including the finale with its assembled cast of interested parties and suspects where the truth and a killer is revealed by the protagonist, 38 year old Zofia Turbotynskya. She is married to Ignacy, a university medical professor, whose career promotions have been engineered by the wily Zofia. Set in 1893 in the Poland and the city of Crakow of the time, a melting pot of diverse ethnicities, languages and religion that reflects the regional history and culture. It took me a little time to warm to the flawed Zofia, she engages in familial rivalries, determined to improve her position, a name dropper, with every intention of climbing the social ladder, in many ways this novel is a study in the social manners and class divisions of the time in this part of Europe. 

Zofia writes poetry, which has yet to receive the public acclaim that she feels it deserves and is engaging in organising a charity raffle, seeking the patronage of elderly aristocratic women to raise her social and public profile in society. To this end she visits Helcel House, a retirement home run by Mother Zaleska. Zofia finds herself distracted by the disappearance of a judge's widow, Mrs Mohr, and is instrumental in the discovery of her body. This is just the beginning of the murders and disappearances at Helcel House, where investigating magistrate Klossowitz is dismissive of Zofia and her input. Aided by her cook, Franciszka, Zofia develops a taste for poking about in other peoples' business, whilst keeping her husband in the dark about what she is doing. She is a force of nature, with a talent for cajoling the truth from witnesses and suspects alike, not above engaging in underhand machinations, and making extensive use of her wide ranging social contacts to get to the complicated truth of the case.

The author includes some real life figures from this historical era, and does a stellar job of evoking the atmosphere of the period and the location with her rich descriptions of Crakow, its social and political class divisions, culture, religion and attitudes of women. The more I read of Zofia, the more I began to like her, sure there are times when she is distinctly unlikeable, but as a woman of the times, there were not many opportunities for women to make their mark or to develop their skills outside of the home. She begans to feel increasingly confident in what is a man's world as she begins to get results from all the efforts she expends on the case, although none of it is publicly acknowledged, and she is hiding her successes from Ignacy. This is a wonderfully quirky and entertaining read from Maryla Szymiczkowa, which I recommend highly to those looking for a slightly different take on the classic crime tradition with its unusual location of Crakow in the tail end of the 19th century. Many thanks to Oneworld Publications for an ARC.

This is an interesting book. I think it suffers a little in the translation, because so much of the story and its events are rooted in Poland and polish ideas, culture and lore. It's fun and amusing but I found myself struggling to follow and keep attention as I was reading. Definitely for readers who like stories with a bit of a gothic touch but enjoy the Agatha Christie style mystery sleuthing.

A really deliciously smart and amusing novel. Zofia Turbotyńska is a wonderful firecracker of a snobby protagonist whose shameless social climbing and desperate craving for something more satisfying in life were both utterly endearing. While a lot of modern novels which try to walk the line between comedy and mystery often fall into farce, Zofia's adventures were as cleverly amusing as a Jane Austen and as intriguingly mysterious as an Agatha Christie. The 19th century Polish setting was constructed with a light and elegant touch that was as entertaining as it was believable, and the translation was light and really quite delightful. I really look forward to seeing what Zofia and Maryla Szmyczkowa do next.