My suggestion is to experience this novel as primarily a humorous study of manners, gender, and class politics (with a smidge of religious bigotry) in late 18th century Cracow that uses a murder investigation as a method by which to throw these characters together. Is there a murder? For sure, but there's a lot of information kept from the reader so we're not in "fair play" territory which can be frustrating if that's your thing. And the big revealing clue is completely kept from you which is kind of bs. There's a long ass parlor scene at the end that ties it all up (which I remain dubious of) but for the most part we're talking about plum conserves and the social intricacies of the bourgeoisie. It's not a world that I normally read about and the writing is tremendously fun so I'd definitely recommend - it's a cozy and a wonderful light read.

I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the ebook. A great women's fiction novel. Love the cover

This historical mystery takes place in Cracow in the late 1800s. Socialite Zofia’s maid seems to be missing. What has happened to Karolina? What will it be like for Zofia to go outside of her comfortable existence to try to find out? Suffice it to say that she learns a great deal about the less salubrious aspects of life in her city.

This is the second book in a series following on Mrs. Mohr goes missing. Its story is told with flair and humor. It also casts an eye on the roles of women during the time period.

Karolina and the Torn Curtain is a book that I can confidently recommend. Many thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for this title. All opinions are my own.

The synopsis sounded very intriguing so I was interested in reading this book. However, the plot was slow moving, and I could not connect with the characters. Still, I recommend this for fans of Tessa Harris!

Loved the descriptive scenes of Cracow at the end of the 19th century, this is a well written mystery with great characters centering on Zofia and the disappearance of her maid. Well worth the read.

This was a great mystery story; I loved the plot twists and turns, the cover is amazing and this made me laugh with all the wit involved.

This book is more about 19th century Poland, its people, traditions, customs and society than it is about crime and mystery.

I found the story of Karolina's (maid) murder to be secondary to the story of Zofia's domestic life and social activities. It was quite interesting and fun to see Crakow through Zofia's eyes and to read her running commentary on personalities, customs and traditions.

This book would be interesting to those who love history, 19th century and Europe. For the lovers of crime, whodunit and mysteries, Karolina and the Torn Curtain takes a very round about way when it comes to solving the crime. But it does gets solved.

Interesting, unusual, peculiar and long-winded in places but overall fun read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for kindly providing me with a digital copy of this book for review.
I’ll be utterly honest here- I really struggled to get into this book and I did put it down for a while and considered not finishing it. I’m not sure if it was translation issue, or I just didn’t connect with the story. However, I did persist and I found the second half of the book a much more enjoyable read.
I had this pinned down as a cozy mystery but I think this is maybe a bit more grittier than most cozy’s. It deals with quite heavy topics such as prostitution and exploitation. It’s not just the upper class, more mature lady poking her nose into police cases because she’s bored. For a start, our lead character has an investment into the murder she starts to investigate as it was her maid.
I enjoyed the Polish setting of this book and found it quite a change from the usual.
I am glad I did complete the book but can’t wholeheartedly say I loved it as I did struggle so much to begin with.

I really enjoyed this book. It managed to integrate humor with the murder mystery in a seamless and enjoyable way. Definitely would recommend.

It's the first book I read by this author and even if I found the story interesting the language was a bit too stilted for my tastes.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A book that I was not prepared to read; I was bogged down in what I felt was a novel pretending to have been written a hundred years ago, and usually I have no problem with these (are you listening, Boris Akunin?) but in this case, it didn't work for me. Three and a half stars for an intriguing story that felt too laborious to read.

Sincere thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with a free digital ARC of this novel, which in no way influenced my review or rating.

Last year I listened to “Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing” on audiobook, the first book in this series, and loved it! I was so excited to get a NetGalley copy of “Karolina and the Torn Curtain” and continue the series. These books are pretty independent, so you could theoreticall read them in any order. I am so happy these are getting translated into English, they are really unique books!

The writing in this mystery series is so complex and dense, which leads me to believe it is a top notch translation. The pace is a little slow because the writing is so detailed and there are so many archaic 19th century words thrown in. I actually appreciated reading this on the kindle because I was able to look-up definitions instantly… It’s great writing. Definitely not your standard cozy mystery. Because of the format and writing style, it did take me a lot longer to finish than when I listened to the audiobook last year, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the journey. This book is more fun if you take your time reading it and researching events or places along the way.

The character of Zofia Turbotynska, housewife in 1890s Poland and amateur sleuth, is so clever and sneaky. She is also funny, with a dry sense of humor. Through Zofia, the reader learns a lot about Polish history and culture, the early suffragette movement that our protagonist is resistant to, and religious tensions in the country. Maryla Szymiczkowa (a writing duo’s pseudonym) inserts true story into the setting and plot, cameoing historic figures like Polish musician turned politician Paderewski and librarian extraordinaire Karol Estreicher.

Interestingly, the plot of this 2nd book in the series is much more serious than Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing. After Zofia’s maid is murdered, Zofia begins to discover the dark underbelly of Crakow’s sex trafficking and brothel operations. Again, you’ll learn a lot and hopefully be surprised along the way!

This is a detective novel set in late 19th Century Poland, featuring a socialite with a penchant for gossip, Zofia, as the detective, and her trusted ( and very intrepid ) cook as her assistant. Sofia's beloved maid has been murdered, and Zofia will not rest till her killer is brought to justice. The setting is very well-evoked, and the language flows very smoothly, this is a masterful translation. The fascinating part about this book is the very unique context. Zofia leads a comfortable life as the wife of a professor, seemingly unchanged from her mother's before her. That curtain of appearances, though, hides a far more complicated reality. The end of the 19th century saw a world in turmoil. Poland was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and that was crumbling, with corruption being rife throughout the chain of command. Echoing the adage of politics being personal , the social order was being upended, The workers of the world were uniting, women were being educated, and horror of horrors, universal suffrage was being seen as a right. All these circumstances are more than enough to make a delicately reared professors wife clutch her pearls in horror! Zofia, however, for all her prejudices given the society she belonged to, is not an unsympathetic protagonist. The tone of the book, firstly, is deeply feminist. Also, unlike most detective fiction, where the detective is omniscient and righteous, Zofia almost always leaps to the wrong conclusions, and it's interesting to see her assumptions being dismantled. She might assume something based on her narrow and parochial view of the world, but someone, usually from a different sphere of life, quickly disabused her of those notions. She's always willing to change her mind,though, when confronted with facts, and her sheltered, conservative upbringing and lack of exposure never blind her to her ignorance. Unlike her husband the scientist , who ironically never makes an attempt to change, and isn't receptive to new ideas. Through her investigations, Zofia encounters several fascinating characters, including some real life ones, and by the end of the book she's a lot more aware of how politics affects people, and she's a lot more empathetic. Her investigations are hugely helped by Francizka, her cook and confidant, who, unlike usual sidekicks, is responsible for uncovering most of the major revelations that help them solve the case. The title is the theme of the book- the curtain of appearances over the 19th Century was tearing- not just affecting the characters of this book, but on the centuries old Austro-Hungarian Empire. The 20th Century with all its upheavals was waiting, to rip it completely apart.
#KarolinaandtheTornCurtain #NetGalley

I read the first in the series last year with interest, as this is a fascinating time (late 1800s Cracow, Poland) that I know very little about. I thought the first book was a fair starting point for a new series, I wasn't sure if I would continue. I was therefore very pleased when I started the Netgalley digital arc and saw that the authors were doing something much more interesting with this book in the series- they are taking our protagonist, the difficult, haughty, social-climbing professor's wife, Zofia Turbotyńska, and dropping her into situations that test her understanding of the world.

In this installment, number 2 of the series, we open with her main goes missing and is found murdered. She is called in as the woman's employer and immediately wants to find out what happened to her. The hunt takes her into parts of Cracow that she had only heard rumors of and has her confronting some of her own assumptions along the way.

Zofia's character is a perfect foil for us to see how challenging some of the new push for women's rights were at the time. She is particularly irritated at the appearance of young women at the university, even though she herself is smart and would have benefitted from formal education. So it's fun to watch her eyes slowly open to the harsh realities and challenges that face some women as her investigation has her looking into prostitution and human trafficking.

I was quite amused and pleased by this installment of the series and it has piqued my interest in reading further as the authors' works in the series are translated into English.

I would like to thank the publishers for access to the e-galley in return for an impartial review.

Poland, police-corruption, political-corruption, 1890s, murder, murder-investigation, amateur-sleuth, women-sleuths, trafficking, historical-research, historical-fiction, cultural-exploration*****

Set in Poland at about the time when some of my grandparents left and came to a Polish enclave in Wisconsin, the names and speech patterns are only too familiar. Many thanks to Antonia Lloyd-Jones for her translation of this fun mystery. I also thought it a marvelous thing to "see" Crakow as it once was instead of the disaster left by the last world war.
Zofia is a rather snobbish wife of a professor who has a quick wit and an investigative bent. When one of her maids is found to have been murdered, her investigation (AKA snooping) brings her to the world of involuntary trafficking (which has yet to be eradicated in today's world). The main characters are perfect foils and the humor keeps the reality at a distance. Well done and even more enjoyable when the names are familiar in our area!
I highly recommend this book and plan to buy a print copy for my local library (and nag my Cleveland kid to do the same).
I requested and received a free temporary ebook copy from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner Books via NetGalley. Thank you!

I am not sure how I feel about this book. It is an interesting glimpse of old Cracow and its elite then. But it' meanders a lot (took me a long time to finish this) and the "detective" Zofia, a matron married to a respectable professor of the university, did not really endear herself to me. She is a lady long set in her ways, but her investigation does open her eyes a bit. And yet she revels in being a wife/housewife, does not believe that women should be educated (as it may ruin her chances of a good marriage), and is traditional in almost every sense. And yet she goes out to investigate, hiding such from her husband. She is a product of her time, I understand but sometimes it's hard to swallow. As is the beliefs espoused by most of the men in this book.

It's only at the epilogue where we see Zofia becoming more critical, the torn curtain I suppose. So there is hope for her growth.

Is this a second book in a series? Because it talks to Zofia solving a mystery also before. Oh well, it took nothing away from this.

Thanks NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the advance copy of the book.

I can’t figure out how I missed the first book in this series, because this series is so exactly my sort of thing – a well-written historical mystery in a slightly unusual (to me, at least) setting: Cracow in the waning years of the 19th century. In the 1890s, Cracow was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, albeit with a fair amount of autonomy, which included maintaining its own universities. And in this time and place, Zofia Turbotynska is the intelligent wife of a medical professor at Cracow’s ancient and respected Jagiellonian University.

Intelligent enough, in fact, that she isn’t convinced that the killer of her recently murdered maid, Karolina, is actually the man who was shot to death while trying to evade capture. Was that man really the “newly graduated engineer” who had recently been courting Karolina – or just a convenient scapegoat? What about Karolina’s long-term sort-of boyfriend – might he have been involved? Or the cadets who had been partying a bit more than they should, just before discovering Karolina’s body in the river?

So when Zofia’s other maid, Franciszka, sees the supposed dead man in town, looking very much alive, Zofia and Franciszka start investigating. Along the way, they confront a few stereotypes, meet a professor with an interesting research specialty, do a bit of jostling for social position, talk with local authorities about some of the latest developments in forensics (!!!), visit with Karolina’s mother, learn a bit more about brothels and the sex trade than a pair of respectable women should know, make plum jam, and eventually figure out who really did it. And then of course, Zofia’s sharp elbows prod the authorities to do something about it – all while keeping her husband, Ignacy, in the dark about what she has been up to.

I found Karolina and the Torn Curtain to be a wonderful read – mostly quick and fun, but with some serious moments that made me think. These serious moments also made Zofia think and grow, and I look forward to seeing how she develops in later books. As an aside, I loved the little quotes at the beginnings of the chapters, and had fun seeing them “come true” in some unexpected ways. The historical note at the end of the book provided some nice background, and also got me curious enough to do some googling about Cracow and the Austro-Hungarian Empire on my own. I now plan on going back to read the first book, and also will be eagerly waiting (hoping) for the next two books, currently available in Polish, to be translated into English. And finally, my thanks to Mariner Books and NetGalley for the advance review copy!

I really enjoyed the first book in this series and was really looking forward to this one. In my experience, finding a good mystery in translation can be difficult and that makes finding this series even better. Well-written, with great characters and some seriously funny dialogue and thought-processes [some of the exchanges between the MC and her maid are just priceless], this is a series that I truly hope to see continue, as I will be first in line to be able to continue to read them. Very well done.

**Kudos to Antonia Lloyd-Jones who is the amazing translator of these books; she does an excellent job and really makes these book so readable in English. VERY. WELL. DONE.

Karolina and the Torn Curtain is the second book in a historical cozy series by Maryla Szymiczkowa. Originally published in Polish in 2015 this English translation was released 23rd March 2021 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on their Mariner Books imprint. It's 416 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a capably written historical cozy with beautifully believable characters and sublimely delivered lightly humorous pitch perfect dialogue. The translation work is seamless; it didn't feel translated to me. The disparate plot threads wind ever more closely and the denouement and resolution are clever and very well engineered. The entire read is finely rendered and surprising. I didn't manage to figure everything out despite being given all the information along the way. I'm impressed and will be looking forward to more from this pseudonymous author pair.

Four and a half stars. I would recommend this one unhesitatingly to readers of historical cozies featuring academic types, light humor, and smart female protagonists. Although the time period is completely different, and in this case the protagonist is the professor's wife and not the professor herself, this book reminds me in a lot of nice ways of Amanda Cross' Kate Fansler novels.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I picked this one up because it sounded like something I was in the mood for and because I saw Olga Tokarczuk's praise of it, but then only realised it was book two. It was great that you could read it without reading the first books, so if you are hesitant regarding this aspect, don't be. Read it. It reads just like any other mystery, and you won't feel like you're missing out on something.

I loved the different, authentic writing style and how the paragraphs started off. To be quite honest, I was a bit put off in the beginning, because it's not the most welcoming writing style. I was a bit confused and bored, but I pushed through it and quickly found my pace.

I think this is going to be perfect for any mystery lover, but who needs something different from their mystery. Who needs something a bit different from what they have read before. I definitely think it's not a book for everyone, because of the style its written in.