The Minotaur's Head

June 30, 2014
An awkward framing device mars the concluding volume of Krajewski’s quartet featuring German detective Eberhard Mock (after The Phantoms of Breslau). The book opens in 1939 Lwów with the discovery of the battered corpse of a toddler, whose wounds lead the community to accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Commissioner Edward Popielski refuses his boss’s directive to handle the investigation, because the crime has to do with the “case of the Minotaur.” The story then shifts to 1937 Breslau, where former policeman Mock, now serving in the Abwehr, looks into the murder of a young woman who “was raped, had half her face devoured, and was strangled” (in that order). Her killer is dubbed the Minotaur after the mythical half-human creature. Popielski joins forces with Mock to investigate this horrific murder. Readers are likely to either forget or wonder about the relevance of the 1939 crime.

September 1, 2014
Quirky sleuths solve a string of brutal murders as Europe changes all around them. Lwow, May 1939. Deputy Commissioner Popielski is called to investigate the death of a young boy found brutalized in an outdoor privy, a sign of escalating national tensions. Then Krajewski flashes back to the nearby town of Breslau on New Year's Day 1937. Maverick investigator Eberhard Mock is called to a similarly gruesome murder scene: a young woman strangled and raped, with half her face eaten off. She's identified as Anna, a teenager recently arrived from France with a dark and more imposing woman. Popielski, meanwhile, is immersed in the life of his beautiful teenage daughter, Rita, who's struggling at university but also engaged in some romantic intrigue hinted at to the reader but not to the father. The story cuts back and forth between the two men for a while. At length, because Popielski has investigated a murder like the one in Breslau, Mock travels to Lwow to consult him. These two iconoclasts, misfits in their own departments, discover kindred spirits in each other. They tackle the case with vigor, exploring the city's decadent districts. Popielski provides a helpful profile of the killer, whom they call the Minotaur, as well as files on all the local victims. Popielski, however, is thrown seriously off his stride when he learns of his daughter's risky behavior in the city's tenderloin. Mock's fourth case, filled with incisive period detail, features not one but two singular detectives at its core.

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August 1, 2014

The year is 1937, and Inspector Mock has transferred from the Breslau police to German military intelligence (the Abwehr). He was hoping to avoid politics but finds Nazis among the intelligence staff. When a Polish girl is brutally murdered in a local hotel, Mock is sent to Lvov in Poland, where a string of similar killings has occurred. There he joins the investigation with Commissioner Popielski, who is as idiosyncratic as Mock and is especially eager to solve these murders since his teenage daughter fits the victim profile. The two detectives uncover connections to the local underworld and even a possible international criminal dimension. There is also a surprising mathematical thread to be followed. VERDICT Followers of the series and fans of gritty crime novels set in Europe between World War I and World War II will enjoy this fourth and final entry (after Phantoms of Breslau), which finds Mock doggedly continuing to try to solve the worst cases while the shadow of war lingers everywhere, especially in a country that soon will be invaded from two directions.--Dan Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2014
Breslau's most storied copper, Eberhard Mock (Phantoms of Breslau, 2014), is ordered by the gestapo to L'viv, Poland, the wild, Jew-ridden country of the underpeople, in the words of the gestapo chief. His assignment is to partner with L'viv's finest, Commissioner Edward Popielski, in the hunt for a rapist and murderer who chews the faces and genitals of his virginal victims. Free of gestapo martinets, Mock is charmed by the city's beauty, culture, ethnic diversity, rich food, and beautiful women. Edward's willingness to show off L'viv's glories is dampened only by his fear that his rebellious teenage daughter's great beauty puts her at risk. Their investigation produces wildly disparate leads: Popielski begins to obsessively surveil members of the elite Polish Mathematical Societyand his daughterwhile libertine Mock concentrates on carnal mediation and crypto-prostitution which, happily for him, necessitate many visits to L'viv's brothels. Eventually, the threads converge to reveal a bizarre tale of beauty and the beast, pure mathematics, richly imagined perversity, and a savage reckoning in the underground river beneath L'viv. The Minotaur's Head appears to be the last Mock novel that will be published in English. U.S. fans of international crime in little-known locales will mourn the loss of Krajewski's sui generis detective and the exotic world he polices.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)