What is the most dangerous city in Poland? According to the latest serials and books, it is Sandomierz. This underrated pearl of architecture is situated on seven hills, so is called “little Rome”. The Sandomierz police can boast 100% efficiency at catching criminals. It is interesting whether it is in fact like this in real life when a priest-detective and white-haired genius of criminology don’t support the police.
The action of the next crime novel “Grain of the truth” by Zygmunt Miłoszewski takes place only in Sandomierz. The icy spring of 2009 begins with a grisly discovery. Near the wall of the old synagogue a dead woman’s body has been found. She was a well-liked and regarded community activist in Sandomierz. Teodor Szacki, a prosecutor, who after some changes in his private life moves to scenic Sandomierz, leads the case.
Reading this book, a sizeable part of which is the prosecutor’s reflections, I wonder why a happily married, settled father with a successful professional career begins a love affair with a younger woman. Additionally, this woman doesn’t appeal to Szacki’s taste. I think that to understand this problem I would need to be a man.
Szacki leads the case while in despair over his shattered family life. Maybe it sounds awful, but the brutal murder adds some colour to his repetitive life in the province. From the case emerges a city which is torn between two nationalities: Jewish and Polish. The prosecutor discovers the bad old days, family dramas, forged tragedies and he wonders whether the townspeople are telling him everything. Is Sandomierz a town of honest, noble people? Is the nationalist movement only a taint on the ideal appearance of the town? Will the cutthroat, who leads the prosecutor by the nose, hornswoggle him? Will the murder go wrong? Will intuition fail the prosecutor, who tries not to submit to superstitions and anti-Semitism?
After reading two novels by Zygmunt Miłoszewski and getting to know Szacki, I wonder why Robert Więckiewicz got the prosecutor’s role? This top actor, in my opinion, doesn’t fit the role of the prosecutor, but maybe this choice was necessary for the movie adaptation of the book.
I recommend “Grain of truth” and I’m starting to read the third volume.