The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka

Toronto, ON, Canada: Lester & Orpen Dennys, Limited, 2002. 1st Canadian edition. (Originally published in Prague in 1966). Fine in fine dust jacket, not price clipped, in protective mylar cover. Cover illustration by Bernice Eisenstrin. From the internationally acclaimed writer Josef Skvorecky we now have the first in a series of linked detective tales featuring a highly intelligent member of the Czechoslovak police force and his agreeable colleagues. Many of the tales are delightful parodies of "standard" mysteries, and most are set in the author's native Czechoslovakia. Lieutenant Boruvka himself is splendidly realized -- a pensive, conscience-stricken man driven to melancholy by the fiendish truths of murder, yet always wide awake to the strange methods of murder he encounters. Twelve bizarre plots involve theatrical people or musicians, and one concerns a band of mountaineers. Its solution reveals pent-up emotions of love, jealousy, and envy. Other cases involve blackmail, apparent suicide, and unusual trajectories for weapons -- a wealth of gruesome circumstances, The entire book is intended to be read as a continuous account; in the last tale, the reader learns the secret of Boruvka's past. . First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. Illus. by Eisenstein, Bernice. Book.