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Polichromia
W willi na poznańskim Sołaczu zostaje popełnione morderstwo. Ofiarą pada samotnie mieszkający emerytowany konserwator zabytków. Fakt, iż morderstwo popełniono w jednej z najdroższych dzielnic Poznania, a także brak potencjalnych podejrzanych i motywów oraz zagadkowe napisy odnalezione przy zmarłym wróżą trudne i zagadkowe śledztwo.
Wkrótce ginie kolejny mężczyzna. Sposób, w jaki zostaje zabity, i kolejne łacińskie zwroty sugerują, że mordercą może być ta sama osoba. Detektywi
(Maciej Bartol i Piotr Lentz) za wszelką cenę starają się znaleźć związek między obiema ofiarami. Dokładna analiza zagadkowych sentencji daje detektywom podstawy, by przypuszczać, że wkrótce morderca znów da o sobie znać. Dzięki pomocy tłumaczki symboliki chrześcijańskiej, Magdaleny Walichnowskiej, policjanci odnajdują wskazówki do rozwiązania zagadki. Jednocześnie, poza komplikacjami w śledztwie, zmagają się z osobistymi, życiowymi problemami.
Wkrótce ginie kolejny mężczyzna. Sposób, w jaki zostaje zabity, i kolejne łacińskie zwroty sugerują, że mordercą może być ta sama osoba. Detektywi
(Maciej Bartol i Piotr Lentz) za wszelką cenę starają się znaleźć związek między obiema ofiarami. Dokładna analiza zagadkowych sentencji daje detektywom podstawy, by przypuszczać, że wkrótce morderca znów da o sobie znać. Dzięki pomocy tłumaczki symboliki chrześcijańskiej, Magdaleny Walichnowskiej, policjanci odnajdują wskazówki do rozwiązania zagadki. Jednocześnie, poza komplikacjami w śledztwie, zmagają się z osobistymi, życiowymi problemami.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
2 people are currently reading
63 people want to read
About the author
Joanna Jodełka
18 books15 followersJoanna Jodełka is the first woman to win the High Calibre Award for the best Polish crime novel, taking the prize in 2010 for her debut Polychrome (2009). Her second crime novel, The Rattle, was published in 2011, followed by her third in 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 13, 2016
August 2014.
Reasonably interesting police procedural from Poland. Not that I've read a great deal of recent crime fiction, but this is more literary and descriptive, more dwelling on characters' thoughts than Anne Holt or Arnaldur Indriðason. Those have an atmosphere which is itself of straightforwardness. Polychrome opens in autumn and like the mist or the fallen leaves, it's not clear and tidy. (A little early for that perhaps: this is the time of year when I usually get impatient for autumn, not fully appreciating the remaining sunshine and absence of heating costs.) What I most liked was the sense of place and culture, of somewhere less familiar as it is now than in a story of life under Communism.
The style / translation could do with honing and editing. There's definitely something good going on here, but there are faults familiar to me from my own: sometimes it takes too many words to say something and loses punchiness; others the narration is too immersed in its own world, elides things and doesn't easily convey meaning to the reader. Continuity is a bit slippery too; months pass when it seemed like a couple of weeks. The dodgy formatting in this kindle edition (as purchased 3 months ago) didn't help.
Each of the novel's three long chapters begin as if polyphonic, with a close third-person narrative switching between a number of characters. I'd like to have heard more from several of these voices, who evidently have interesting stories of their own, however the narrative focus soon narrows. There's usually a good sense of personality, perhaps rendered more original by cultural differences, but an oversight is that the focal characters are rarely embodied; they think but physical sensations and movement are hardly ever mentioned.
Most of the narrative airtime goes to straight men, especially Maciej Bartol, a police commissioner (his role much like a DI in a British story). Current trends in interpretation would connect this use of predominantly male perspective with Jodelka being the first female winner of a top Polish prize for crime writing - it sounds as if women are hardly a fixture of the genre as they have been here since Christie, Sayers et al. Compared with Nordic mysteries I've read, it's noticeable that male characters find girlfriends and wives something of a ball and chain. (Although Bartol's situation, in which a short fling with little love on either side has resulted in a pregnancy, would be difficult for most.) There are several very close mother-son relationships: in Anglo-American pop culture terms, rather Italian; also recalls that the stereotype called the 'Jewish mother' is within Jewish culture known as the 'Polish mother' - the characters in Polychrome are Catholic however. The following sounds like something from the 1950s-70s here, but it's Bartol, probably early 30s circa 2009, after visiting his overbearing mother: "It crossed his mind that there should be more women in the police force, special units which could pacify in various ways." Whilst female supporting characters include an architect and an optician, there aren't any women among the police officers; I can't remember seeing a UK cop series since the late 80s which didn't have at least one, with the possible exception of some Morse. And the sense of novel capitalist brashness - including an arrogant estate agent character - set against a recent gloomy past, also from a British POV feels early-1980s, just with smartphones.
The detective himself could have been more a more compelling character although he wasn't the cliched hard-drinking divorced loner, and until the last 15%, there wasn't enough sense of urgency and excitement (could be the fault of the translation) around the plot - two murders of a retired art restorer and of the manager of a homeless shelter and former alcoholic appear to be connected by Latin tags and religious symbolism around the bodies. The police seemed in no particular hurry, chivvying from senior staff and the media were curiously absent and this again made it seem like something from decades past. (Also reminded of the Hungarian film Kontroll, about a crew of shambolic jobsworth train ticket inspectors.) Cultural interest was the main reason for reading. I also liked Magda, a friend of Bartol's mother who's a translator and art and literature expert, and it would have been good to have some narrative from her viewpoint. (No consideration here of the ethics of discussing a case with outside semi-professional experts as there is in Nordic novels; hard to tell if that's cultural or routine trope.)
There isn't such evident social comment here as in Scandinavian equivalents, though what Polychrome does show is a country pervaded by Catholicism, as strongly as depictions of Ireland a decade or two ago - although we never see anyone going to mass. One character is the proprietor of a Polish equivalent of Ann Summers, and such modernity coexists alongside struggles with a pervasive sense of duty and fatalism, at least some of which is rooted in religion. There is also a nod to a society becoming more atomised, to use Houellebecq's term - difficulties occur in the families which have few ties, whilst those which are closer tend to be "good".
Whilst there are some very nice lyrical descriptions, a surprisingly good love scene, and the novel metaphors I love finding in books from other countries, this translation could be better [edited]. I like to have a sense that a book is from another language, but there are too many odd word choices and sentences that don't quite fit or follow. It's possible that in here is a book I'd have given 4 stars with sharper editing or translation.
--------
Although the latter two weren't the heavyweight novels I originally intended to finish, I have at least now managed to read 3 books to coincide with the blog event Women In Translation month, as mentioned the other week.
Reasonably interesting police procedural from Poland. Not that I've read a great deal of recent crime fiction, but this is more literary and descriptive, more dwelling on characters' thoughts than Anne Holt or Arnaldur Indriðason. Those have an atmosphere which is itself of straightforwardness. Polychrome opens in autumn and like the mist or the fallen leaves, it's not clear and tidy. (A little early for that perhaps: this is the time of year when I usually get impatient for autumn, not fully appreciating the remaining sunshine and absence of heating costs.) What I most liked was the sense of place and culture, of somewhere less familiar as it is now than in a story of life under Communism.
The style / translation could do with honing and editing. There's definitely something good going on here, but there are faults familiar to me from my own: sometimes it takes too many words to say something and loses punchiness; others the narration is too immersed in its own world, elides things and doesn't easily convey meaning to the reader. Continuity is a bit slippery too; months pass when it seemed like a couple of weeks. The dodgy formatting in this kindle edition (as purchased 3 months ago) didn't help.
Each of the novel's three long chapters begin as if polyphonic, with a close third-person narrative switching between a number of characters. I'd like to have heard more from several of these voices, who evidently have interesting stories of their own, however the narrative focus soon narrows. There's usually a good sense of personality, perhaps rendered more original by cultural differences, but an oversight is that the focal characters are rarely embodied; they think but physical sensations and movement are hardly ever mentioned.
Most of the narrative airtime goes to straight men, especially Maciej Bartol, a police commissioner (his role much like a DI in a British story). Current trends in interpretation would connect this use of predominantly male perspective with Jodelka being the first female winner of a top Polish prize for crime writing - it sounds as if women are hardly a fixture of the genre as they have been here since Christie, Sayers et al. Compared with Nordic mysteries I've read, it's noticeable that male characters find girlfriends and wives something of a ball and chain. (Although Bartol's situation, in which a short fling with little love on either side has resulted in a pregnancy, would be difficult for most.) There are several very close mother-son relationships: in Anglo-American pop culture terms, rather Italian; also recalls that the stereotype called the 'Jewish mother' is within Jewish culture known as the 'Polish mother' - the characters in Polychrome are Catholic however. The following sounds like something from the 1950s-70s here, but it's Bartol, probably early 30s circa 2009, after visiting his overbearing mother: "It crossed his mind that there should be more women in the police force, special units which could pacify in various ways." Whilst female supporting characters include an architect and an optician, there aren't any women among the police officers; I can't remember seeing a UK cop series since the late 80s which didn't have at least one, with the possible exception of some Morse. And the sense of novel capitalist brashness - including an arrogant estate agent character - set against a recent gloomy past, also from a British POV feels early-1980s, just with smartphones.
The detective himself could have been more a more compelling character although he wasn't the cliched hard-drinking divorced loner, and until the last 15%, there wasn't enough sense of urgency and excitement (could be the fault of the translation) around the plot - two murders of a retired art restorer and of the manager of a homeless shelter and former alcoholic appear to be connected by Latin tags and religious symbolism around the bodies. The police seemed in no particular hurry, chivvying from senior staff and the media were curiously absent and this again made it seem like something from decades past. (Also reminded of the Hungarian film Kontroll, about a crew of shambolic jobsworth train ticket inspectors.) Cultural interest was the main reason for reading. I also liked Magda, a friend of Bartol's mother who's a translator and art and literature expert, and it would have been good to have some narrative from her viewpoint. (No consideration here of the ethics of discussing a case with outside semi-professional experts as there is in Nordic novels; hard to tell if that's cultural or routine trope.)
There isn't such evident social comment here as in Scandinavian equivalents, though what Polychrome does show is a country pervaded by Catholicism, as strongly as depictions of Ireland a decade or two ago - although we never see anyone going to mass. One character is the proprietor of a Polish equivalent of Ann Summers, and such modernity coexists alongside struggles with a pervasive sense of duty and fatalism, at least some of which is rooted in religion. There is also a nod to a society becoming more atomised, to use Houellebecq's term - difficulties occur in the families which have few ties, whilst those which are closer tend to be "good".
Whilst there are some very nice lyrical descriptions, a surprisingly good love scene, and the novel metaphors I love finding in books from other countries, this translation could be better [edited]. I like to have a sense that a book is from another language, but there are too many odd word choices and sentences that don't quite fit or follow. It's possible that in here is a book I'd have given 4 stars with sharper editing or translation.
--------
Although the latter two weren't the heavyweight novels I originally intended to finish, I have at least now managed to read 3 books to coincide with the blog event Women In Translation month, as mentioned the other week.
September 27, 2016
This started out really well - I enjoyed the main detective, and his interfering mother, the good pace of the investigation, so for the first half of the book I was recommending it to others. But then the Latin inscriptions and the explanations became a little overwhelming, the attraction to the historian a little unnecessary, and it just lost me.
February 18, 2022
Bardzo irytował mnie styl, jakiś taki przekombinowany. Zwłaszcza w dialogach wypadał nieprzekonująco. Często gubiłam przez to wątek, chociaż sama fabuła nie była aż tak zawiła.
April 9, 2023
Niezwykle się męczyłam w trakcie czytania tej książki. Sam pomysł na morderstwa i kto za nimi stał uważam za świetny, jednak cała reszta pozostawia wiele do życzenia. Główny bohater był dla mnie po prostu obleśny, to jak traktował kobiety w swoim życiu sprawiało, że czułam ogromną irytację. Jego romans z jedną z postaci był niepotrzebny, tak samo wątek z jego dzieckiem. Styl w jakim książka byla napisana był po prostu męczący.
October 31, 2021
"Polichromia" to debiut literacki Joanny Jodełki, i to całkiem udany. Książka jest ciekawa, ale wymaga sporej dozy uwagi.
https://korcimnieczytanie.blogspot.co...
https://korcimnieczytanie.blogspot.co...
May 5, 2025
I enjoyed reading this for the most part. The fake outs were shocking. I didn’t really enjoy the weakness of the main character.
June 29, 2011
Świetne. Choć pozostawia pewien niedosyt, bo mogło być niemal idealne. Niedosyt głównie za sprawą głównego bohatera, który ma parę momentów, w których zachwiana zostaje jego ciekawa kreacja. Czasem trochę za dużo w nim męskiego dupka (pardon my french). Ale i tak jest to jeden z najlepszych kryminałów jakie dane mi było czytać. Prześwietne postacie - dobrze wykreowane i przedstawione. Ciekawa historia o tym, jak to przeszłość lubi czasem ugryźć. Ciekawe modus operandi złoczyńcy. I Poznań. Polecam gorąco!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews