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The Engineer,
The Engineer is a powerful and compelling thriller, the story of a young boy of Polish descent, born in anada who is unable to escape the burden of history. Teddy abden finds That tr as he might he cannot escape his immigrant past and the mystery of his father's record in Eastern Eurpe. Whilst England draws him ever closer to her bosom Teddy meets a darker side of life full of connections and coincidencesthat lead him into the dangers of the Secret Service. Whe thge fog of war interrupts his playboy existence Teddy begins to see that like a cog in a machine he can be used or he can become the engineer of events. Through a variety of affairs he looks for the love and affection that is missing in his life. But ca he find it?
His Polish upbringing forces him to take unexpected sides with consequences that put his life in danger from the Russian agents embedded in MI6. He becomes involved in the fringes of the political assassination of the Polish Prime Minister General Sikorski, but who gave the orders? Teddy is helped by a variety of friends to survive in a world of intrigue hidden from ordinary men and women.
His Polish upbringing forces him to take unexpected sides with consequences that put his life in danger from the Russian agents embedded in MI6. He becomes involved in the fringes of the political assassination of the Polish Prime Minister General Sikorski, but who gave the orders? Teddy is helped by a variety of friends to survive in a world of intrigue hidden from ordinary men and women.
359 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
19 people want to read
About the author
Jan Kusmirek
8 books3 followersJan has a life association with the Organic movement and served for a while as the marketing manger of the Soil Association the doyenne of the movement.He continues his interest in sustainability but is on the sceptic side of the man made global warming issue!
Now one of the worlds most respected designers of active cosmetics and fragrances Jan Kusmirek is well known for his writing on the subject. He has been a sought after international speaker and a prolific writer on the subject.
Four years ago he turned his attention to fiction writing and his first book more accurately factional was published early 2009.
Of Polish descent Jan has recently taken up his Polish nationality out of respect for his parentage.
His uncle writing under the name Kenneth Royce became a popular crime writer and gave Jan many tips as to style and research.
Now one of the worlds most respected designers of active cosmetics and fragrances Jan Kusmirek is well known for his writing on the subject. He has been a sought after international speaker and a prolific writer on the subject.
Four years ago he turned his attention to fiction writing and his first book more accurately factional was published early 2009.
Of Polish descent Jan has recently taken up his Polish nationality out of respect for his parentage.
His uncle writing under the name Kenneth Royce became a popular crime writer and gave Jan many tips as to style and research.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 4, 2010
If you are looking for a thriller, don’t pick this book up. On the other hand, if you are looking for a novel that feels semi-autobiographical and gives a good insight into the position of Poland during the Second World War, then this is the book for you. Even though this purports to be fiction, there is much in a book that feels like a history lesson and the style appears at odds with it’s attempt to make you relate to the central character, it as if the author has forgotten to make you emphasise and as a result it rarely tugs at your heart strings, it is more like you are given a list of crucial events. What you come away feeling is how the account of the War you were given at school does not necessarily tie in with machinations that allegedly cost the Poles dearly, but were seen as the way to win.
January 27, 2010
I really enjoyed this book which came as a bit of a suprise. I was expecting it to be a tough read weighed down with facts, history and war which is not my type of book. However I found it compelling and very hard to put down. The history is told from the perspective of a Polish-Canadian with loyalties in the UK and it had a personal twist to it that made it easy to read. The characters were well developed and I felt that I was hearing more of the history of Poland during World War II and have found a new admiration for the Polish people and the hardships they must have encountered. I am looking forward to the next book.
October 29, 2009
I thought it would be a shoot and bang boys book but I loved the childhood part and Mrs.Simpson. I found the book to be a tear jerker and something I wanted to finish. It is a complex espionage read and keeps the brain working like Alan Furst. I want to read the next book as there are unanswered questions.
What did I learn? The nobility of the Polish Forces in WW2 and my view never to trust politicians was reinforced.
What did I learn? The nobility of the Polish Forces in WW2 and my view never to trust politicians was reinforced.
January 2, 2010
Nothing bad about the novel, in and of itself, but the voice was just lackluster and terribly undefined. I think the story found the wrong author.
August 11, 2010
The annals of history usually record the victors of the Second World War – the ‘saviours of freedom’, no less – as a triumvirate of nations.
But though the combined forces of the Americans, British and Russians did eventually overwhelm Hitler and the Axis powers in 1945, there was a fourth country that made the ultimate sacrifice to halt the advance of Nazism, fascism and communism.
The Engineer is the story of that country – Poland – as experienced by central character and novice British spy, Teddy Labden.
Teddy Labden is the adopted name of Tadeusz Labycz, or Tadek for short. The novel opens during his childhood in the idyllic but tough countryside of Calgary, Canada.
From an early age, he starts to pick up fragments of his family's proud past fighting the Bolshevik invasion and is taught by his parents to be proud of his Polish heritage.
With a natural aptitude for engineering, Tadek – or ‘Teddy’ as he becomes known in Britain - is accepted to Cambridge on a scholarship and quickly develops a taste of the 30s good life.
With war looming between Britain and Germany, and having studied aircraft engineering, Teddy joins the Royal Air Force.
He is soon seconded into the Secret Service, discovering to his shock that his father was involved with the British espionage services before him.
Being a Polish speaker, he is sent to Warsaw to keep tabs on the Polish Air Force and to obtain plans of their new aircraft.
It is here, while moving in new social circles, that Teddy begins to understand the true nature of alliances and political friendships.
Despite the Poles' hopes, guarantees by the French and British to counter a Nazi and Russian invasion prove empty when the time comes for action.
So begins a war marked equally by Polish bravery in the face of the enemy and repeated betrayals by the Allied forces.
Despite subsequent communist-fuelled propoganda that portrayed the Polish forces as cowardly, the Polish 303 Squadron, for example, distinguished itself in the Battle of Britain alongside the RAF, downing more enemy craft than any other squadron.
Yet though Polish soldiers laid down their lives for the Allied forces, when their fellow countrymen desperately needed their help in repelling the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, it was due to an Allied order that nothing was done.
The Polish Parachute Brigade, built specifically to drop into occupied Poland, was instead sent to Arnhem, Netherlands, to take part in Operation Market Garden. Even then, the troops were dropped behind enemy lines.
Another shameful episode in history is illuminated when Teddy is ordered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to infiltrate an occupied Poland to discover the truth of reports of genocide.
A cynical Britain ultimately suppresses the Russian-led extermination of Polish intelligentsia while flagging up the Nazi's Jewish holocaust.
For, as the novel reveals, the loyal Poles - who constantly lived up to their motto “For our freedom and yours" by fighting the red threat - are sold out by the UK (and America) in an attempt to woo the Russians.
The greatest act of treachery is in the suspected assassination of Polish leader General Sikorski as he tries to muster the diaspora of Polish forces together to take back the fatherland, handed on a plate by Churchill and Roosevelt to Soviet dictator Stalin.
To both leaders, the stubborn but noble Sikorski is an embarrassment and a risk to the fragile Russian alliance.
In making it his mission to expose the truth behind the suspicious plane crash that killed Sikorski and, in turn, reveal red infiltrators in the highest echelons of the Foreign Office, a thoroughly disillusioned Teddy risks the ire of the British secret service as much as the Russian.
As the book ends, Teddy is forced to flee London after being framed for a honey-trap murder he didn't commit, off on a new quest on behalf of the exiled Polish secret service to investigate claims Sikorski's daughter is not dead as reported, but instead imprisoned in a Gulag.
Like the work of John Le Carre and Alan Furst, The Engineer is both a powerful and compelling thriller – and a thoroughly-researched snapshot of the era, giving the reader a detailed insight into the people and places, political and cultural climates, heroics and atrocities of the Second World War.
And like the best of Le Carre, the novel is morally complex, with 'good' and 'evil' being relative, not absolute terms – reflected in Labden's self-doubt and questioning as he sees the backstabbing going on all around him.
Positioned and repositioned on a deadly political chessboard, Tadek struggles to find his identity, made explicit by the way Teddy/Tadek fluctuates between his Polish and anglicised names.
Only at the end does he accept that he is proud to be Polish and vows now to fight for his country in the coming Cold War.
The book - the first of a proposed trilogy known as Chronicles of Love and Honour - is undoubtedly complex and, in its unflinching condemnation of the British and American forces, highly controversial.
Yet author Jan Kusmirek expertly crafts the material to deliver an unashamedly intelligent work of historical fiction that serves as much as impassioned re-evaluation of the Polish war contribution as spy novel.
It is heavy reading, not least for the graphic torture scenes and barbarous war crimes committed against Poles, but because of this attention to detail.
No-one will ever forget the extermination of six million Jews in death camps such as Auschwitz and, after coming to the final chapter of The Engineer, readers will have the contemptible treatment of Polish freedom fighters burned into their hearts and minds.
Tadek will pick up the fight in Stolen Lives (a sequel to The Engineer) and, if Kusmirek can make it half as insightful and gripping as The Engineer, then I can't wait to read it.
The Engineer by Jan Kusmirek (364 pages, ISBN 9781907084010) is out now, published by Derwen, priced £12.99. For more information visit: www.jankusmirek.com
But though the combined forces of the Americans, British and Russians did eventually overwhelm Hitler and the Axis powers in 1945, there was a fourth country that made the ultimate sacrifice to halt the advance of Nazism, fascism and communism.
The Engineer is the story of that country – Poland – as experienced by central character and novice British spy, Teddy Labden.
Teddy Labden is the adopted name of Tadeusz Labycz, or Tadek for short. The novel opens during his childhood in the idyllic but tough countryside of Calgary, Canada.
From an early age, he starts to pick up fragments of his family's proud past fighting the Bolshevik invasion and is taught by his parents to be proud of his Polish heritage.
With a natural aptitude for engineering, Tadek – or ‘Teddy’ as he becomes known in Britain - is accepted to Cambridge on a scholarship and quickly develops a taste of the 30s good life.
With war looming between Britain and Germany, and having studied aircraft engineering, Teddy joins the Royal Air Force.
He is soon seconded into the Secret Service, discovering to his shock that his father was involved with the British espionage services before him.
Being a Polish speaker, he is sent to Warsaw to keep tabs on the Polish Air Force and to obtain plans of their new aircraft.
It is here, while moving in new social circles, that Teddy begins to understand the true nature of alliances and political friendships.
Despite the Poles' hopes, guarantees by the French and British to counter a Nazi and Russian invasion prove empty when the time comes for action.
So begins a war marked equally by Polish bravery in the face of the enemy and repeated betrayals by the Allied forces.
Despite subsequent communist-fuelled propoganda that portrayed the Polish forces as cowardly, the Polish 303 Squadron, for example, distinguished itself in the Battle of Britain alongside the RAF, downing more enemy craft than any other squadron.
Yet though Polish soldiers laid down their lives for the Allied forces, when their fellow countrymen desperately needed their help in repelling the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, it was due to an Allied order that nothing was done.
The Polish Parachute Brigade, built specifically to drop into occupied Poland, was instead sent to Arnhem, Netherlands, to take part in Operation Market Garden. Even then, the troops were dropped behind enemy lines.
Another shameful episode in history is illuminated when Teddy is ordered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to infiltrate an occupied Poland to discover the truth of reports of genocide.
A cynical Britain ultimately suppresses the Russian-led extermination of Polish intelligentsia while flagging up the Nazi's Jewish holocaust.
For, as the novel reveals, the loyal Poles - who constantly lived up to their motto “For our freedom and yours" by fighting the red threat - are sold out by the UK (and America) in an attempt to woo the Russians.
The greatest act of treachery is in the suspected assassination of Polish leader General Sikorski as he tries to muster the diaspora of Polish forces together to take back the fatherland, handed on a plate by Churchill and Roosevelt to Soviet dictator Stalin.
To both leaders, the stubborn but noble Sikorski is an embarrassment and a risk to the fragile Russian alliance.
In making it his mission to expose the truth behind the suspicious plane crash that killed Sikorski and, in turn, reveal red infiltrators in the highest echelons of the Foreign Office, a thoroughly disillusioned Teddy risks the ire of the British secret service as much as the Russian.
As the book ends, Teddy is forced to flee London after being framed for a honey-trap murder he didn't commit, off on a new quest on behalf of the exiled Polish secret service to investigate claims Sikorski's daughter is not dead as reported, but instead imprisoned in a Gulag.
Like the work of John Le Carre and Alan Furst, The Engineer is both a powerful and compelling thriller – and a thoroughly-researched snapshot of the era, giving the reader a detailed insight into the people and places, political and cultural climates, heroics and atrocities of the Second World War.
And like the best of Le Carre, the novel is morally complex, with 'good' and 'evil' being relative, not absolute terms – reflected in Labden's self-doubt and questioning as he sees the backstabbing going on all around him.
Positioned and repositioned on a deadly political chessboard, Tadek struggles to find his identity, made explicit by the way Teddy/Tadek fluctuates between his Polish and anglicised names.
Only at the end does he accept that he is proud to be Polish and vows now to fight for his country in the coming Cold War.
The book - the first of a proposed trilogy known as Chronicles of Love and Honour - is undoubtedly complex and, in its unflinching condemnation of the British and American forces, highly controversial.
Yet author Jan Kusmirek expertly crafts the material to deliver an unashamedly intelligent work of historical fiction that serves as much as impassioned re-evaluation of the Polish war contribution as spy novel.
It is heavy reading, not least for the graphic torture scenes and barbarous war crimes committed against Poles, but because of this attention to detail.
No-one will ever forget the extermination of six million Jews in death camps such as Auschwitz and, after coming to the final chapter of The Engineer, readers will have the contemptible treatment of Polish freedom fighters burned into their hearts and minds.
Tadek will pick up the fight in Stolen Lives (a sequel to The Engineer) and, if Kusmirek can make it half as insightful and gripping as The Engineer, then I can't wait to read it.
The Engineer by Jan Kusmirek (364 pages, ISBN 9781907084010) is out now, published by Derwen, priced £12.99. For more information visit: www.jankusmirek.com
August 1, 2016
Okay. So. Sometimes I loved this book, and other times it drove me nuts. The writing had me thinking that maybe Kusmirek is Polish and thus learned English second. Case in point: "I thought of austerity Britain and devastated Poland" (271); definitely a learned-English-later kind of thing, I would think. However, my search results imply that Kusmirek was, in fact, born in Aylesbury. So I guess writing was never the author's favorite subject in class? ( It has occurred to me since I first wrote this that perhaps the author wanted the character of Teddy/Tadek to sound like he learned English after Polish. Unfortunately, I think this was a less-than-brilliant choice, as all it did was confuse me with unclear sentences and pull me out of the story.)
I was also thinking that perhaps Kusmirek self-published, since the correct use of quotation marks is a little sporadic, which makes following who's saying what difficult. But it appears I'm wrong about that, too. Derwen Publishing published this for Kusmirek, and they do have editors to work on the books. But maybe they should get better ones.
Obviously, my biggest problems with The Engineer are related to the editing. However, this was also a very dense novel; the author would cover weeks of which country managed what in the war in the span of two or three pages. Which is fine, but it makes for tragically slow reading. I had a hard time getting into the novel and often felt like I was missing something. I doubt I'll want to read this one again, if only because my memories of it will be laced with that "When will this chapter end?" sensation. Further, there was a line about "a Jewess in a right-wing army. That is a novelty" (257). My reaction was "I don't get it." I don't feel that the significance of that circumstance was fully explained to me. It's left me with the impression that one has to have some previous understanding of Polish politics/history to really follow this book's plot without being confused in some way, shape, or form.
Not to say that this isn't worth reading; totally gave me a new perspective on England and Poland in WWII. But I think once is enough. I had pretty much come to the conclusion that I wouldn't read the following novels, and then Kusmirek went and ended with that fantastic cliff-hanger, and now I need to know how the main character gets himself out of that mess. So, right now, I plan on finishing the trilogy.
I received a free copy through FirstReads in exchange for an honest review.
(EDIT:) I no longer intend to finish the trilogy. I don't remember the cliff-hanger, so I no longer feel the need to find out what happens next.
I was also thinking that perhaps Kusmirek self-published, since the correct use of quotation marks is a little sporadic, which makes following who's saying what difficult. But it appears I'm wrong about that, too. Derwen Publishing published this for Kusmirek, and they do have editors to work on the books. But maybe they should get better ones.
Obviously, my biggest problems with The Engineer are related to the editing. However, this was also a very dense novel; the author would cover weeks of which country managed what in the war in the span of two or three pages. Which is fine, but it makes for tragically slow reading. I had a hard time getting into the novel and often felt like I was missing something. I doubt I'll want to read this one again, if only because my memories of it will be laced with that "When will this chapter end?" sensation. Further, there was a line about "a Jewess in a right-wing army. That is a novelty" (257). My reaction was "I don't get it." I don't feel that the significance of that circumstance was fully explained to me. It's left me with the impression that one has to have some previous understanding of Polish politics/history to really follow this book's plot without being confused in some way, shape, or form.
Not to say that this isn't worth reading; totally gave me a new perspective on England and Poland in WWII. But I think once is enough. I had pretty much come to the conclusion that I wouldn't read the following novels, and then Kusmirek went and ended with that fantastic cliff-hanger, and now I need to know how the main character gets himself out of that mess. So, right now, I plan on finishing the trilogy.
I received a free copy through FirstReads in exchange for an honest review.
(EDIT:) I no longer intend to finish the trilogy. I don't remember the cliff-hanger, so I no longer feel the need to find out what happens next.
March 13, 2010
I think I would have enjoyed this book more if my expectations had aligned more closely to the way the book was constructed. I went into it expecting a fast-paced thriller---what I call "airplane reading." Instead, European history (that of Poland, in particular) and the main character's upbringing play an integral role in the book. Ultimately, this probably makes the book more satisfying, but it didn't match up with what I was looking for in a book right now.
October 15, 2010
I won 'the enginner' in the giveaway long time ago. It took be so much time to read this book, because of lack of time. But when I finnaly start reading, I couldn't stop. It's so much interesting! Even if you don't like historical books, you will enjoy it for sure ;)
January 7, 2010
I really like the style of the book and its pace, especially with the sudden changes.
Found this read through the good press it has received here in the UK, which it deserves!
Look forward to Stolen Lives, and love the prologue for it!
Found this read through the good press it has received here in the UK, which it deserves!
Look forward to Stolen Lives, and love the prologue for it!
April 6, 2012
Waiting for it to come in the mail. Won it on First Reads!!
Very good book! Interesting story
Very good book! Interesting story
March 24, 2011
I really enjoy historical fiction novels and I found this book to be an interesting read.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews