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Sündenfall: Roman (2013)

von Anya Lipska

Reihen: Kiszka and Kershaw (1)

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576453,320 (4.08)4
THE FIRST KISZKA AND KERSHAW MYSTERY A naked girl has washed up on the banks of the River Thames. The only clue to her identity is a heart-shaped tattoo encircling two foreign names. Who is she - and why did she die? Life's already complicated enough for Janusz Kiszka, unofficial 'fixer' for East London's Polish community: his priest has asked him to track down a young waitress who has gone missing; a builder on the Olympics site owes him a pile of money; and he's falling for married Kasia, Soho's most strait-laced stripper. But when Janusz finds himself accused of murder by an ambitious young detective, Natalie Kershaw, and pursued by drug dealing gang members, he is forced to take an unscheduled trip back to Poland to find the real killer. In the mist-wreathed streets of his hometown of Gdansk, Janusz must confront painful memories from the Soviet past if he is to uncover the conspiracy - and with it, a decades-old betrayal.… (mehr)
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Anya Lipska’s Where the Devil Can't Gobegins on a building site in London, where an incompetent young Polish builder and decorator gets strong-armed by the hero, Janusz Kiszka, for late payment of a sum of money he owes. The first few chapters develop the backdrop of East London and the fast money, back of a lorry, gambits to be enjoyed in the erection of sub-standard buildings for the Olympic Games.

Janusz’s troubled character slowly comes into focus. A devout but doubting Catholic, a large man whose face carries every trace of worry and wear it has picked up since his twenties, unsuccessful in love, he is fairly well off due to the increase in the value of his apartment. He makes his day to day money from intimidation and other small time activities he would never have envisaged when he was a young science student in Poland.

A mistake Janusz made in Poland, at the time of Solidarity, cut him off from a potential, respectable career as a scientist. Now, he has become a sort of go-to man in the Polish working class community in London, partnering often with a loveable but obnoxious loudmouth named Oskar. Janusz navigates uneasily between the working-class Polish community and his priest, who takes him to meetings and events in respectable institutions, such as the Catholic Church and the Polish Embassy, that still smack of the old, aristocratic Poland.

Janusz is asked to find a missing Polish girl in London. At the same time, the second major character of the novel, Detective Constable Natalie Kershaw, begins to investigate the case of a dead body found in the Thames. Then a second dead body appears, and Natalie discovers that they are both Polish. In alternate chapters, the reader follows Janusz on a physical journey from London to Gdansk (and its area) and then back again, on his quest for Weronika, while Natalie seeks out evidence to find out how the two young women died. At one point they cross each others pasts and if, at that moment, Janusz had dropped his guard and shared information Natalie’s case would have been been quickly solved. But Janusz’s distrust of the police, based to some extent on his experience in Poland, and the mistake he made, prevents him from talking.

On his physical journey to discover the truth, Janusz also engages in a historical journey (which illustrates why the novel is titled, « Where the Devil Can’t Go »), that gives the reader an interesting resume of the the Solidarity movement, the struggle to throw off Communism, the way in which informers were used by the Polish secret police to rat on their fellow citizens, and how all that is still influencing the behaviours of a few present-day Polish politicians.

Janusz is also very aware of the difference between the Polish generations, the old generation that is glad (for the most part) to have said goodbye to Communism, but that is still suffering from the wounds totalitarianism inflicted on the Polish psyche, and the younger generation, which works hard in England but whose main hedonic pursuits seem to be ego-centric, superficial and dismissive of anything older people wish to tell them about the past. On his physical and historical trip, at every step of which he is unknowingly spied upon and led where others want him to go, Janusz, who has worked in London for more than twenty years, comes to the realization that he no longer speaks the language of the place where he was born. He has become one of those Poles who has been away too long. He will never go back home.

Janusz and Natalie both discover towards the end of the novel that all the initial assumptions they had made about their respective investigations were wrong. Natalie finds out why the two young Polishwomen died. In the process of discovering what has become of Weronika, Janusz unearths a sordid tale of collusion with communism and that, in his quest to find the young girl, he had been less of a hunter than the prey.

The novel is well plotted, with many surprising twists, and it's very well written. The book ends in a very satisfying display of fireworks, in which Janusz and Natalie finally come face to face with the bad guys. But that’s all I’ll say about that. I don’t want to spoil the novel for everyone of you whom I encourage to read it.

I bought the book because of its Polish theme and I was not disappointed. Anya Lipska’s description of the surprise Janusz felt when he goes back to his home town of Gdansk, which no longer resembles the colourless, joyless town he left behind, reminded me of the gap between the miserable cities of Warsaw or Toruń I first saw in 1990 and the illuminated, sophisticated and trendy places they had turned into only 10 years later, after they’d had a few years to reconnect with their sophisticated, pre-Communist past.

Although most of the comments about the book I have seen so far tend to concentrate on Janusz Kiszka, I was just as delighted to read the chapters featuring Detective Constable Natalie Kershaw, a young Londoner, who is determined to show her wise, big-hearted Sergeant, « Streaky » Bacon that she is a good detective, while resisting the barrack-room humour of her male colleagues, as she tries to resist falling in love with a fellow cop. I hope that Anya Lipska will be able to develop both Janusz and Natalie in future novels. I will certainly be among the first to buy them. ( )
  JohnJGaynard | Dec 31, 2018 |
A big thanks to Harper Collins for a chance to read this book. I was really looking forward to it as I work in Stratford near the Olympic Park where much of this book was set and it was great to read about familiar places. Apart from the setting however this was a cracking read.
Janusz Kiszka, a part of East London’s Polish community, is asked by his local priest to find a missing waitress. This simple request leads him into all sorts of trouble including being accused of murder by up and coming detective Natalie Kershaw. The action takes him back to his native Poland and a secret that goes back a generation.
This was a real page turner. Sometimes the first novel in a series can feel a bit contrived as the reader is introduced to several new characters all at once but I never felt like that with this book. Janusz is a bit of enigma at first, good guy or bad guy? Turns out he’s a bit of both plus being a great cook into the bargain. His best friend Oskar is a fantastic character as well a brought much needed humour into a very dark tale. Natalie’s character was good but less fleshed out I thought but towards the end of the book there were some flashes of great things to come from her.
However it was the insight into Polish history that made this a great book for me. The struggle to throw off Communism, the secret police’s use of informers to single out troublemakers and the clash between the generations was all fascinating to read. I feel like I’ve learnt a lot whilst reading a brilliant bit of fiction.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the next in the series immensely.
( )
1 abstimmen angelaoatham | Feb 21, 2017 |


I started reading this novel because of the title. Really... I'm familiar with the quote by the German poet Ludwig Tieck. The quote in German goes something like this:

"Wo der Teufel nicht selbst hin will, schickt er ein Weib", which means "Where the Devil Can’t Go, he'll send a woman" (Kershaw in this particular case).

After reading the novel, I came to conclude that there's also a polish version of the same proverb. Despite the numerous tales and proverbs celebrating the wiseness of old people and promoting their well-being, the unwritten lore (stories and proverbs and riddles and songs) of a culture is replete with reflections of a basic distrustfulness of age.


You can read the rest of this review on my blog. ( )
  antao | Dec 10, 2016 |
No idea whatsoever how or why, but WHERE THE DEVIL CAN'T GO by Anya Lipska wafted into my somewhat dodgy attention span recently, and I started reading it immediately. As in read the sample, bought the ebook and read it as soon as it downloaded.

Sometimes the universe is very kind and benevolent place, because this is an excellent debut book. Set within the Polish community in England, I think I've since heard somewhere that this is the first novel of this sort out of that environment.

The story is set deep within that Polish community, many of whom are in England for work, escaping economic deprivation and sometimes official persecution in their homeland. The timeline is before the London Olympics, with much of the community working on building the Olympic venues.

Janusz Kiska doesn't work as a builder, rather he's an unofficial "fixer" for the community, a solid, taciturn man with a past and strong connections back to his homeland. One of the very early Polish arrivals in England, he sees things as a migrant, and as a long-term resident. Believable, fascinating, approachable although slightly stand-offish and touchingly sentimental, Kiska is a strong man with a strong sense of right and wrong. Thoughtful, calculating, clever and not above rule bending if required, his connections extend from recent arrivals, through to the religious hierarchy of the community and many of the leaders and power-brokers in both Polish and English society.

Natalie Kershaw is a young detective trying to forge her way in the male dominated police force. Her struggles in the force make her another outsider, especially as she's not against breaking a few rules herself. Starting a relationship with a workmate is probably the biggest rule she could have broken. Despite her doubts, she is supported by her boss, and whilst her colleagues might be a bit tricky, a large percentage of the problems she experiences could be put down to her own attitude. She's touchy, prickly and as believable as Kiska.

These two characters form less alliance, more a ceasefire when their cases of missing or dead young women connect up. Kiska working within the community and Poland with knowledge of the people, their superstitions and the language on his side. Kershaw with scientific and, eventually, the support of police resources behind her.

There's a lot working in this book. The characters are strong, and whilst we have a pairing of male and female, the romantic complications are in other directions. The plot elements are cleverly unpredictable, relying on the evils of money, drugs and sex as well as politics, influence and corruption. The book also takes the reader into a community that's not as well known, at least in these parts. Along the way there's some light cast about a background and the consequences of migration and marginalisation which was elegantly done.

Like it when a debut book puts an author on my "to be bought immediately" list. WHERE THE DEVIL CAN'T GO was finished in a couple of greedy reading sessions, DEATH CAN'T TAKE A JOKE pre-ordered immediately. It's going going straight to the top of the pile come March 2014.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/where-devil-cant-go-anya-lipska ( )
2 abstimmen austcrimefiction | Dec 13, 2013 |
Great thriller set in London's Polish community. 'Fixer' Janusz Kiszka and ambitious young detective Natalie Kershaw are likeable protagonists. ( )
  westwoodrich | Mar 29, 2013 |
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If I can just crawl to the bottom step, I might be able to reach the stair rail, pull myself up with my good arm. My legs are useless - the fall must have broken something in my back.[Prologue]
Janusz slammed the younger man so hard against the flat's freshly pained plasterboard that he heard the fixings pop, and twisted the neck of the guy's sweatshirt around his throat.[Chapter 1]
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The book title is a reference to the Polish saying "gdzie diabeł nie może, tam babę pośle", literally meaning "where the Devil can't go, he sends a woman", or more liberally translated as "when the going gets tough, the tough get going".
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THE FIRST KISZKA AND KERSHAW MYSTERY A naked girl has washed up on the banks of the River Thames. The only clue to her identity is a heart-shaped tattoo encircling two foreign names. Who is she - and why did she die? Life's already complicated enough for Janusz Kiszka, unofficial 'fixer' for East London's Polish community: his priest has asked him to track down a young waitress who has gone missing; a builder on the Olympics site owes him a pile of money; and he's falling for married Kasia, Soho's most strait-laced stripper. But when Janusz finds himself accused of murder by an ambitious young detective, Natalie Kershaw, and pursued by drug dealing gang members, he is forced to take an unscheduled trip back to Poland to find the real killer. In the mist-wreathed streets of his hometown of Gdansk, Janusz must confront painful memories from the Soviet past if he is to uncover the conspiracy - and with it, a decades-old betrayal.

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