Entanglement

Miloszewski takes an engaging look at modern Polish society in this stellar first in a new series starring Warsaw prosecutor Teodor Szacki. Analyst Cezary Rudzki, the leader of a group therapy session, uses the innovative Family Constellation approach, in which each person pretends to be a relative of each other participant. When one of the four members of the group, Henryk Telak, turns up dead with a skewer through his eye, Szacki investigates. The victim's tragic circumstances—one child a suicide, another terminally ill—suggest to Szacki that a fellow patient got too absorbed in the role-playing and committed the murder as an expression of rage on the part of someone close to Telak. Szacki, who's undergoing a midlife crisis and has ambivalent feelings about his wife, considers an affair with a journalist hoping to get exclusive details on his inquiry. Readers will want to see more of the complex, sympathetic Szacki. (Aug.)