Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing

Written by Maryla Szymiczkowa

Narrated by Moira Quirk

A bored socialite becomes a cunning amateur sleuth in this wildly entertaining, Agatha Christie¬inspired mystery of murder and mayhem set in nineteenth-century Poland¶“An ingenious marriage of comedy and crime.”—Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel laureate and author of the Man Booker International Prize winner Flights¶ Cracow, 1893: Zofia Turbotynska—professor’s wife, socialite, and bored homemaker—has little more to do than plan a charity auction sponsored by the wealthy residents of a local nursing home and the nuns who work there. But when one of those residents is found dead, Zofia finds a calling: solving crime. Ridiculed by the police, who have declared the deaths of natural cause, she starts her own murder investigation, unbeknownst to anyone but her loyal cook Franciszka and one reluctant nun. With her husband blissfully unaware of her secret, Zofia remakes herself into one the most surprising, and maybe even effective, detectives combing the city streets. But what will it take for her to find the killer. . .before she becomes the next victim?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Mar 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780358311232

Maryla Szymiczkowa

MARYLA SZYMICZKOWA is a pseudonym for partners Jacek Dehnel and Piotr Tarczyński. Dehnel is the award-winning author of numerous books, including the novels Lala and Saturn and the poetry collection Aperture. Tarczyński is a translator and historian. They live in Warsaw, and the Zofia Turbotyńska Mysteries are their first shared project.

Reviews for Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This should be entertaining enough, a detective comedy of manners set in 1893 Cracow. But it isn't. There's something about the tone that feels sneering throughout. It makes fun of Zofia almost throughout. She is married to a professor and takes every advantage of his position, she's a social climber. But that doesn't excuse the edge to this, it didn't feel as if it was affectionately taking the mick.

[charon07 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A charming little cozy mystery, and an interesting glimpse of Polish culture at the turn of the last century.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Poland is not often the country we in the US think of when we think of European countries. But it has a rich and varied history, including being partitioned by Russia, Austria, and Germany (Prussia) from 1795-1918, wiping its very existence off the map. In fact, Cracow in 1893 was very diverse in population and complicated politically and religiously, at least in part because of this partition. The authors behind the pen name Maryla Szymiczkowa have written a Golden Age inspired mystery set in this very complex time and place in Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing, the first in a new series.Zofia Turbotynska is a professor's wife. She's a busybody, a gossip, and a raging snob. And she has nothing better to do with her time than to push her unambitious husband's career forward, ingratiate herself as high up in society as she can, and hire and fire maids. She decides that she should run a charity raffle, intending to ask the nuns at the local church run retirement home for contributions from their residents and to get a countess at the home to head up the effort with her in order to give the raffle benefitting scrofulous children the social cachet it needs. But when she arrives at Helcel House to propose her plan, things are all aflutter, a resident having gone missing. Curious and intrigued, Zofia is the driving force behind finding Mrs. Mohr's body but when the little old woman's death is ruled natural causes, Zofia does not agree. And when a second resident is discovered murdered in her bed, Zofia jumps into an unofficial investigation with both feet, pursuing it personally as well as with the help of her cook Franciszka and of her wide net of social contacts giving her entre into places she should never be allowed.Zofia is not an entirely likeable character and that, combined with the slow pace of the novel, makes it hard to get fully engaged with the story. The mystery of whodunit itself is quite complex and convoluted although Zofia's strong determination, she's really a force of nature, leaves no doubt that she will be able to collect all the information she needs to prove her case dramatically in an unveiling scene worthy of the greats. Where this novel really shines is not so much the mystery though as in its examination of class in nineteenth century Cracow, the look into the political climate of the time and its recent, bloody past, the confounding complexities of proper etiquette and society, and the rich and detailed historical setting itself. Zofia is smart and deductive and always (irritatingly) convinced of her own superiority. Her keeping her sleuthing from her dear husband Ignacy is rather entertaining but humor at his expense helps make Zofia just that slightest bit more endurable. Even the other characters all seem to find her to be a pill. Zofia's character and the byzantine twists and turns of the mystery (rarely shared with the reader until Zofia's grand reveal in the end) keep this from being the unreserved pick that the fascinating historical situation of Cracow would have made it and I doubt I'll pick up any more in the series but it was a decent enough read.

[ozzer_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Complex plotting follows the genre to a satisfying resolution. It is probably a bit too complex to follow easily, especially with all of the unusual character and place names.