Editor's Note: This is the next to last of my blog posts. I actually wrote it just days after I arrived back in the States after 13 years living in the UK. I think I was in a state resembling mild PTSD, the preceding three months had been so stressful, and I was living all alone in a 3 bedroom, two-storey house on Chicago Avenue, which was a little bit scary at night. But anyway, what I wanted to add is that since this post, Public TV carried a great series called Spies of Warsaw starring David Tennant as - the Polish Officer! It had this same scene that so moved me in the book, and it was beautifully done.
Well, it's not often I review and blog a book I have only read one chapter of. In fact, it's not often I review and blog books at all anymore. And maybe I am more jetlagged and culture-shocked than I thought I was, or maybe it really was that good. I just read the first chapter of The Polish Officer by Alan Furst, entitled "The Pilawa Local." I was in tears. It made me wish I was Polish. And to all my Polish friends, my God, you come from a noble people, and I am heartily sorry if ever in my careless youth I retold or even laughed at a Polack joke, no matter how good-natured.
