The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka — Josef Skvorecky

Things looked very black for Lieutenant Boruvka in The End of Lieutenant Boruvka. But in this, the fourth and (perhaps) final volume in the series, the sad-eyed detective turns up again, this time in Canada.Boruvka is working as a parking-lot attendant in downtown Toronto, after a spectacular escape from a Czech prison which provoked an international scandal, when a young woman is murdered, perhaps in a spy coverup. Boruvka lends his years of experience and hard-won pessimism to the neophyte Canadians on the case (including his daughter, who works for a feminist detective agency).By having this story—his most riveting and funniest yet—narrated by the murdered woman's brother, an amiable WASP, Josef Skvorecky sets the Old World against the New, and pokes fun at the absurdities on both sides of our cultural divide. In the end, as an old war crime is avenged, the narrator discovers the source of Lieutenant Boruvka's mournful demeanour.