“I write to lift spirits and to amuse hearts”—that is what the well-known Polish writer Joanna Chmielewska says about herself. Chmielewska is paradoxes, sharp jokes, mystifications, and extraordinary journeys that grow out of an ordinary telephone conversation or a visit. She takes her plots exclusively from life and finds the key to any reader. Even people who start reading any detective story from the middle—not to waste time on ramping up the plot—read Chmielewska from beginning to end. Because the main thing isn’t “who the murderer is,” but how it’s written.