The Investigation

Readers who like some science fiction in the science fiction may not respond to this novel. Lem's American publishers package The Investigation as they do his science fiction novels, but this is Lem's variation on the British mystery. Bodies are at first merely repositioning themselves in rural morgues, but soon they apparently are getting up and walking away. There is some loose talk about aliens, but it never amounts to much. Then again, the search for a deranged perpetrator strikes both Lt. Gregory of Scotland Yard and Harvey Sciss, a brilliant, eccentric statistician, as a dead end. As Sciss says, "This is not a criminal investigation. It is a scientific study."

Sciss could have said that what embroils him and Lt. Gregory is a metaphysical puzzle and Sciss, who is possibly mad, feels right at home. Lt. Gregory, dedicated to police work as he is, is increasingly frustrated and ill at ease. Gregory is Lem's central character and our sympathies flow his direction. Sciss is comfortable with such conclusion as

Since human reason isn't capable of understanding everything, it's irrelevant whether or not this explanation makes sense.

Gregory cannot take things so lightly. His efforts to maintain his composure in the face of the crimes, his own bizarre living arrangements, and the behavior of his co-workers creates a comic thread Lem underplays to great effect.

Relax, he told himself, nothing really awful had happened. He'd been given the slip by a man on the subway who vaguely resembled one of the missing corpses.

The Investigation is unmistakable Stanslaw Lem, but it is not science fiction. It's a mystery, and a fun one, but not aimed at readers whose enjoyment of a good mystery has anything to do with the solving of it.