Busy ploughing through Lonely Hearts by John Harvey.

The hero of this series of well praised detective stories is Detective Charlie Resnick. He has a Polish background which makes a lugubrious appearance now and again.

But if Arrow Books are going to do detective stories with a Polish angle, they ought to get Poles to help the proof-reading.

Imagine my shock and dismay to see on p 249 of the 2002 edition (corrected now?) the Polish national dish traduced by being turned into something with an Albanian flavour: they meant pierogi, but it appeared as pieroqi.

Resnick visits a Polish woman settled in the UK. There on the wall (p 251) is a picture of Cardinal Wysznski. Who or what is he? Can’t they spell? They must be referring to Cardinal Wyszynski.

Come on, Arrow Books. These are all easy words.

Try Polish for beetle: chrzaszcz.

Then move on the infamous Polish tongue-twister:

W Szczebrzeszynie chrz