A Blind Eye by Jane Gorman

Adam Kaminski, former teacher turned policeman, is on a cultural exchange with a group of other Americans to Poland.  They are touring the country, learning about the people, customs, government and other institutions and sharing their own experiences.  Adam is pleased to have been chosen when someone dropped out.  His own family had immigrated from Poland at the start of World War II, and he knows there is still family there although his branch has lost track years before.

He is pleased when circumstances allow him to meet a relative.  He stops to help a man who seems in need of assistance and it turns out to be his own cousin, Lukasz Kaminski.  Their grandfathers were brothers, but Lukasz's branch of the family stayed behind.  He is now a respected journalist but Adam is meeting him at the worst juncture of his life.  His daughter, Basia, has committed suicide a few weeks before.  Lukasz insists that it cannot be suicide and then is attacked and his apartment broken into.  Is all this coincidence?

He asks Adam for help in unraveling the mystery.  Basia had just started a job in government and Lukasz believes she uncovered something that caused her death.  Adam is hesitant but when he sees how his cousin is ignored and pushed away at every turn, he cannot help but want to help.  As the two men start to get answers their own lives start to be in danger.  The tour guide, Sylvia, is also drawn in as she and Adam are starting a romance.

This is the first novel in the Adam Kaminski series.  It gives a good overview of Poland and its current situation as it tries to recover from the war and then the stifling rule of Communism.  It seems a bit unlikely that Adam and Lukasz are able to make so much progress in a few short days, but overall the plot is satisfactory and readers will get not only a mystery but a history lesson.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.