SOURCE: A review of The Investigation, in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 1, Winter, 1994, pp. 168–69.

In the following review, Lewis offers a positive assessment of The Investigation.

The English translation of Stanisław Lem's Śledztwo (1959) first appeared in the U.S. in 1974. Almost twenty years later, the same translation [The Investigation] has now been published in England. Why the novel should appear in the U.S. long before it does in England is somewhat curious in view of the fact that the work is a piece of detective fiction set in England, with Scotland Yard at the center of events. Indeed, not only is Scotland Yard at the center of events, but it is also the target of Lem's critique of the methods employed by investigators in general, whether detectives, scientists, or mathematicians. Even the genre of detective fiction itself becomes a target of Lem's satiric depiction of rational...