Per describes an island society that has embraced all of the 60/70's ideas (in extreme) - but can only survive using the free market (which it, of course, abhors). On the mainland a group of generals sets out to bring the island back under their control again.

This is Per Wahlöös best book. Almost science fiction. Very exiting and well written.

The sixth Martin Beck novel. The crime this time around is the brutal murder of a decorated police officer in his hospital bed. Beck (now divorced from his shrewish wife) and his partner Kollberg, are on the case again.

This is the best novel in the series, masterfully interweaving the virtues of Beck's patient, methodical style of detection with a damning indictment of the pointless brutality and general incompetence of modern law enforcement. The point of the book, made in a variety of ways, is that law enforcement needs better cops, not bigger guns. Excellent as both a crime thriller and social commentary.

And don't miss the cliffhanger ending.

Unfortunately, it's out of print, and hard to find. Beg, borrow, or steal a copy, and read it.

"The Abomidable Man" is one of the better entries in the ten "Martin Beck" mysteries by the husband-and-wife team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. It features the unforgettable characters of Martin Beck, Leonard Kollberg, and their colleagues at the newly nationalized Swedish Police Force as a particularly brutal murder of a police officer in a hospital is investigated. With few clues, Beck and his colleagues eventually solve the case, but are overtaken by events in the sort of bleak existential denouement that characterizes this unmatched series of crime stories. The authors use the police procedural as a prism through which to look at society, and their liberal outlook seems innocent and quaint given the passage of time. Search your local used bookstores and garage sales for any entries in this series (not too uncommon in paperback) and let's hope that Black Lizard rereleases the whole series. NOTE: This book was made into an outstanding Swedis! ! h film called "The Man on the Roof", available on video at certain outlets.

Another spellbinding Martin Beck mystery that invites the reader into the world of the Swedish police in the 70's. The characters are memorable, the plot is very believable, it's an excellent piece of mystery fiction.

set in 70's Sweden, one of the "Martin Beck" Mysteries (there are 10 of them I think). Although they were Swedish, they made it into mainstream American Paperback print. Racy covers with contradictorily reasonably serious themes and decent writing.

"And just why is it not longer in print?" one of the bureaucrats might ask.

"Ridiculous" Beck might think under his breath.

These books give me the feeling that the authors really had a lot of experience in the world of police detective work. I don't know if they did or not. I think perhaps they were journalists who covered some criminal investigations.

There isn't a gunfight on every other page, and they don't get the guy who did it quite as easily as all that.

The work is methodical and frustrating, but in the end things get done and in the end the book is a satisfying read with small insights into both the work and the lives of the men.

This particular one has a good bit of Gunvald Larsson (not exactly Beck's favorite colleague, but definitely my favorite character) and the brick walls he very nearly runs into in trying to solve this case.

The comic relief, like the more serious moments, is reserved but very well done. I've reread some of the Larsson scenes many times.

jl

The fifth Martin Beck novel. When an apartment building under police surveillance mysteriously explodes in the middle of the night, it's up to Beck to solve the crime. Was it terrorism? Assassination? Or just a gas leak?

One of the better novels in the series, this is the first one to deal seriously with organized crime and the underworld. It also gives more time to the hilarious Gunvald Larsson, introduced in earlier novels but here playing a major supporting role.

An excellent crime thriller.

A look into the world of Swedish Homocide Bureau Chief Martin Beck. The book is well plotted and gives the reader a realistic look into the procedures of the police, as well as a glimpse into the steamy side of life (and crime) in Sweden in the late sixties.

The second book in the Martin Beck detective series. ... the emphasis is more on the police procedural than the social and political commentary which would dominate the authors' later works.

The crime in this one is again sexual in nature, although even more barbaric: the serial rape and strangulation of little girls, whose bodies subsequently turn up in parks all over Stockholm. Beck is on the case (with his trusty partner Kollberg), and the two thoroughly investigage every lead, but to no avail. The tension in the book is simple, but palpable: ... As the detectives begin to feel the heat from their superiors and the public, the killer prepares to strike again...

And then the anticlimactic ending. No car chases, no shoot-outs, no ingenious breakthroughs, no sudden flashes of psychic insight: just simple police work and a healthy infusion of old-fashioned dumb luck.

One of the better novels in the series, again to be praised for its attention to details and realism.

The Martin Beck stories written by the gifted husband and wife writers, Wahloo and Sjowall are well written and will hold your attention. Guaranteed. These are crime novels with a social conscience of the 60's era. The authors bemoan the disintegration of the Swedish and western society, where everything is worse than it used to be. Martin Beck is a cop who is no villain, and who does his job because somebody has to do it. We look at the evils of the 60's society almost with nostalgia today. If only today's society could be as bad as the one Martin Beck had to face every day. Had he been able to see into the future, Martin Beck would have indeed been thankful that he didn't have to live in 2001. When I first bought the Black Lizard edition in a Berkeley bookstore years ago, I must confess it was strictly for the slick cover of a dead man with a face in a spaghetti plate (in "Murder At the Savoy"). Soon I had to have all ten of the Wahloo-Sjowall books. I still have them, and still occasionally go back to read them again!

Serial-killer novels with the detective in hot pursuit are a dime a dozen... This is a primary source for the genre, and a literary work of the first magnitude. One of those rare books with the ring of truth, making it all the more terrifying... The protagonist Martin Beck and his colleagues are in a league of their own, among the most compelling characters in modern fiction. The Martin Beck mysteries as a whole dwarf almost any other literary achievement of the last fifty years. If you've made it this far in this review, do yourself a favor and read one of these books. You won't regret it.

I was recently pointed in the direction of these husband and wife novels by a fellow reviewer here at Amazon, who read, and loved, The Laughing Policeman. I figured I would start at the beginning of the series, as Roseanna is the first "Martin Beck" mystery written by the Sjowall/Wahloo team, and I was not disappointed.

The book takes place in Stockholm in the early 1970''s where a young woman's body is found in a lake, near the locks of a major waterway. The police at first have no leads, there is no identification on the body, and they have no clues whatsoever as to the identity of the victim, nor who might have killed her. Over the course of the novel, the crime is ultimatley solved through meticulous police work, including some false leads, which in this reviewer's opinion comes reasonably close to how homicides are solved in the real world. Interrogations and surveillance of the suspects have a gritty, realistic feel which is not lost at all in the translation from the authors' native Swedish.

What I found most surprising about the book, especially given the fact that it was written by a husband and wife team, is the utter lack of personality given the main character Martin Beck. Beck is married and has kids, and yet when in the midst of an investigation he seems so engrossed in the details of the crime that he barely speaks to his family, comes home essentially to sleep, and is always battling a cold. I don't think 3 sentences of true dialogue were exchanged between Beck and his wife all novel. This wouldn't be so odd, except that there are repeated scenes in his home, he just is so absorbed with the mystery he ignores all extraneous matter until the crime is solved.

Overall, I thought this was a taut, suspenseful novel and I look forward to periodically sampling other Martin Beck mysteries from this writing duo.

The nude body of a young woman is dredged from the bottom of a Swedish canal, and Martin Beck, a homicide detective with the Stockholm Police Force, spends the rest of "Roseanna" doggedly looking for clues and trying to solve her murder. Authors Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo supposedly set out to write ten books featuring a homicide detective (Beck), and showing the ills of modern society in the process. Roseanna was the first of the ten books, one per year, that came out in the late sixties and early seventies. But what Sjowall and Wahloo may have succeeded in doing is something a little different - revealing a genius for characterization and story, so that by the tenth book ("The Terrorists", sadly out of print), one looks at Beck and the other recurring characters like old friends. But Roseanna is great reading, whether basking on the beach or in bed on a dark and stormy night. One roots for Martin Beck, a creation every bit as compelling as S! ! am Spade, Travis McGee or Phillip Marlowe, as he stubbornly pursues his seemingly impossible task. And one also has to thank Black Lizard for having the courage to re-issue these masterpieces of crime fiction. Enjoy!

The first in a series of ten detective novels intended to portray the decay of modern Scandinavian society though the lens of the police procedural. Written by a husband and wife team, (Sjowall and Wahloo), the books are excellently plotted and written, with an eye toward detail and realism.

In this first book, the emphasis is more on introducing the characters and their methods, with very little political or social commentary. The protagonist is the hapless Martin Beck, a homicide detective with the Stockholm police force, trapped in a loveless marriage at home and stultified by inept bueracracy at the workplace. His escape from the tedium of existence is his quiet, unstated, love of police work, particularly his own methodical approach to homicide.

This book introduces us to Beck, and follows his patient investigation into the rape, bludgeoning, and subsequent drowning of an American tourist named Roseanna. It is one of the best in the series; in fact, its probably one of the greatest crime novels ever written. Start with this book and read the rest of the series. You won't be disappointed.

While "The Laughing Policeman" ostensibly focuses on Sjowall and Wahloo's protagonist Martin Beck, the book truly gains its appeal not solely through the depiction of Beck, but rather through the colorful cast of all the policemen involved in this mystery of a busload of citizens and one policeman murdered, seemingly without motive. Sjowall and Wahloo are not only skilled at character development, however. The pleasure I got from meeting and getting to know each of their idiosyncratic policemen was only surpassed by seeing each of their methods and discoveries coming together to finally solve the case (whose solution, itself, brilliantly comes through the examination of a policeman's character). Every time the narrative found a new policeman to follow, I found myself wishing that this one had been the protagonist. And while I occasionally found myself confused by the names of the characters and places of the story (I admit to being a novice regarding Sweden and Swedish), I found Wahloo/Sjowall's depiction of 1968 Stockholm as a dark, dreary city full of criminal elements and lacking any innocents on a par with the literary Londons, New Yorks, and Los Angeleses of the world. Despite being more of a police procedural, concerned with the details of the case, rather than a Sherlock Holmes-style case with an explosive surprise ending, "The Laughing Policeman" kept me interested both in its characters and its story up until the last page. I'd recommend it to anyone as a good read, and especially to fans of the police procedural.

Sweden meets "NYPD Blue" in this non-action-packed police detective mystery by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. All of the action of "The Laughing Policeman" seems to take place before the book even begins. At the start of the book we learn that a terrible crime has been committed, nine passengers have been shot dead on a public bus in the streets of Stockholm. In light of the current events that have recently taken place in the U.S., it is ironic that the Swedish detectives on the case speak of how strange the crime is, stating that such a crime would more likely be seen on U.S. soil. The reader gains a good knowledge of the city of Stockholm, its streets, its people, its dark side, as the detectives leave no stone unturned in their search for the killer. Yet, while the characters are busy searching all over the city, we, the readers, are busy exploring the depths of the characters themselves. Each character has many interesting distinctions and, much like the way the details of the crime are slowly unraveled, different facets of the characters involved are revealed as the novel progresses. It almost seems, at times, that the novel is more about the detectives and their lives than it is about solving the crime at hand. It comes across as a kind of police detective television show where there is always a crime to be solved, but people really watch the show just to see what will happen in the characters' personal lives. Overall, a good mystery, with an exciting conclusion, but perhaps more for the "NYPD Blue" fan, than the "Murder She Wrote" type.

The Laughing Policeman will satisfy anyone searching for a classic crime novel with a truly original and engaging storyline, but the most satisfaction comes in its subtle social commentary. Ace detective Ake Stenstrom has been murdered in the deadliest case of mass murder in Stockholm (the detectives on the case have only heard of such atrocities happening on the violent soil of America). But the husband-wife co-authors present more than an intriguing knot of clues to demand the reader?s intellect?they present characters as complex and worthy of unraveling as the murder case itself. Chief Inspector Martin Beck, former boss and close friend to the victim, is the foremost example. He not only leads us to the solution of the mystery with intelligence and compassion, but through Beck and the other detectives, we begin to see the condition of man, as well as the sacrifices made to improve society. Perhaps Detective Beck articulates this condition of the policeman: the dehumanizing effect of seeing the most brutal, violent and loathsome aspects of society. But despite the police officer?s submersion in this victimized, grotesque reality, the Stockholm Homicide Squad is able to maintain (not without sacrifice) the ideals of justice. Even the brutish Gunvald Larsson expresses his sympathy for the victimized lower class?including victims and petty lawbreakers alike: ?I feel sorry for nearly everyone we meet in this job. They?re just a lot of scum who wish they?d never been born. It?s not their fault that everything goes to hell and they don?t understand why.? From page one till the final climax, The Laughing Policeman provides the customary suspense and entertainment of a detective novel, as well as lucid glimpses of the complex relationship between Man and Law.

Detective Martin Beck is back at work after a near-fatal event at work. A team of colleagues is attempting to solve a series of bank robberies that they are convinced are related. Beck is in the process of solving another case. His work and conclusions are more intriguing than that of the others and finally solved but not prosecuted. All crimes eventually can be all tied together even though they are not officially solved. The crimes are set in the Stockholm of the 70ies and integrated in Sweden's social problems of that era.

While I was expecting a masterpiece along the lines of Henning Mankell's criminal investigator Wallander this book did certainly not live up to my expectations. The stories are very fragmented, the sudden shifts from one story to the other are deliberate but destructive to the reader. I did not get hooked onto the book at all - because of its fragmentation it totally lacks suspense. It is hard to relate nowadays to the social problems of the time and they seem to overshadow the story lines in many instances. I concluded for myself that I could not get interested because of too many contemporary references, which will not make this mystery a classic of its genre. While Martin Beck fills the role of an interesting inspector he is pushed to far into the background even though he is supposed to be the novel's hero.

I have recently become a fan of this series of twelve detective novels, written in the late 1960's and early 1970's in Sweden by husband and wife team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Wahloo, who died in 1975, did some reporting and the no-nonsense style of these novels reminds one of good reporting.

The Locked Room is somewhat unique to the series, in that the authors frequently shift their focus to the minor characters and criminals, in omniscient narrator style, giving the reader more perspective than is usual. The novel involves two crimes, a bold bank robbery in which a bank customer is killed, and the discovery of a retired man's decomposed body in his apartment, which appears to be locked from the inside. Beck, who recently returned to the force after recovering from a shooting, is assigned the locked room case and we see him trying to fit the pieces together of a seemingly impossible crime to solve.

A NY Times critic has recently praised the grim realism of these novels; if Beck drinks too much coffee on an empty stomach, his gets sick. After a broad daylight bank robbery, the police get starkly different eyewitness accounts, leading to a morass of seemingly unrelated clues, some of them way off. The reader is constantly reminded that in the real world, this is how crimes are really solved by big city police forces.

Some readers are a little put off by the Socialist leanings of the authors, which rises to the surface occasionally as they discuss current events of Stockholm 30 years ago including strikes, poor health care/benefits for workers, etc. However the rantings never seemed to me to get in the way of their story, and the novels are all written in a lean, sparse style with few wasted scenes or verbal flourishes. I recommend the series highly, beginning with the great Roseanna.

The seventh Martin Beck novel. Recovering from his misadventures in "The Abominable Man", Beck takes up a seemingly unsolvable case: a friendless, elderly miser, shot one time in the head in a one-bedroom apartment, with locked doors and locked windows, and no gun in sight. Meanwhile, his colleagues are investigating the high-profile shooting of a security guard during a daring bank robbery conducted, apparently, by a beautiful blonde woman.

Although the authors begin to get a little too heavy-handed in their social commentary, this is still one of the better Beck novels (in fact it is regarded by many as the best, though I think its predecessor is better.) The dual plot structure and the improbable connection between the crimes make for a great thriller. The characters are engaging, and the ending is wonderful. Read it.

The ninth Martin Beck novel. Not as good as some of their previous work, but still pretty engaging nonetheless. ... The authors frequently remind us of how much better things were back in the good old days. Funny satire, but pretty cranky, and not much of a thriller.

The book redeems itself with some of Gunvald Larsson's uproarious antics and the shocking revelation of the identity of the title character.

"Cop Killer" is entertaining in parts, but I think Sjowall and Wahloo were beginning to get bored with the police procedural, and it shows.

All of the Martin Beck mysteries (I believe there are 10 in all) are excellent reads that offer a window into the criminal Scandinavian landscape. Sharply etched characterizations and stories that remind one of the Magritte novels of Simenon. It's a shame that they are hard to find!

The eighth Martin Beck novel. For the first time in the series, Sjowall and Wahloo feel like they're treading water. The crime this time is the mysterious murder of a wealthy industrialist at a fancy supper club. The murderer shoots him once in the back of the head at dinner, with thirteen witnesses in attendance, exits through a window, and rides away on his bicycle. But amazingly, Stockholm homicide detective Beck finds the crime virtually unsolvable.

As in some of their previous novels (particularly "The Man who Went Up in Smoke") very little happens during the course of the book, the ending is anticlimactic and the solution to the crime has less to do with police work than dumb luck. However, in their previous novels, the extra space with filled in with the fascinating details of police investigation: false leads, lying witnesses, and bueracratic incompetence. Although those elements are again present in this work, here the focus is on heavy-handed political and social criticism, particularly the evils of capitalism (Sjowall and Wahloo were Marxists.)

Still, the book has its own paticular charm.

This was my second contact with Sjowall and Wahloo's Martin Beck police detective novels, and while I like the taut no-nonsense style of these novels, I think this one falls quite a bit short of Roseanna. In Murder at the Savoy, a wealthy businessman named Palmgren is shot in the head and killed while addressing a group of people at dinner in the elegant Savoy Hotel in Malmo, a Swedish coastal resort town. The killer calmly escapes out the window and leaves the scene on a bicycle, and we learn that nobody at the table got a decent look at the shooter.

Martin Beck is soon brought in from Stockholm, since the case has political repurcussions arising from Palmgren's shady business transactions, including international arms sales. I was a little disappointed in the way the crime was solved, since Beck was ultimately a bit player in the novel, and the interplay between the various Malmo detectives was a little stale since the authors had not given us much background information. I found myself getting confused between "Larsson" and "Kollberg", and not much caring who was who.

As usual with this series, the crimes are solved by thorough detective work, including chasing some leads that go nowhere, without a lot of contrivances in the plot like extended gunplay, strange coincidences or mystical psychic citizens who identify the killer through hypnosis. I am not a detective, but it seems to me these novels give a more accurate account of how crimes are actually solved by municipal detectives. All in all a pretty good read, suspenseful and engaging at times, but not up to the level of the authors' best.

Along with Roseanna and The Man on the Balcony, Murder at the Savoy easily ranks in the top three out of the ten Martin Beck series. Logical, crisp plot. Great references to the political climate of the 60's. A real pleasure.