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Cop Killer (Martin Beck #9)

4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 · rating details · 582 ratings · 53 reviews

Au fin fond de la campagne suédoise, un cadavre de femme est retrouvé dans un marécage. C'est la personnalité de son voisin qui intéresse particulièrement la police. Mais comme souvent, les apparences sont trompeuses et les préjugés tenaces. C'est alors qu'une fusillade oppose des flics à des adolescents. L'un des policiers décède et Malm organise la chasser à l'ado surviv...more

Paperback, 288 pages

Published December 2007 by Harper Perennial (first published 1967)

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Nov 01, 2012 Brad rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: ki hope

Shelves: about-violence, ethics, audio-book, police-procedural, swedish-lit

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö wrote their Martin Beck series in the sixties and seventies. They wrote ten novels in ten years. They wrote about a time without computers and modern gadgets, but apart from those conveniences themselves, the books could have been written yesterday.

These books are about everything that continues to be wrong in our societies. They are about carceration, misplaced conceptions of justice and the omnipresence of injustice. They are about the militarization of police forces...more
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö wrote their Martin Beck series in the sixties and seventies. They wrote ten novels in ten years. They wrote about a time without computers and modern gadgets, but apart from those conveniences themselves, the books could have been written yesterday.

These books are about everything that continues to be wrong in our societies. They are about carceration, misplaced conceptions of justice and the omnipresence of injustice. They are about the militarization of police forces and police culpability in the crimes they are expressly formed to fight. They are about an environment under siege by our way of living. They are about our fears of sexuality and society's role in controlling our desires. They are about rape culture and the fight of women to control their bodies and own their sexuality. They are about the disaffection of our children and young adults. They are about failing economies, people without work, the haves having more and the have-nots having so little that they turn to crime in despair. They are about the need for forgiveness. They are about guilt and conscience and ethics. And they show that not a damn thing has changed (at least in the Canada of today, the country I live in, it hasn't. Canada right now is the Sweden of the seventies and that is fucking depressing).

Into all of these issues, spanning nine years a this point, are thrust Martin Beck and Lennart Kollberg. They solve murders for the National Police Squad. They are men of conscience, actively struggling everyday with the issues Sjöwall & Wahlöö drop in their path. By the close of the book, one of them resigns from the force he once loved and now disdains. The other goes wearily on. People die over the course of Cop Killer, even a cop (though the "actual" cop killer is rather surprising). The wrong man is railroaded into prison to await trial for a crime he didn't commit simply because it is the path of least resistance. Other men are hunted and ear-marked for death because of coincidence. A girl is bitten repeatedly in the groin by an attack dog because she helped some friends (though she'd already surrendered when the dog attacked). A cop and a man he helped convict of murder (now free after serving his sentence) sit down over a seltzer water and an aquavit to share their guilt over the people they've killed. And one cop looks forward to eating a meal with the woman he loves. It's all here in this marvellous book.

Make no mistake, these books are not to be taken lightly; they are literature. They should be the canon of police procedurals. If you love detective stories and you've not read the Martin Beck books you need to get started. You'll see why.

p.s. If you decide to read this series take my advice and reread Roseanna just before you read this for the first time. I did quite by accident and a happy accident it was.(less)

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Mar 21, 2011 Nancy Oakes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My first thought: oh no, there's only one more book left!

It's been about a year now since the events of The Locked Room. Martin Beck's life has gained some stability since he met Rhea Nielsen, the landlady of the victim in the previous novel. Now he's called to the small rural town of Anderslöv, where a young woman, Sigbrit Mård, has gone missing. Described as a "highly normal" person, Sigbrit isn't the type to just up and wander off into another life, so the police suspect foul play. The two m...more My first thought: oh no, there's only one more book left!

It's been about a year now since the events of The Locked Room. Martin Beck's life has gained some stability since he met Rhea Nielsen, the landlady of the victim in the previous novel. Now he's called to the small rural town of Anderslöv, where a young woman, Sigbrit Mård, has gone missing. Described as a "highly normal" person, Sigbrit isn't the type to just up and wander off into another life, so the police suspect foul play. The two main suspects in the case are her ex-husband and a returning character from the first book in this series, Roseanna, and it is because of the latter that Beck becomes involved in the crime. Things heat up when Sigbrit's body is discovered, and the press has a field day, putting immense amounts of pressure on the police to solve the crime, and literally trying the case in the newspapers. Beck's superiors in the National Police feel that the public will be happy if Beck takes the most obvious suspect into custody, but they're not the ones directly involved and Beck is frustrated. His instincts tell that him something is just not right here, and that the obvious may not be everything it seems. While this investigation is going on, there's another crime -- this time against three members of the police force when they make a traffic stop where things go very badly and a shooting occurs. One of the accomplices in this crime gets away, and the police must try to find him -- but not solely for his participation in this crime. In the meantime, one of the members of the Homicide Squad begins to wonder if maybe he's had enough.

The ninth of out ten books in this series, Cop Killer is a very thought-provoking novel, with one of the key discussions that runs throughout the story centered on whether or not police should be armed, and whether or not an armed police force is the cause of so many gun-related deaths. But beyond this debate, the book's title also gives a clue into the growing disenchantment of more seasoned members of the national police force, who realize that their abilities are being hampered by the rise in bureaucratic ineptitude. For example, Stig Malm, Beck's boss, begins to call the shots from his comfy desk and tell the detectives how to do their jobs, even though in Beck's murder case, Beck knows that if he follows Malm's orders, he may be committing a miscarriage of justice. The same is true for the other case, but Malm is more concerned with pleasing the National Police Commissioner than anything else. Even worse, to get his name and face in the newspaper, he takes command of operations in which he has no business being involved, and time has proven that things turn out very badly when he insinuates himself into these situations. But on the whole, the police force has changed both from within and from without, and not always for the better, and for some people it's just too much to deal with any more.

Once again, these authors have given their readers a terrific story while continuing their tradition of social critique of what they see as the betrayal of the ideals of the welfare state. You may or may not agree with them or care about a Sweden of 40+ or so years ago, but you can't help but admire their sophisticated plotting talents, their ongoing characters who act and think like real people, and above all their literary talent. Personally I'm rather sad that the series is almost at an end, because I know I'm never going to experience anything like it again. While there are some well-known modern writers of Scandinavian crime fiction that are quite popular right now (for example Henning Mankell or Stieg Larsson), I would hate to think that these fine books are being overlooked when they are clearly a part of the best that the Nordic countries have to offer.

Definitely recommended, but you should read the series in order to get the most out of it.

-sigh. On to the last book. (less)

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Aug 30, 2009 Kathleen Hagen added it

Shelves: 2009-audio-books, 2009-fiction

Cop Killer, by Maj Sjöwall, Per WahlööA. Narrated by Tom Wiener, produced by Blackstone Audio, downloaded from audible.com.

Blackstone Audio has been producing these books now over the last year. Unfortunately, while they have usually been in order, this one isn’t. So, with 7 and 8 as yet unread, this is book 9 in the series. It’s interesting, knowing that these books were coming to an end, and maybe it’s only a retrospective observation, but it seems to me the authors were bringing this series t...more Cop Killer, by Maj Sjöwall, Per WahlööA. Narrated by Tom Wiener, produced by Blackstone Audio, downloaded from audible.com.

Blackstone Audio has been producing these books now over the last year. Unfortunately, while they have usually been in order, this one isn’t. So, with 7 and 8 as yet unread, this is book 9 in the series. It’s interesting, knowing that these books were coming to an end, and maybe it’s only a retrospective observation, but it seems to me the authors were bringing this series to an end. I imagine in books 7 and 8 we see Martin Beck finally divorced, and now with a woman who he loves and seemingly loves him. What’s interesting about all that is that we barely see her in the pages of this book. In this one, a girl goes missing in a little Swedish town. Martin Beck is sent to investigate. They find the body decomposed after a few weeks in the bottom of some very swampy water. Also, it turns out that the murderer of Roseanna from the first book, Folke Bengtsson, who has been released from prison after only ten years, lives next door to the victim. He seems to be living quietly among his neighbors who know he murdered someone but don’t seem particularly bothered about it now. Beck, however, is instantly on guard believing that since Bengtsson lived next door to the victim, and since she was killed in a similar way to Roseanna, it might well be Bengtsson. His superiors are sure it’s Bengtsson so as soon as he has been arrested they want Beck to close the case and move on. But beck has begun to believe that Bengtsson, although capable of murder, didn’t do this one. As he digs through the woman’s life, he finds some secrets and a motive for someone else to kill her. There is also one of the authors’ semi-comic scenes involving the shooting of two cops who then killed the shooter, and a third cop actually died although he hadn’t been shot. So Beck’s long-time friend is put seemingly in charge of chasing down the remaining person. The two men were burglarizing cabins and had run from being stopped by the police. The Keystone Cops scenario that we have become familiar with occurs regarding these “cop killers”. It’s very good, but I wish I hadn’t read it out of order.
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Jun 20, 2009 Sun rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookaweek2009

When a woman is reported missing in the small town of Anderslöv, Martin Beck, Chief of Sweden's National Homicide Squad is summoned. There's no indication the woman is even dead, but for the fact that convicted sex killer Folke Bengtsson is her closest neighbour. While in Skåne, Martin Beck and Lennart Kollberg are aided by sanguine and oddly-named local policeman Herrgott Allwright. But their investigation is interrupted by a shootout between three duty officers and two teens in nearby Malmö. C...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Timothy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

1 1/2 stars.

Personally, I'm scratching my head over all of the great reviews for this book. I admit that it starts off fairly well with the murder of a divorced woman who's body is hidden in the woods and the subsequent search for her killer. Unfortunately, about half way through the book the authors suddenly start up an, apparently, completely different story about two youths involved in a shoot-out with police and the search for one of the survivors of that incident.

It is at this point that th...more

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Sep 11, 2011 Mitch rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mysteries, kindle

With a number of characters returning from past novels and some climactic decisions at the end of the book, this really felt like the series was coming to an end. I am very curious to see how The Terrorists goes. Sjowall and Wahloo use the same device of tying up two apparently different strands with one nice coincidence as we saw in The Locked Room, which is a bit disappointing from the authors who won praise for novels about nothing happening for days or weeks or even months (e.g. Roseanna). B...more

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May 09, 2011 Karmologyclinic rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books, crime-thriller

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 14, 2011 Jim Coughenour rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime4connoisseurs

I'm in the position of looking at that box of candy, when only one piece is left. Cop Killer was number nine, a bit slower than the last few, but at this point Martin Beck & company are like an old group of friends whom I'm just happy to hang out with. As is their habit, Sjöwall and Wahlöö throw in plenty of wry laughs along the way.

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Mar 19, 2013 Andrewh rated it 4 of 5 stars

The title should be in scare quotes as there is no cop-killer - rather, a cop who dies of a bee sting while jumping for cover. This is the penultimate of the Beck mysteries and the style has matured, with slightly less of the occasionally irritating sociological didacticism of some of the earlier novels, though we still learn some useful facts about 70s Sweden (highest suicide rate in Europe, for example). The book's theme is mainly that of the militarisation of the police in Sweden, and how arm...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Srinivas Prasad Veeraraghavan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Seems as if I've been hittin' all the right notes recently.

'Cop Killer' is THE best Martin Beck novel I've read so far and there are just 2-3 let in the Series so that's sayin' something. The prodigious duo depict a microcosm of Swedish society in their typical,no-nonsense way and they use the crime genre deftly to turn the focus on disillusioned youth struggling to stay afloat in a rapidly disintegrating economy and disgruntled middle-aged Scandinavians trying in vain to make sense of their li...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Greg Young rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: detective-fiction, kindle

The 9th book in the Martin Beck series has Martin investigating the disappearance of a middle-aged divorcee in a remote Swedish town. As the plot unfolds, a separate police shooting incident in Stockholm entangles the Cop Killer of the title and some of Martin's team are diverted to the ensuing manhunt.

Sjowall and Wahloo are scathing here about the Swedish police force. Their writing seems to become more political as the series progresses.

This novel has a lot of references back to the earlier b...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Terry rated it 5 of 5 stars

The best thing about Sjöwall and Wahlöö's Martin Beck books is the rich characters drawn from mundane and unglamorous circumstances. Their Marxist critique of Sweden's welfare society and the increasing incompetence of the ever growing Police force is the back drop for hoodlums and ne'er do wells (on both sides of the law) to wreak havoc. In amongst it all is Martin Beck attempting to keep his head while everyone else loss theirs.

The apparent change in story mid-way through the book is a little...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Maria rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mysteries

Martin Beck and Lennart Kollberg visit rural Sweden to solve the murder of a young woman, but it's the manhunt for a young "cop killer" (who never fired a single shot) that gives them the break in their case...and leads Kollberg to make a fateful decision about his future as a policeman. Once again I'm impressed by how well the authors show the evolution of the policing profession--how it's gone from the neighborhood cop on the beat to a militarized and violent army--and the impact of institutio...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Maria João Fernandes rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-in-english, own, sjöwall-wahlöö, favorites

"This isn't a Sherlock Holmes movie."

O nono livro da série do Inspetor Martin Beck teve o mesmo impacto em mim que os oito que o antecederam. A qualidade nas obras do casal de escritores suecos mantém-se no nível mais elevado e, apesar de terem sido escritas na década de setenta não perderam a relevância e os temas abordados continuam atuais.

"The best part of Murder was that it got you out of the city now and then."

O cenário é a cidade de Mälmo. Uma mulher desaparece e Martin Beck é chamado para...more "This isn't a Sherlock Holmes movie."

O nono livro da série do Inspetor Martin Beck teve o mesmo impacto em mim que os oito que o antecederam. A qualidade nas obras do casal de escritores suecos mantém-se no nível mais elevado e, apesar de terem sido escritas na década de setenta não perderam a relevância e os temas abordados continuam atuais.

"The best part of Murder was that it got you out of the city now and then."

O cenário é a cidade de Mälmo. Uma mulher desaparece e Martin Beck é chamado para a investigação. Irá auxiliar o policia local - Herrgot Allwright - um homem simpático, divertido e atencioso, dotado de um sentido de humor contagiante com quem o Inspetor Chefe da Brigada de Homicídios de Estocolmo simpatiza imediatamente.

A linha de investigação inicial é simples: os dois policias, com a ajuda de Kollberg, tentam perceber se o culpado pelo desaparecimento é o mesmo assassino que o nosso protagonista apanhou, pela morte de Roseanna, há nove anos atrás ou o seu ex-marido, que tem tendência para a violência.

Enquanto isto, três policias são atacados por dois jovens. O incidente é investigado separadamente mas parece haver uma ligação com o caso de Martin Beck. Novamente, o papel do acaso e do destino como fulcral nas nossas vidas.

As duas investigações seguem o seu rumo separadamente, numa narrativa caracterizada por observações, pensamentos e reflexões profundas das personagens. Uma vez mais, a sociedade sueca é criticada e uma das questões principais centra-se no uso de armas pela força policial, que geralmente gera mais violência do que aquela que combate.

Para além disso, e como já é habitual nos livros de Sjöwall e Wahlöö, a pressão dos meios de comunicação e a influência da opinião pública fazem-se sentir, ainda que Martin Beck se mantenha firme a estas "distrações". Mais uma vez, o Inspetor Chefe tem de lidar com a pressão exercida pelos seus superiores, a quem tenta, de certa forma, agradar, ainda que não seja homem de ceder nunca às suas convicções e princípios. Ao mesmo tempo, anseia voltar para casa, para Rhea - que conheceu na investigação do livro anterior. Pela primeira vez, tem alguém à sua espera.

Este é um livro que se destaca pelo aparecimentos de várias personagens dos anteriores. Não só os policias, como os criminosos e também vitimas. Um vislumbre do passado, a um passo do desfecho da série.

"Life cannot be like a ganster film, with only two kinds of people."(less)

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Jun 26, 2012 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mysteries

The first time I heard of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo books, I was recently reading a list of vintage crime novels. Their series, Martin Beck police mysteries(10 of them) were all listed there. Being unfamiliar with them I kept their names in the back of my mind noting the titles of their police procedurals, a genre I am especially fond of having read all of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books (which I consider to be the best of the genre). These books, all published by 1975, are how good books in t...more The first time I heard of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo books, I was recently reading a list of vintage crime novels. Their series, Martin Beck police mysteries(10 of them) were all listed there. Being unfamiliar with them I kept their names in the back of my mind noting the titles of their police procedurals, a genre I am especially fond of having read all of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books (which I consider to be the best of the genre). These books, all published by 1975, are how good books in this genre can be. Cop Killer is the ninth in this series of books all featuring the character of Martin Beck, police detective.
This book features short terse writing that provides details necessary for a police story while propelling the story and the reader along. At the same time, the authors weave into the story a bit of commentary about police work, the people who work in it and about a society who employs them. There is a bit of an undertone of the melancholia of real life that runs through the book of which the characters are aware of as they reflect about the difficult situations they find themselves in. But for that very reason all of the characters in these books are well drawn and true to life. The situations presented are eerily all too familiar to situations we read about in the news today, even though these books were written in the 1970s.
The Martin Beck police mysteries are exceptional and set the standard for the modern police procedural stories of today. Liza Marklund perhaps says it best in her introduction to Cop Killer when she says Sjowall and Wahloo "starkly highlighted the discrepancy between society's wishful visions and the real lives of the ordinary people, revealing the consequences of society's failure". She continues, "As a team, Sjowall and Wahloo set a completely new standard for fiction that dealt with crime in society; they brought together literary quality and dramatically skillful plotting-plus a social committment that lent a real spark to their writing".
A spark that I love and want more and more of!
If you love these types of police stories, definitely seek out these books!

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Nov 11, 2011 Jake rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Book Nine of The Martin Beck series takes us out of the city and into the foggy countryside of southern Sweden. A divorcee has disappeared. There are two suspects: her alcoholic sea captain ex-husband, and a paroled sex killer who lived in the house up the road. Martin Beck is called in because he had previously arrested the sex killer, in "Roseanna", which was Book 1 of the series. Kollberg, Martin Beck's trusted associate, is initially tasked to help him but transferred to a country-wide dragn...more Book Nine of The Martin Beck series takes us out of the city and into the foggy countryside of southern Sweden. A divorcee has disappeared. There are two suspects: her alcoholic sea captain ex-husband, and a paroled sex killer who lived in the house up the road. Martin Beck is called in because he had previously arrested the sex killer, in "Roseanna", which was Book 1 of the series. Kollberg, Martin Beck's trusted associate, is initially tasked to help him but transferred to a country-wide dragnet after two policemen are shot during a routine car-stop.

Both cases come together neatly: the escaping cop killer steals a car, which the owner fails to report to the police. The owner turns out to be the boyfriend of the missing divorcee, who has killed her when she threatened to tell his wife about their affair. The "Cop Killer", who turns out to be a teenager who has killed no cops (he was just along for the ride, and one of the cops was actually killed by a wasp sting) miraculously survives being murdered by the police after Martin Beck's men save him from a brutal police assault. The novel ends with Kollberg resigning his commission in disgust about how corrupt the police force has become.

After nine novels, Wahloo and Sjowall's critique of post-war life in Sweden has crystalized. Despite Sweden's reputation as a a democratic socialist paradise, they see a rising tide of crime, drug abuse, and poverty that only gets worse throughout the series. By book nine, they have identified what they believe is the cause of these problems, which is rising income inequality. Furthermore, they are disgusted by a government which they feel fails to recognize this cause, and instead attempts to solve the country's problems through ever harsher policing. This particular novel was written in 1975, a couple of years after the Swedish police had been nationalized, a move which the authors clearly see as a slide towards fascism driven by the rich and powerful who control state policy.

Whether you agree with their politics or not, their description of the country's problems feels honest and nuanced, and their ideas about the causes and solutions of those problems are well-argued and heartfelt. The problem in "Cop Killer" is that their feelings of hostility toward the system seem to be crystalizing into a particularly virulent dislike for the police. Take, for instance, these two quotes, both from the scene in which the patrolmen are shot:

"Squad cars poked about in unlikely places or stood poisoning the air with idling engines, while the average patrolmen inside had a bad back and a steadily decreasing IQ, even as he grew more and more alienated from society in general."

"Elofsson was in great pain, and the front of his uniform was already soaked and smeared with blood. He could neither talk nor move, only observe. And still he was more dumbfounded than afraid. How could this have happened? For twenty years he'd been driving around shouting and swearing, pushing, kicking, hitting people with his billy club, or slapping them with the flat side of his saber. He had always been the stronger, had always had the advantage of arms and might and justice against people who were weaponless and powerless and had no rights. And now here he lay on the pavement."

This kind of snarling disgust is not of a piece with their earlier writing, which has a far more subtle view of the nature of policing and the difficulties of the individual police officer, who must balance the sometimes violent needs of the state against his natural human compassion. Even here, in book 9, Sjowall and Wahloo continue to paint their homicide detectives as sympathetic, though often flawed, human beings. But when they write about other cops, they seem to have lost this thread, and that's definitely to the detriment of the book. (less)

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Nov 25, 2009 Dave Riley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-fiction, favorites

Is this the best of the 10 written by Sjöwall and Wahloo? Ironic, more bitter and cynical than its predecessors (it is the second last novel published), more than any other it is sharply critical of Swedish society of the mid 70s. If there is a Martin Beck world view, and Martin is no ideologue, this is it. Separated from Stockholm and working a case in Skane there's more opportunity for reflection and for the plot to explore a wry satirical look at the way modern journalism and state power bend...more Is this the best of the 10 written by Sjöwall and Wahloo? Ironic, more bitter and cynical than its predecessors (it is the second last novel published), more than any other it is sharply critical of Swedish society of the mid 70s. If there is a Martin Beck world view, and Martin is no ideologue, this is it. Separated from Stockholm and working a case in Skane there's more opportunity for reflection and for the plot to explore a wry satirical look at the way modern journalism and state power bends reality for preferential ends.

The way these two writers construct their plots and engineer their POV is superbly crafted. They set a threshold for crime fiction that seems now only to relate to those Swedish writers who came after them. The pity is that they warrant much more deference than they get. This isn't pulp fiction by any stretch of the imagination but literary works that masquerade in a simplicity and coherency of language that ensured that none of these novels are either over written, or dramatised to the point of exaggeration. Beck is not living a fictional lifestyle, or inhabiting a mythic capacity to solve crime. He is a character in a broader existence which he cannot control or manipulate but which throws at him -- and us -- the capacity for evil through what we do to one another as our society trims our options and corporatizes our resources.

The irony is that the political dialogue that is housed in the Martin Beck series is a dénouement for the post war e boom that by the time Beck was being written up was running its course. If the welfare state was the best of all possible worlds then god help us, it is a sham.

So for those who may share a mixed nostalgia for the days before Neo-Liberalism took over, the novels of Sjöwall and Wahloo are a sharp warning that the trickle down effect wasn't trickling much at all even in everyone's favorite welfare state template, Sweden.

The one draw back with the Beck series is that after you've read the ten novels, that's it.One was published after Per Wahloo's premature death and we've had to wait until this recent republishing to be reminded of what a remarkbale series these novels are.

So there's only one thing for it: read them again, and again....

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Aug 09, 2008 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

A naked woman was dredged up from the bottom of Sweden's beautiful Lake Vattern one July day. Where had she come from? How had she got there? And why? . . . a rash of brutal muggings and child sex-murders with the elusive mugger perhaps the only person in Stockholm to have seen the murderer . . . the search for a hard-drinking well-known Swedish journalist in Budapest, who has vanished without a trace . . . eight people were shot to death in a Stockholm bus, with one of the dead being an ambitio...more

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Dec 03, 2012 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The 9th in Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's series of police procedural novels featuring Stockholm homicide detective Martin Beck is faster paced than some of the previous entries, which is not to diminish those prior books in any way. This one revolves around the disappearance of a woman in southern Sweden, the likelihood that the killer is a man Beck knows from a previous case (depicted in the first Beck novel, ROSEANNA), and Beck's increasing realization that there's more going on than the open-s...more

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Sep 02, 2010 Diane C. rated it 4 of 5 stars

My first Martin Beck mystery, and a real eye opener into Swedish life at the public and private level. Sweden is often presented to americans as a close to perfect society (and their social democratic way of government seems preferable to me over our "ownership society"), but here, all the warts are exposed. Granted, it's from the 1970's, but look at how little has changed in many places in 40 years.

I look forward to reading the rest of these books.

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Sep 17, 2011 Liz Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was written in the 1960s so the modern technology used today to solve crimes is absent. This makes the story fascinating for two reasons. One is that it highlights how far we have come technically and second, the characters are fleshed out with more detail. I feel like I know these characters by the end of the book.

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Aug 02, 2012 Miss Kamala rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

CITAZIONE
Che loro stessi, tempo addietro, fossero stati imbalsamati nel loro superficiale materialismo, sembravano non accorgersene, così come lui e molti della sua generazione non capivano di soffrire di un'indolenza imposta dall'alto e avevano bisogno di un qualcosa di promettente e concreto che li spingesse a vivere.

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Feb 09, 2011 Barb Breger rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is number 9 in an extremely intelligent, well written series. I really like this series and have ordered a third book. Great character development and interesting to read about Swedish society. It's an easy, fast, smart and most enjoyable reading experience.

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Jan 05, 2013 Brett rated it 5 of 5 stars

As good as any book in the series. I love it when you're enjoying a mystery so much you just want to follow the main characters around and don't care if they solve the thing or not. Amusing how the Stockholm-based detectives travel to the future area of the Wallander series and act as if they are in the boondocks.

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May 19, 2013 Trudy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Good police procedural -- actually fascinating for its Swedish location and setting in the early 1970's -- modern times but pre- cell phone, Internet and other gadgetry. Good plot and characters (stereotyped but works for genre).

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Jan 23, 2013 Thomas Stevenson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I first read this in the 1970s. It has aged well. The characters are appealing, the plots are well devised, and the authors' digs at the Swedish social state remain sharp. Add cell phones and computers and this could have been written today.

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May 03, 2011 Dixie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, mystery-crime, library

I randomly picked this audiobook up at the library, mistaking it for some other book I planned to read.

Of course I chose the next to last book in the series to be my introduction to a series. Do I move on to number 10 now or do I go back to number 1?

I greatly enjoy Scandinavian crime novels. There's just something about them.

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Dec 01, 2012 Alp Eren rated it 4 of 5 stars

With this book the political commentary, welfare state and police criticism gets really finley mixed with the mystery. It really does get better with each book in the series.

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Dec 04, 2011 Kat rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: recently-read

Wow! What an opener! I will be finished this in no time, I think.

This was just so good! I only have two left of the ten novels that make up, "The Story of Crime" and I'm going to really miss them. Oh, Mr. Wahloo, why did you have to die?

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Jun 24, 2011 Pgchuis rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like this series and the translation is good too. The humour is sometimes very subtle and there is always a political aspect - this time about whether the police should carry guns.

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About Maj Sjöwall

Maj Sjöwall is a Swedish author and translator. She is best known for the collaborative work with her partner Per Wahlöö on a series of ten novels about the exploits of Martin Beck, a police detective in Stockholm. In 1971, the fourth of these books, The Laughing Policeman (a translation of Den skrattande polisen, originally published in 1968) won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America...more

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Books by Maj Sjöwall

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (Martin Beck #2)

The Man on the Balcony (Martin Beck, #3)

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Cop Killer (Martin Beck #9)

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