The Laughing Policeman
The Laughing Policeman is one novel in a ten-part series featuring Martin Beck, homicide detective in the Stockholm police force. It’s set in 1967, and the time period is significant because of burgeoning civil disobedience and political protests.
Beck is loyal to the police force, but he isn’t blind to the organization’s ultra-conservative short-comings. There are a lot of reactionaries on the force, like detective Ullholm, who think that the country’s recent switch to right-hand drive on the roads has increased “promiscuity,” which he considers Sweden’s biggest problem, next to “foreigners, teenagers and socialists.”
In a way, it’s surprising to encounter reactionaries like Ullholm in old books, because that type is so noisy and common today. We tend to think our own time is special, even unique, but that brand of virulent “cancel culture” idiocy has always existed. Ullholm, incidentally, thinks that Lapp women have a horizontal vaginal opening.
Human nature hasn’t changed since 1967 but the book describes a different era, in terms of policing. Sweden doesn’t have a high murder rate, and Stockholm’s homicide department can experience weeks-long periods where they don’t have much to do. However, as The Laughing Policeman opens, Sweden experiences its first American-style mass murder: eight people are gunned down on a double-decker bus. Beck takes a taxi to the murder scene. (He relies on public transit to get around, much like Maigret, the famous French detective.)
One of the victims was Ake Stenstrom, a young detective in Beck’s own homicide unit. Beck has no idea what his subordinate has been doing for the past three weeks. As I said, Sweden doesn’t have a lot of murders, and Ake was due some lieu time, so he was unsupervised, and unassisted. Beck eventually figures out that Stenstrom was independently working on a cold case, just because he was young and “ambitious to a fault.”
In a way, that’s a weak premise for a mystery, because there would be no mystery if two colleagues simply chatted with each other in a meaningful way.
But that’s what allows the book to transcend its genre. Like many great novels, including detective novels, The Laughing Policeman features people who sabotage norms and expectations simply by being stubborn and exerting their individualism.
Beck solves the crime because he appreciates Stenstrom’s character and knows his young subordinate would have selected the most difficult cold case to work on, the Teresa murder, to advance his career. After that flash of insight, police re-examine suspects from the "Teresa" file and plod towards a solution.
But the strength of the novel (and the series) comes from Beck’s simmering empathy for the mixed bag that composes humanity. Beck has his own personal disappointments. His marriage is disintegrating without it being anyone’s fault. He admires his daughter, Ingrid, but admits in a later book that he doesn’t like his son Rolf very much. Beck isn’t really happy until he gets a girlfriend in the last couple of novels in the series.
In the early instalments he always seems to be sick and depressed: “The rain kept on all night and although the sun, according to the almanac, rose at twenty minutes to eight, the time was nearer nine before it was strong enough to penetrate the clouds and disseminate an uncertain, hazy light.” When Beck comes home and greets his sixteen-year-old daughter, he “was almost paralyzed by the utter futility of his words. For a moment he thought of all the trivialities that had been spoken between these walls during the last ten years.”
One of the things I like about the Martin Beck series is that the title character isn’t a superhero. Actual policework is a team effort and, here, Larson and Kollberg move the investigation forward much more than Beck, who is mostly a stoic anchor. Beck’s cleverness appears twice: firstly, with the decision to reinvestigate the proper cold case, and then at the very end where he tricks a suicidal suspect into staying alive so he can be questioned.
“The Laughing Policeman” title is obviously ironic, because the book isn’t a cheery read. The phrase refers to a novelty record that Beck gets for Christmas, where an English Bobby laughs inanely between song verses.
In this bleak setting, “laughter” itself is suspicious. When detective Nordin asks a witness “What was 'strange' about this short, dark man?” she responds “Well. . .he laughed.”
The novel ends with the sentence: “Then he began to laugh.”
But Beck’s laughter isn’t unadulterated joy, even though they’ve followed Stenstrom’s trail, “cleared up the Teresa murder,” and proved that a nervous suspect from that case perpetrated the bus slaughter. Beck’s laughter is more like an impulsive reaction to life’s absurdity: he has just received a phone call and been informed that an important clue, a piece of paper with the suspect’s name on it, was under Ake Stenstrom’s desk blotter, all the time.
Life would be so cheerful and sunny if people communicated openly and honestly, but that’s never the case.
Life is actually a rainy November in Stockholm, 1967.
Beck is loyal to the police force, but he isn’t blind to the organization’s ultra-conservative short-comings. There are a lot of reactionaries on the force, like detective Ullholm, who think that the country’s recent switch to right-hand drive on the roads has increased “promiscuity,” which he considers Sweden’s biggest problem, next to “foreigners, teenagers and socialists.”
In a way, it’s surprising to encounter reactionaries like Ullholm in old books, because that type is so noisy and common today. We tend to think our own time is special, even unique, but that brand of virulent “cancel culture” idiocy has always existed. Ullholm, incidentally, thinks that Lapp women have a horizontal vaginal opening.
Human nature hasn’t changed since 1967 but the book describes a different era, in terms of policing. Sweden doesn’t have a high murder rate, and Stockholm’s homicide department can experience weeks-long periods where they don’t have much to do. However, as The Laughing Policeman opens, Sweden experiences its first American-style mass murder: eight people are gunned down on a double-decker bus. Beck takes a taxi to the murder scene. (He relies on public transit to get around, much like Maigret, the famous French detective.)
One of the victims was Ake Stenstrom, a young detective in Beck’s own homicide unit. Beck has no idea what his subordinate has been doing for the past three weeks. As I said, Sweden doesn’t have a lot of murders, and Ake was due some lieu time, so he was unsupervised, and unassisted. Beck eventually figures out that Stenstrom was independently working on a cold case, just because he was young and “ambitious to a fault.”
In a way, that’s a weak premise for a mystery, because there would be no mystery if two colleagues simply chatted with each other in a meaningful way.
But that’s what allows the book to transcend its genre. Like many great novels, including detective novels, The Laughing Policeman features people who sabotage norms and expectations simply by being stubborn and exerting their individualism.
Beck solves the crime because he appreciates Stenstrom’s character and knows his young subordinate would have selected the most difficult cold case to work on, the Teresa murder, to advance his career. After that flash of insight, police re-examine suspects from the "Teresa" file and plod towards a solution.
But the strength of the novel (and the series) comes from Beck’s simmering empathy for the mixed bag that composes humanity. Beck has his own personal disappointments. His marriage is disintegrating without it being anyone’s fault. He admires his daughter, Ingrid, but admits in a later book that he doesn’t like his son Rolf very much. Beck isn’t really happy until he gets a girlfriend in the last couple of novels in the series.
In the early instalments he always seems to be sick and depressed: “The rain kept on all night and although the sun, according to the almanac, rose at twenty minutes to eight, the time was nearer nine before it was strong enough to penetrate the clouds and disseminate an uncertain, hazy light.” When Beck comes home and greets his sixteen-year-old daughter, he “was almost paralyzed by the utter futility of his words. For a moment he thought of all the trivialities that had been spoken between these walls during the last ten years.”
One of the things I like about the Martin Beck series is that the title character isn’t a superhero. Actual policework is a team effort and, here, Larson and Kollberg move the investigation forward much more than Beck, who is mostly a stoic anchor. Beck’s cleverness appears twice: firstly, with the decision to reinvestigate the proper cold case, and then at the very end where he tricks a suicidal suspect into staying alive so he can be questioned.
“The Laughing Policeman” title is obviously ironic, because the book isn’t a cheery read. The phrase refers to a novelty record that Beck gets for Christmas, where an English Bobby laughs inanely between song verses.
In this bleak setting, “laughter” itself is suspicious. When detective Nordin asks a witness “What was 'strange' about this short, dark man?” she responds “Well. . .he laughed.”
The novel ends with the sentence: “Then he began to laugh.”
But Beck’s laughter isn’t unadulterated joy, even though they’ve followed Stenstrom’s trail, “cleared up the Teresa murder,” and proved that a nervous suspect from that case perpetrated the bus slaughter. Beck’s laughter is more like an impulsive reaction to life’s absurdity: he has just received a phone call and been informed that an important clue, a piece of paper with the suspect’s name on it, was under Ake Stenstrom’s desk blotter, all the time.
Life would be so cheerful and sunny if people communicated openly and honestly, but that’s never the case.
Life is actually a rainy November in Stockholm, 1967.
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