From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

The Locked Room (Martin Beck, #8)

Maj Sjöwall,

Per Wahlöö,

Paul Britten Austin (Translator),

Michael Connelly (Introduction)

Start date: December 15, 2024

Finish date: January 8, 2025

Discussion: Buddy reads

Why we're reading this: The 8th book in this classic series
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What Members Thought

Dec 10, 2024 Susan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is the eighth in the Martin Beck series, published in 1973. There are only two books left in the series to read and I will be sad when it is finished.

Beck is recovering from injuries in an earlier book and, having returned to work, is given a rather mysterious case to work. That of an old man, found in a rented room. The case was listed as a suicide, but the man was found shot in a locked room and no gun was found. Of course, Beck is not impressed with the way the man's case has been dealt ...more

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Sep 23, 2021 Bev rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, silver-age-mystery, mount-tbr-2021, police-procedural, swedish-mystery

The eighth installment of this series finds Martin Beck just returning to work after a life-threatening encounter with a bullet. His colleagues are trying to put a stop to an outbreak of robberies--primarily bank robberies, but robberies of all sorts have taken over Stockholm. Most recently, a young woman walked into a bank, wound up with 87 thousand kroner, and shot a man who tried to stop her. Witnesses' accounts conflict (don't they always?)--she had several different outfits; she got into a The eighth installment of this series finds Martin Beck just returning to work after a life-threatening encounter with a bullet. His colleagues are trying to put a stop to an outbreak of robberies--primarily bank robberies, but robberies of all sorts have taken over Stockholm. Most recently, a young woman walked into a bank, wound up with 87 thousand kroner, and shot a man who tried to stop her. Witnesses' accounts conflict (don't they always?)--she had several different outfits; she got into a blue car or a beige one--no, wait she didn't get in a car at all; she had accomplices waiting for her or maybe she just drove off/walked away alone. Who knows? The head of the bank robbery investigations--District Attorney "Bulldozer" Olsson soon decides it's one of a string of robberies planned by criminal mastermind Werner Roos. According to Bulldozer, Roos is planning a BIG robbery--his biggest yet--and the DA is adamant that they're going to get him this time.

A hot lead to Roos's plans practically falls into Bulldozer's lap, but will he and his team be able to use it to their advantage (Spoiler Alert---that's a big no). Meanwhile, Beck is handed an impossible crime to solve. The body of Karl Edvin Svard was found shot to death (after several weeks) behind the quadruple-locked door of his apartment. All the windows were shaded, unbroken, and locked as well. The local officers quickly filed it under suicide--but the case is handed over to Beck because things don't quite add up. For one thing, if the man shot himself, where is the gun? In an odd little twist, it's found in the most interesting place...Beck will, of course, figure it all out. But will he be able to prove it? And what about those bank robberies?

I'm having a difficult time deciding what I think of this one. It is both entertaining (in a Keystone Cops kind of way) to read about the absolutely inept handling of the bank robbery investigations by Bulldozer and his special team and depressing to see how little justice and correct police procedure ultimately figure in this story.

Seriously, if you can read the scene where Larsson and Kollberg and company bust into the room where they believe two of the bank robbers are holed up and Larsson winds up hanging out the window, one of the nervous uniformed officers shoots the lights out (literally) as well as hitting a hot water pipe (insert image of spraying hot water pipe), the police attack dog bites one of the officers and refuses to let go, and--as a grand finale--one of them tosses in some tear gas...and you don't laugh, then I guess you just don't like physical humor. It's slapstick straight from the era of silent film. And, of course, the bad guys aren't even there anymore. And the crackerjack band hot on the trail of the bank robbers don't get any better. Just wait till they screw up the intelligence they receive on the upcoming BIG bank job.

So, entertaining? Yes, indeed. And the locked room mystery is pretty good as well. Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö use an old trick to good effect and there's enough going on to distract most readers from seeing it until Beck finds the answer.

But...then there's the actual police investigations--breaking and entering for evidence; the whole Bulldozer fiasco; Beck not being sure his taping equipment is working properly (though--Beck comes through the best in this book). And there's all sorts of shady goings-on among the police. Not to mention that at the end of the book, Beck's superiors decide not to promote him (there had been rumors) and why? Because they think he's unbalanced. Now--just to be clear, Beck doesn't want to be promoted. He wants to keep on investigating crimes and not be kicked up to a desk job. [And he's definitely not unbalanced--he's probably the best detective they've got.] But, let's just suppose that Beck really is unbalanced. His superiors think it's better to keep an unbalanced Beck where he is--investigating crimes and dealing with the public?! There's some fine bureaucratic thinking for you... I know that this sort of thing happens in real life--but I'm not all that keen on my fiction being so realistic. I like the wheels of justice to run smooth in my detective stories.

On balance, this is a solid story. I enjoyed the mystery and I especially enjoyed the slapstick antics and Martin Beck's portion of the plot. If it hadn't been for the (to me) depressing realism of how justice (and the police) really works, I would probably rate it higher.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting portions of review. Thanks. ...more

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Mar 09, 2011 Nancy Oakes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: translated-crime-fiction, crime-fiction, crime-fiction-scandinavia

Some fifteen months have passed since the events of The Abominable Man, and Martin Beck is still recovering from a bullet wound that almost killed him. As the novel opens, he's going back to work, and upon his return, Kollberg hands him a case file. He notes to Martin Beck that it was too bad Beck didn't read detective stories, because if he did, he'd probably appreciate the case even more. As it turns out, what he's handed over is the case of Karl Edvin Svard, who died from a gunshot in a locke Some fifteen months have passed since the events of The Abominable Man, and Martin Beck is still recovering from a bullet wound that almost killed him. As the novel opens, he's going back to work, and upon his return, Kollberg hands him a case file. He notes to Martin Beck that it was too bad Beck didn't read detective stories, because if he did, he'd probably appreciate the case even more. As it turns out, what he's handed over is the case of Karl Edvin Svard, who died from a gunshot in a locked room. The police suspect suicide, but the problem is that there's no gun anywhere. Because the original investigators thought it was suicide, they treated the case rather lackadaisacally, and this attitude rippled outwards, even down to the medical examiner. Beck now has to go back and start over from the beginning to make any sense of the case. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing series of bank robberies that are plaguing the police, and the National Police Commissioner has turned the investigations over to one Sten "Bulldozer" Olsson, in charge of a newly-formed special squad. Olsson isn't a policeman, but an overconfident and overzealous district attorney, for whom life was "one big jolly game". The squad spends a great deal of its time working on a small group of criminals who Olsson is convinced are the robbers -- but who also may be using their ill-gotten gain to fund larger crimes. There's a great deal to be said about the obvious differences in the ways in which Martin Beck and Olsson go about doing their jobs in this book.

This time the authors do something a bit different than in previous books, offering a look at the criminals and their dealings with each other. I'm not so sure I liked this diversion so much -- one thing I enjoy about these books is their ability to tell several stories at once without being superfluous. Personally, this was a disruption in my reading flow. But on the other hand, the backstory of another of the characters, Monita, was well done and fit better into the narrative as a whole; in fact, her story was necessary to the novel on several levels. What is ongoing in this novel, as in all of the Martin Beck series, is the social and political commentary. This time it's the police department, the state of care for the elderly, and other facets of society that fall under the authors' axe. Also continuing is the humor, which is at times rather wicked in this novel. And then there's Rhea, a woman whom Martin Beck meets during the course of his investigation, who after all of Beck's troubles in life, is able to free him from his own locked room. Is this a sign that love is in the offing? I suppose I'll have to wait and see in the next book.

The Locked Room is perhaps not of the intensity of its predecessor The Abominable Man, but it's still quite compelling and a good read. Highly recommended, as is the entire series. ...more

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Jul 19, 2015 Leslie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mysteries, scandinavian

Maybe even 4.5 stars! While the locked room part of the mystery was not as clever as John Dickson Carr's, it was a great backdrop to Martin Beck's recovery (from his injury in the previous book) and Sjowall & Wahloo did a great job entwining it with the series of bank robberies that Kollberg and others are investigating.

But what really lifts this police procedural from above average to excellent is the look at 1971 Sweden that we get and the snide comments about bureaucracy (and the District At ...more

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