Gülen Polis

Martin Beck #4

by Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö, Aydın Arıt (Translator)

Otobüste öldürülenler arasında bir de dedektif vardı. Bir rastlantı mıydı bu, yoksa otobüstekiler de dedektifi yok etmek için mi öldürülmüşlerdi? Bu konuyla "Teresa"nın ne ilgisi vardı? Martin Beck, ipuçlarını toplamaya başladı...

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Sweden, Scandinavian Literature, Detective, Thriller

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Maj Sjöwall was a Swedish author and translator. She was 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 for Best Novel. They also wrote novels separately.

Sjöwall had a 13 year relationship with Wahlöö which lasted until his death in 1975.

Reviews

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the things I dig most about the "Martin Beck" mysteries is that they are only named "Martin Beck" mysteries out of convenience. He's the highest ranking policeman in Sjowall and Wahloo's Stockholm Homicide Division, and a couple of the early books tended to focus on him, but as the series goes on the books can be about any of the men who work with Beck.

The Laughing Policeman revolves around two of the detectives: Lennart Kollberg and Åke Stenström. In fact, the central mystery of the book is the shooting of Stenström and seven others on a double decker bus on the edge of Stockholm and Solna. No one has any idea what Stenström is doing on the bus, and the hunt for a mass murderer in 1968 Sweden is all a bit surreal to the detectives who expect that kind of thing in Vietnam war torn USA, but not late-sixties Sweden.

The investigation (refreshingly bereft of the "cop killer" chest beating we've come to expect from our police procedurals) digs deep into the life of Stenström, trying to figure out what he is doing and why he is on that bus. We meet his girlfriend and future cop Åsa Torell, we discover their sexual proclivities, Stenström's love of guns, and his lofty ambitions.

It is Kollberg who does most of the work on this front, befriending Åsa Torell after Stenström's death and going so far as to invite her to stay with him, his wife, Gun, and their baby (only one at this point) for a while. We discover much more about Kollberg's Socialist politics, his disdain for guns, his and Gun's sexual proclivities, and that he is a damn good detective. No wonder he and Beck get along so well.

The Kollberg and Stenström stuff is exactly the kind of stuff I love. Getting to know characters in the midst of whatever it is they are supposed to be doing. But what Kollberg is supposed to be doing, along with Beck and Melander, Larsson and Rönn, is finding a mass murderer. And that part of the story is as satisfying as it can possibly be. If you love mystery novels, and if you're even mildly interested in Swedish crime fiction, you will love this book. I did.

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just reread this for work, but it's reminded me that I meant to go after the others in the series and work my way through them. I really do have to, because they're brilliant, and decades ahead of their time. Sorry the US, but your classic hardboiled fiction really does pale into insignificance next to Nordic Noir. Give me Sjöwall and Wahlöö every time.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

There aren’t a lot of laughs in The Laughing Policeman, which is the best known and most acclaimed of the Martin Beck detective series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, set in Stockholm. Published in 1968 in Sweden, it was translated into English in 1971, when it won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery. Part of the reason for its being the best known in the ten book series is that it was the first book (loosely) adapted into an American film, featuring Walter Matthau. The rep of the book far exceeds the American “adaptation” of it, I’m sure.

A double-decker bus crashes on a rainy night in Stockholm, with eight people aboard shot to death, and one left clinging to life. One that was killed was a detective, Åke Stenström. The book is otherwise not sensational; it’s a straight-up police procedural with a team approach. Calling it the Martin Beck series is almost a misnomer, as the team solves the (mass) murder, including clearly defined and interesting characters: Lennart Kollberg, Gunvald Larsson, Einar Rönn, Benny Skacke, Fredrik Melander.

Some things are a little funny along the way--early on, two cops who trampled through the scene of the crime are screamed at for being idiots, for example; some of the cops are a bit bumbling or quirky--but it is just ordinary cops doing police work. Beck would almost never seem to smile; he’s not happily married. He’s not happily anything. These books serve as the model for much “nordic noir,” chiefly (for me) the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell. Social critiques through the lens of the police procedural. Ordinary guys doing a job well and not Poirot-brilliant. They make mistakes in their personal and professional lives. Flawed. I found this from one interview with Sjöwall:

“There is no one hero. The policemen irritate one another in the same way that anyone who has ever worked in an office will recognise. Mannerisms grate. Tempers flare. Yet they spend more time with one another than they do with their wives – those who can hold down a marriage, that is.”

There's a bad intro by Jonathan Franzen who thinks this books is funny?! Not a bit of it.

What do we learn? That the victim Åke Stenström was sort of privately investigating a cold case involving sex and pornography. The woman is sort of self-identifed as a “nymphomaniac,” which is probably no longer a real category, disrespectful of women, of course, as men have gone on talk shows as “sex addicts.” I suppose the sex angle might be seen in 1971 (Swedish girls! Sexual freedom! Free love! I Am Curious Yellow!--a 1967 sexual revolution-oriented Swedish film), as really racy, but this angle is not as sensational in 2022 as it was in 1971, probably.

The best reason to read this book is that this is just a terrifically written detective story, a model for others to follow.

Kohlberg gets to be the chief social critic, speaking from a socialist point of view: anti-guns, anti-drugs, anti-inequities, anti-materialism. He sees America (in 1968) as a violent country, capitalist, creating more social problems than it solves. The culprit here is rich, entitled, selfish, Kohlberg notes, vs. the vast number of crimes committed by the poor that they see and can better understand.

A song that partly inspired the title, “The Laughing Policeman,” by Charles Jolly/Penrose:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI1nP...

There’s a 1955 Swedish version of the song, a recording of which Beck’s daughter gives him for Christmas, that Swedish readers would also have been familiar with. The mopey Beck doesn’t find the song or the gift funny, as he is not a generally humorous man. The only time he laughs is in the last sentence of the story, when his colleague Stenström is vindicated.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laughter is hard to find in The Laughing Policeman, a singularly grim police procedural that centers around a Swedish police team’s investigation of a mass murder that took place on board a bus in Stockholm. Such a scenario might seem counterintuitive, because we all know that Sweden is one of the safest countries on Earth. Yet Stockholm, such a beautiful and sedate city, is also a city of extremes - so sunny and warm in the summer, so dark and cold in the winter - and therefore it is an eminently suitable setting for a murder mystery.

Nowadays, the Stockholm murder mysteries that are all the rage are Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels; but forty years before Larsson, the writing team of Maj Sjövall and Per Wahlöö created their own powerful series of mystery novels, centering around the phlegmatic and taciturn Martin Beck and his fellow Stockholm homicide detectives. And it may be that the best-known of the Sjövall-Wahlöö team’s Martin Beck novels is the fourth book in the series, 1970’s The Laughing Policeman.

If The Laughing Policeman is one of the better-known of Sjövall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck novels, that may be in part because it was adapted for cinema in 1973. The film featured good actors (Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, Louis Gossett Jr., Anthony Zerbe, Joanna Cassidy), but the filmmakers moved the story’s action from Stockholm to San Francisco. Perhaps it was thought that a U.S. setting would bring more American viewers into the theatres.

Yet the Swedish setting of Den skrattande polisen is vital, because when this novel begins with a mass shooting on a city bus, it is the first mass shooting in all of Swedish history – certainly not something that could be said of the more violent society of the U.S.A. Indeed, it is a sad commentary on the violence of American life that Martin Beck’s detectives begin their research by studying the many mass shootings that have occurred in the United States, looking for characteristics that could help them identify the murderer. Stockholm is knocked on its civic ear, and the city's leadership puts pressure on Beck and his colleagues to solve the crime quickly.

Part of the pleasure of the police procedural is the idea that the application of a rational thought process to factual evidence can bring order and truth out of the seeming chaos and undeniable violence of everyday life. Beck and his detective team are admirably methodical in considering every specific of this murder case, as shown in this conversation between two of Beck’s detectives:

Hammar went on staring at him. Kollberg followed his look and said, by way of diverting his attention, “All we know is that someone shot nine people in a bus last night. And that he followed the internationally familiar pattern of sensational mass murders by not leaving any traces, and by not getting caught. He can, of course, have committed suicide, but in that case we know nothing about it. We have two substantial clues – the bullets and the fired cases, which may possibly lead us to the weapon, and the man in the hospital, who might regain consciousness and tell us who fired the shots. As he was sitting at the rear of the bus, he must have seen the murderer.” (p. 51)

In a nod to Sweden's “Third Way” tradition of social democracy, each member of Beck's team has a particular talent - one can remember every detail of every unsolved “cold case,” another can find any hidden object in a room - and together they conduct a conscientious and detailed investigation that helps the reader hope that the murders will be solved.

If this crime had been nothing more than a horrific act of mass violence, with no apparent motive except the killing of many human beings as possible – if, in short, it had been like many of the most notorious mass shootings that have taken place here in the United States – then there would not be much of a story to tell. Yet in the case of The Laughing Policeman, Martin Beck and his detectives eventually find themselves concluding, after a great deal of diligent and challenging investigative work, that the crime was not an example of random violence, as they had initially thought, as shown by this conversation between Kollberg and Martin Beck:

“The situation is as follows,” [Kollberg] said with his mouth full….“The working hypothesis is therefore this: A person armed with a Suomi submachine gun, model 37, shoots nine people dead on a bus. These people have no connection with each other, they merely happen to be in the same place at the same time.”

“The gunman has a motive,” Martin Beck said.

“Yes,” Kollberg said, reaching for the Mazarine cupcake. “That’s what I’ve thought all along. But he can’t have a motive for killing people haphazardly. Therefore his real intention is to eliminate one of them.”

“The murder was carefully planned,” Martin Beck said.

“One of the nine,” Kollberg said. But which?” (p. 107)

The identities of two victims -- one was an ambitious young detective seeking to make a name for himself, while the other was a low-level underworld figure -- provide important clues.

Over the three prior Martin Beck novels, Sjövall and Wahlöö put considerable emphasis on the psychological toll that police work takes on Beck and the members of his detective team. For this reason, I was glad that Sjövall and Wahlöö took some time to depict Beck’s strained home life with his family. If you’ve been wondering why such a painfully serious police procedural has a title like The Laughing Policeman, then please be advised that it has to do with a breakfast-time conversation between Martin Beck and his daughter Ingrid:

“What are you thinking about, Daddy?”

“Nothing,” he said automatically.

“I haven’t seen you laugh since last spring.”

Martin Beck raised his eyes from the Christmas brownies dancing in a long line along the oilcloth bedspread, looked at his daughter, and tried to smile. Ingrid was a good girl, but that wasn’t much to laugh at, either….

“On Christmas Eve you’re going to laugh anyway,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yes. When you get my Christmas present.” (p. 155)

The ultimate resolution of the case – and I am taking pains to avoid the need for a spoiler alert here – is both more and less than one might expect. On the one hand, there is no vast, all-encompassing conspiracy that reaches up to the highest levels of the Swedish Government. On the other hand, the mass murder on the bus is the culmination of a series of vile crimes committed by a person who might have seemed educated and affluent enough to have known better.

One of Beck’s detectives, Gunvald Larsson, confides to Beck that he feels a particular loathing for the perpetrator of the bus murders because the killer is an example of the “Smug swine who think only of their money and their houses and their families and their so-called status. Who think they can order others about, merely because they happen to be better off. There are thousands of such people….[W]e never get at them. We only see their victims. This guy’s an exception” (pp. 210-11).

Among the other strengths of this novel is the manner in which it recreates the tensions of 1960's life, with anti-Vietnam War protesters in front of the U.S. Embassy, and a generalized fear that society is somehow going off the rails.

Strange to reflect that Sweden, one of the safest nations on earth, has produced so many fine crime writers. I read this book while visiting Stockholm, noticing how – when the sun finally starts to set, late on a summer night – the evening sky takes on a particularly deep blue, and the golden moon against that dark-blue sky starts to give the cityscape of the delightful Swedish capital a decided feel of menace. The Laughing Policeman is a powerful and well-crafted police procedural.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

After finishing The Man on the Balcony, I decided to go back for more of Martin Beck and his colleagues, and I'm so happy I did. The Laughing Policeman is the fourth in the Martin Beck series, and so far it is my favorite from this writing duo.

While the police in Stockholm are busy at the American Embassy where a protest against the Vietnam War has turned very ugly, patrolmen Kvant and Kristiansson, the Keystone Cop-ish police officers who just so happened to have inadvertently solved the case in The Man on the Balcony, are just biding their time until their shift is over. Crossing from the municipality of Solna into Stockholm, they're flagged down by a man walking a dog who reports an accident. The two drive on over and discover a doubledecker bus with lights on and doors open off the road. Inside the bus are several dead bodies, all gunned down in their seats, and the scene looks like a massacre. The homicide squad headed by Martin Beck arrives and discovers that one of their own is dead on the bus -- a young police inspector named Ake Stenstrom. There are very little clues on the scene, thanks to Kvant and Kristiansson, and as far as motive, until Beck and his men can go through the list of victims, it is not readily apparent. To bring the gunman to justice and close the case Beck and his team will have to put in long hours and examine the lives of all of the dead. To discover why this happened, the most important fact they need to discern is the identity of the intended target, not a simple task in the least.

Sjöwall and Perlöö's plotting and storyline are not the only reasons this book and the series work so well. The authors also continue to develop their characters' personalities so that the people in the Stockholm homicide squad become more and more familiar to the reader as time progresses. Those two factors, along with their ability to evoke what they consider the social ills and the events of the time period make these short novels so compelling. In the space of only 211 pages the authors manage to set up the plot, detail the often-frustrating investigation, catch up on what's going on with Beck, Kollberg and the other main players, and wrap things up in a more than satisfying conclusion. They keep the superfluous prose away, giving the reader only what's needed to keep the story going. There are no torrid love affairs, no in-depth soul searching or major subplots to sidetrack the reader -- Sjöwall and Perlöö are probably among the best crime writers in terms of their focus on the crime at hand, while still managing to continue the growth of their beloved characters. The time frame is well established through their use of current events like the Vietnam War protests and American serial killers of the time (especially Charles Whitman and the U of Texas shootings). They also have this ability to make the reader laugh in the midst of terrible crimes; here they go on about psychologists and profiling of serial killers in a discussion that was priceless.

I'd definitely recommend this book and the entire series to anyone who wants to read something intelligent in the realm of crime fiction, and to readers of Scandinavian crime fiction in particular. You can't read just the current popular authors and feel like you have experienced the best that the Nordic countries have to offer -- this series is a no miss, for sure.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another super book in the series about the morose, melancholy and mirthless detective Martin Beck - though it is an ensemble piece in reality as his colleagues are heavily involved as well rounded totally believable characters in their own right.

Who has machine gunned nine people on a Stockholm bus late one evening? Why is an off duty policeman one of the victims? How is this case linked to an unsolved murder mystery?

There are no witnesses save a man in a coma who expires after waking briefly and speaking a few words of gibberish, no real clues and a compromised crime scene, but Beck and his team painstakingly solve the case by following the minutest of clues to a surprising conclusion.

An evocative thriller, easy to read and enjoyable in the extreme. We even have a dose of slapsick in the incompetent beat cop duo of Kvant and Kristiansson.

This was written in the 60s and in a few places it shows - everyone smokes all of the time and it is less than PC on occasion - but this is certainly a good read.

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fourth book featuring Stockholm Police Commissioner Martin Beck is probably the best known, due to a movie adaptation with Walther Matthau in the main role. I can understand its popularity, as it is my favorite so far in this ongoing police procedural series.
It is important to accentuate the procedural nature of the story, in order to give a warning to readers who expect all crime stories to have a super smart detective who solves cases by smoking a pipe ot twirling a moustache while the author goes to great lengths to hide the true culprit. Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo write about the real thing, where results refuse to come, frustrating weeks are spent chasing fruitless interviews and poring over mountains of archive records. I find it impressive how many modern authors of crime novels, in the foreword of each Martin Beck novel, mention the importance of this 50 years old series, and how it influenced them in their own writing.

The plot is a dark one. On a late autumn evening, a double decker bus is the scene of a mass murder, all passengers victims of a machine gun attack. Nobody has seen or heard anything. One of the victims is a young officer in Martin Beck's unit. The only avenue of investigation is to gather all the information available about the victims, trying to find a motive for the attack and hope it was not the work of a random madman.

Beyond the details of the investigation, the authors did a great job at rendering the tediousness of the work and the dismal atmosphere of the city on the brink of winter.

Monday. Snow. Wind. Bitter cold.
or:
The hours dragged past and nothing happened. Day was added to day. The days formed a week, and then another week. Once again it was Monday.

Martin Beck is the same taciturn, slightly hypochondriac and manic depressive self that I have known in the first three novels. Here is how he describes himself at one point:

He looked in the mirror as recently as the evening before and seen a tall, sinister figure, with a lean face, wide forehead, heavy jaws and mournful gray-blue eyes.

Hard to imagine him as the laughing character from the title. In fact his daughter has one of the most heart rending conversations with him one morning over breakfast:

"What are you thinking about, Daddy?" Ingrid asked.
"Nothing," he said automatically.
"I haven't seen you laugh since last spring"

Readers will have to wait until the last page of the novel to have him finally laugh, but for me it was well worth the journey.


More than the previous novels, The Laughing Policeman stresses the importance of team work, and puts the spotlight on each member of Martin Beck's team - each one with his strengths and limitations, quirks and affectations. Most of the novel has a downbeat tone, which makes even more precious the little flashes of humor in the banter between the investigators. The blackest kind of humor, gallows style, but still it shows the human side of these people who take their job seriously. So seriously that this passage I have extracted as illustration could apply to any of them:

It was true, however, that a few months earlier he had lain awake at night going through the investigation into the murder of a taxi driver twelve years before.

What I love about Wahloo and Sjowall characters is that the job hasn't turned them into bitter cynics. My favorite scene involves not Beck, but his colleague Lennart Kollberg and Asa Torrell - the fiance of one one of the victims, a reminder that they are dealing with human persons and not with cold facts.

I would recommend this novel to all readers who have, at one time or another, been angry at the local cops and joined the "F..k the Police!" angry crowd. Yes, there usually are bad apples in the force, but some of them are heroes and we have them to thank for a tranquil sleep at night and for a continuing faith in justice.

[Dorothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book won the Edgar Award for best novel in 1971 and it is easy to see why. It is a mesmerizing tale right from the first sentence, maybe the best in this series that I have read so far.

As with the three earlier books, this one is deceptively simple in construction. It is told in laconic "this happened, then this happened" fashion, and it is hard for an amateur such as myself to deconstruct just why it is so good. But if the object of a writer is to entertain and hold the interest of the reader, this book - and this series - succeeds admirably.

Once again we have the ever-morose and ever-dyspeptic Swedish policeman Martin Beck, now risen to the rank of superintendent, along with his cohorts in the Stockholm police department, trying to solve an unprecedented crime where clues are few. A city bus has been found abandoned on the streets with everyone on board, including the driver, dead. They have all been shot with a submachine gun.

One of those killed, it turns out, was one of Martin Beck's men, the youngest detective in his squad, Ake Stenstrom. There had been no murders in Stockholm recently and all the detectives were working on old cases, but no one knew exactly which one Ake was working on. The question, of course, is whether he was the unfortunate victim of a random mass murder - a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time - or was his re-investigation of the old case somehow tied to his death? Was the murder of all those other people simply window dressing, a red herring to misdirect the police's interest?

From this point, the investigation proceeds in classic police procedural fashion. Martin Beck and his compatriots are convinced that their colleague's presence on the bus was no coincidence and that his was the death which the murderer sought. Trying to discover what might have been stirred up by his investigation, they retrace his steps and look again at old clues to a crime that has been long thought to be unsolvable.

The reader can be forgiven for wondering whether Sjowall/Wahloo had any affection at all for poor Martin Beck. They certainly don't give him any especially sympathetic characteristics or any redeeming qualities. Except maybe one. We get a hint here of his care and concern for his two children, especially for his teenage daughter with whom he seems to enjoy a certain rapport. Perhaps more will be developed in later books regarding his family relationships in order to give his moroseness and dyspepsia more context. Certainly what we know of his wife indicates that he may have good reason to be morose.

As ever, Martin Beck is not the hero or even the main focus of The Laughing Policeman. Indeed there is little reason for any of the policemen in this tale to crack a smile even, but we get to know and understand each member of the squad just a little better through their participation in this investigation. Each of them doggedly plays his part in pursuing the killer even when they can really see no reason for the line of inquiry they are following. In the end, each of them will have contributed a piece of the puzzle. No one is a standout. It is, in every sense of the word, a team effort.

One of the reasons that I like this series so much is the sly humor which is so much a part of the narrative. It's hard to give a specific example of this; it is a situation where "you had to be there." But, trust me, there is humor here, as there are clear-eyed observations of Swedish society in the 1960s. Indeed, in many ways, this isn't so much a police procedural as a sociological study.

And, yes, finally, Martin Beck does laugh, for the first time that I remember in this series. It comes on the very last page, the last paragraph. It's worth reading that far to see it.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Story of a Crime Book 4: The One With A Mass Murder, a Cop Killing and Beck Takes a Back Seat

Simenon aside I don't think there are any other crime writers who have managed to capture so much in so few pages, once more Sjowall & Wahloo have written fantastic piece of genre fiction whilst holding a mirror up to society, it's failings and its strengths. Yes it is from their own particular Marxist viewpoint but they are not dogmatic about it.

This case is set in the winter of 1968, Europe is protesting American involvement in Vietnam and authority figures in Stockholm, including the police department of Martin Beck, are finding themselves labelled as the villains of society. Nine people are murdered by a gunman on a bus who then flees the scene of his crime leaving Martin Beck and his homicide department to investigate the death of one of their own team, shot whilst off duty.

The authors seem to be using the weather to set the tone for their novels so far and what is remarkable is that each of them have been unique in approach to storytelling whilst consistently adding something to the body of work as a whole. The meandering daze of The Man Who Went Up In Smoke replaced by an oppressive heatwave leaving everybody on edge throughout The Man On The Balcony and now a long, cold, grey and snowy winter adding to the pervasive mood of depression that falls on the detectives, the case and the novel. The slow, methodical and everyday nature of the investigation is what really shines through in this case and should work as a glowing example of what crime fiction should be.

Martin Beck takes a back seat in this investigation, marshalling his troops to great effect but on the whole adopting a more Socialist approach towards solving the case. This allows us to get to know other members of the team that have only had passing roles in previous cases. Kollberg is the major benefactor from this decision from Sjowall & Wahloo, the recipient of more case time as we meet his wife and child (in direct contrast to Beck's failing private life) and witness his own peculiarities when investigating a crime; it is his hard work and dedication to catching his colleagues murderer that finally pays off and it is his relationship with Martin Beck that seems to be more and more at the heart of these novels.

This one feels like new heights have been reached once more in a series that has gotten consistently better from book one and it's surely not going to be long before a five star reaction is had to one. If you haven't read Sjowall & Wahloo yet I feel you could easily start here but taking the complete journey from start to finish has it's own rewards too.

Part 1: Roseanna
Part 2: The Man Who Went Up In Smoke
Part 3: The Man On The Balcony

[Thomas Stroemquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sjöwall/Wahlöö's 4th book has never been made into a Swedish movie, but was filmed starring Wather Matthau in 1973 (The Laughing Policeman). If you happen to have caught that one, please know that, even if the story (more than the characters) survived the relocation to the States, it doesn't really hold a candle to the original. This story, starting off with the shocking mass murder of a number of people on a night bus in central Stockholm, is one of, if not the top of the series.

Note: Not all the others where filmed in Sweden either, no. 8 - Det slutna rummet was a Dutch movie and the last one - Terroristerna - was only in very small parts incorporated in Stockholm Marathon.

[Pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probablemente sea la mejor novela policíaca que haya leído en mi vida. Redonda. Sin grietas. Magistral.

Puede leerse en individual sin perder mayores detalles, pero recomendaría, encarecidamente, leer las tres previas de la serie: No desmerecen para nada.

[Juan Nalerio · Rating 4 out of 5]

La cuarta entrega del comisario Martin Beck combina la sencillez de la novela de género policial clásica con la tragicomedia de la buena literatura.

El sufrido Beck se encuentra peor en cada novela. Ahora tiene catarro y tos, duerme separado de su mujer y no quiere saber nada de la navidad. Se equivoca y acierta en su trabajo mientras la sociedad sueca de los sesenta se describe como sucia, con frustraciones y en decadencia. Igual que el comisario.

Los vientos gélidos y la nieva se abaten sobre Estocolmo y dos casos, uno del pasado y otro del presente se mezclan en esta agradable y bien escrita historia. Los autores, de nombre impronunciable en español saben lo que hacen. Te entretienen y te sacan un par de sonrisas.
Para seguir leyendo la serie.

[George K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Πρόσχαροι οι πολιτσμάνοι", εκδόσεις Γράμματα.

Βαθμολογία: 9/10

Η έκδοση του τέταρτου βιβλίου της σειράς με ήρωα τον Μάρτιν Μπεκ, είναι σίγουρα μια από τις πιο ευχάριστες εκδοτικές εκπλήξεις της χρονιάς. Εκεί που το είχα πάρει απόφαση να διαβάσω κάποια στιγμή το βιβλίο στα αγγλικά, οι εκδόσεις Γράμματα μου έκαναν τη χάρη να το μεταφράσουν, και έτσι μου δόθηκε η ευκαιρία να το απολαύσω στη γλώσσα μου. Δεν μπορώ να καταλάβω γιατί παρέμενε τόσα χρόνια αμετάφραστο (ενώ για παράδειγμα έχουν μεταφραστεί το έβδομο και το δέκατο βιβλίο της σειράς), αλλά κάλλιο αργά παρά ποτέ.

Λοιπόν, είναι το τέταρτο βιβλίο των Σγιεβάλ και Βαλέε που διαβάζω και δηλώνω πραγματικά πολύ ευχαριστημένος. Μια κρύα και βροχερή νύχτα του Νοέμβρη, εννιά επιβάτες ενός λεωφορείου εκτελούνται από έναν μανιακό. Τα κίνητρα είναι άγνωστα, τα στοιχεία για τον δράστη παντελώς ανύπαρκτα. Μήπως η μόδα των μαζικών δολοφονιών πέρασε τον Ατλαντικό και ήρθε από τις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες στη Σουηδία; Αλλά υπάρχει και ένα άλλο ερώτημα: Τι δουλειά είχε ένας αστυνομικός στο συγκεκριμένο λεωφορείο; Ο Μάρτιν Μπεκ και οι συνάδελφοί του θα βρεθούν μπροστά σε μια πραγματικά πολύ δύσκολη και σύνθετη υπόθεση, με την πίεση για την εύρεση του δολοφόνου να είναι εξαιρετικά έντονη...

Πρόκειται για ένα κλασικό police procedural ανώτερης ποιότητας, το οποίο αποτυπώνει με ακρίβεια και ρεαλισμό όλες τις διαδικασίες που ακολουθούν οι αστυνομικοί για την επίλυση μιας δολοφονίας (στην περίπτωσή μας εννιά δολοφονιών). Γινόμαστε μάρτυρες ενός αγώνα με το χρόνο, την έλλειψη στοιχείων και των δεκάδων αδιεξόδων, της προσπάθειας των αστυνομικών να βγάλουν μια άκρη με τα στοιχεία και τις μαρτυρίες που διαθέτουν, και της αγωνίας τους για να μην παραβλέψουν κρίσιμες λεπτομέρειες. Η γραφή είναι πάρα πολύ καλή και οξυδερκής, με τις περιγραφές τοπίων, καταστάσεων και χαρακτήρων να είναι λιτές αλλά και ακριβείς, και με τους διαλόγους εξαιρετικά φυσικούς και με καυστικό χιούμορ σε διάφορα σημεία. Ίσως ο ενθουσιασμός μου για την έκδοση του βιβλίου στα ελληνικά να επηρεάζει την κρίση μου, αλλά νιώθω ότι πρέπει να του βάλω πέντε αστεράκια. Στην τελικά, πέρασα τέλεια!

Υ.Γ. 1. Για όσους ενδιαφέρονται, το βιβλίο είναι άμεσα διαθέσιμο στην πρωτοπορία.
Υ.Γ. 2. Η ταινία "The Laughing Policeman" του 1973, με πρωταγωνιστές τους Γουόλτερ Ματάου και Μπρους Ντερν, βασίζεται στο βιβλίο αυτό.
Υ.Γ. 3. Σε όσους αρέσει το δίδυμο Σγιεβάλ/Βαλέε και ο Μάρτιν Μπεκ, σίγουρα θα ευχαριστηθούν και τα βιβλία της σειράς 87ο Αστυνομικό Τμήμα, του Εντ Μακμπέιν. Φυσικά, ισχύει και το αντίστροφο.

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was only the second of the Edgar Best Novel winners so far that I knew for certain I had read before. But, I decided it would be worthwhile to reread it, and how right I was. Martin Beck, the protagonist of this series, is the spiritual ancestor of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander. He pretty much bears out any stereotype you may have about gloomy Swedes. But he's a heck of a policeman.
One thing I don't recall noticing when I first read this book back in the 1970s was how it is set in a definite time -- 1967, with protest demonstrations worldwide about America's involvement in Vietnam. The book opens with such a demonstration in Stockholm, with most police detailed to keep order. Shortly, however, Beck is called to a crime scene -- someone has shot all the passengers and the driver of a city bus. And one of the victims is one of his own homicide detectives.
The solution of the case leads to the solution of a "cold case" from the early 50s, and owes more to good, solid, routine police investigation than to any stunning intuitions on the part of Beck or his colleagues. (As is my wont, I had forgotten "whodunnit" long ago so that I enjoyed not only the writing, but the mystery.) I very seldom reread mysteries, but the Sjowall and Wahloo series is well worth a reread, or a first read if you haven't encountered them yet.

[paper0r0ss0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Indagine serrata e originale (stiamo parlando di mezzo secolo fa) su una strage compiuta a Stoccolma. Dialoghi azzeccati e credibili, qualita' di scrittura e ritmo dosato con intelligenza. Ci si perde a volte solo nel turbinio di nomi nordici ma poi tutto torna a filare piu' che bene. Consigliato.

[Seher Andaç · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dördüncü kitap ve ben her hikayede ters köşe oluyorum. Güzel çok güzel:)

[Karl]

This book was originally published in Sweden in 1968 as "Den Skrattande Polisen". It is the fourth of ten novels featuring Detective Martin Beck.

The novel was adapted to film in 1973, with Walter Matthau in the lead role. His character was renamed "Jake Martin," the action was relocated to San Francisco, California, and much of the novel's plot was altered.

The series consists of:

"Roseanna" (1965)
"The Man Who Went Up in Smoke" (1966)
"The Man on the Balcony" (1967)
"The Laughing Policeman" (1968) (Edgar Award, Best Novel, 1971)
"The Fire Engine That Disappeared" (1969)
"Murder at the Savoy" (1970)
"The Abominable Man" (1971)
"The Locked Room"(1972)
"Cop Killer" (1974)
"The Terrorists" (1975)

[Barbara K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A definite classic in the Nordic Noir genre. Lately I've been coming across frequent references to it for some reason , and I found that I enjoyed it as much now as when I originally I read it back in the 1970s or 1980s.

One thing I have always enjoyed about Sjowall and Wahloo's writing is how neatly they create a character sketch with only a few words. Enough to give us a grounding in who these people are, but not so much that there isn't room to learn more as the plot develops (or in future volumes).

Oddly, the characters that I remembered most vividly on the re-read are the two inept, lazy beat cops who appear only at the beginning and ending of the book. Klutzes, but entertaining.

[Ümit Betil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Son zamanlarda okuduğum en iyi polisiye. Anlatım bu serinin diğer kitaplarında olduğu gibi doğrusal, kurgu olağanüstü. karakterler canlı. Serinin ilk iki kitabının çok ötesinde.
Kitabı polisiye kategorisinde değil, İsveç edebiyatı kategorisine sokmak daha mı anlamlı acaba?

[Mark Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no single hero. Martin Beck does the most brooding. He--mostly--puts the pieces together. Teamwork rules in The Laughing Policeman. The pieces come together through collaboration, not by lone wolves sniffing one trail.

Written in 1968, the style here is multiple points of view. The prose swoops down from extreme omniscience and scene-setting--a dry, matter-of-fact coolness to the tone--before picking up the thoughts and actions of one of the many cops in the ensemble.

The cops are warts-and-all. They make mistakes. The Laughing Policeman climbs a mountain of plot--a plot within a plot. A cold case becomes the key to solving a mass murder. All hope is lost--repeatedly. Beck and his team are dead in the water more often than they are making real headway. The climax comes quickly and packs a solid left hook.

The key--correction, one of the keys--is that one of those killed in the mass murder is a cop. But what was he doing there? Who was he with? Why was he there? Why was he riding that bus? Over and over that question drives the action.

The cops divvy up assignments, chase down leads--come up empty and fight for a faint tidbits of information. Action? Not really. The work is procedural, dogged, detailed--and nuanced.

When the pieces finally come together, the trap is set and even then Sjöwall and Wahlöö play it cool, don't let the descriptions over-inflate the scene. A very solid read with a throwback style that is grounded and powerful.

[Virginia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I zipped through this short book painlessly; it felt like a rambling, overpopulated, sporadically funny shaggy dog story designed to answer the question “why actually DID the policeman laugh?” I was surprised to be enjoying the plodding, joyless door to door scutwork done by this Barney Miller-level herd of Swedish cops who are distinct in some ways and indistinguishable in others. I’d have given it an extra star if the story hadn’t been so painfully and persistently misogynistic that it left me with no desire to seek out the rest of the series. 3 stars.

[Harry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Review

As is sometimes true: I read books with common threads, one after the other, without fully realizing it. It was only while reading the 4th in a series by Henning Mankell that I noticed I was reading a crime novel whose title remarked on the facial expressions of joy and laughter (Mankell's The Man Who Smiled) much as this novel I'd just finished reading did (the 4th in the Martin Beck series: The Laughing policeman). Did I deliberately choose these books for their evocative titles? I did not. They just happend to be the next in two series of books I've been reading.

This, the fourth book featuring Stockholm Police Commissioner Martin Beck is probably the best known here in America due to a loosely-based movie adaptation with Walther Matthau in the main role. Many Scandinavian writers consider Per and Maj's Martin Beck novels as the series that sparked all subsequent Scandinavian crime series to come. Certainly, Henning Mankell did as he often makes references to this writing duo. And we can't escape the suspicion that Mankell's 4th in his Wallander series is precisely that: an homage to Per and Maj. Both book titles reflect on laughter or joyful expressions, both are written in a strict, realism style prose. Both are written as extensive police procedurals. Both are anything but joyful and reveal what perhaps might be a typical Nordic abhorrance to laughter.


Charles Penrose

Perhaps Per and Maj's own enmity is revealed as the book makes direct references to The Laughing Policeman: a music hall song by Charles Jolly, the pseudonym of Charles Penrose. In 1922, Penrose made the first recording of this song, (Columbia Records FB 1184). The music and melody are taken from The Laughing Song by George W. Johnson which was recorded in approximately 1901. The Laughing Policeman is remembered today as it was remembered by this duo of authors in the few years leading up to the publication of this book in 1977. In the following scene, Beck receives a vinyl recording from his daughter Ingrid for Christmas:

Martin Beck knew very little about music, but he heard at once that the recording must have been made in the twenties or even earlier. Each verse was followed by long bursts of laughter, which were evidently infectuous, as Inga and rolf and Ingrid howled in mirth.

Martic Beck was left utterly cold. He couldn't even manage a smile. So as not to disappoint the others too much he got up and turned his back, pretending to adjust the candles on the tree.

Let's face it, Beck isn't the endearing father we'd like for him to be: nor is he a good husband. His family leaves him cold. Or perhaps in the back of his mind he was reminded of the first clue in the case in which an unidentified man was identified by his proclivity to laughter:

"There is nothing else? About that guy, I mean?"
Nordin considered. At last he said, "He laughed. Loud."
The man's face brightened at once.
"Ah, I think I know. He laughs like this."
Dieke opened his mouth and emitted a bleating sound, shrill and harsh as the cry of a snipe.

Martin Beck is policeman prone to depression. In every novel he manifests flu-like symptoms that never waver or vary. He despises his family, has trouble sleeping. Phlegmatic, taciturn, introverted, he leads a joyless life and so it is with some finality that the last page of the novel has Beck finally succumbing to the inevitable as the clue they'd sought for weeks now had been in plain sight all along. When informed of this:

Martin Beck made no reply. He just sat there with the receiver in hand. Then he began to laugh.

Other aspects of this 4th in the Martin Beck series make it stand out above others. In terms of reading this as a crime novel, Jonathan Franzen who writes the foreword to this Beck novel remarks:

I was exclusively reading great literature (Shakespeare, Kafka, Goethe), and although I could fogive Ekström's [a college roommate] for not understanding what a serious person I'd become, I had zero interest in opening a book with such a lurid cover [The Laughing Policeman, gifted to Franzen by Ekström]. It wasn't until several years later, on a morning when I was sick in bed and too weak to face the likes of Faulkner or Henry James, that I happened to pick up the little paperback again. And how perfectly comforting The Laughing Policeman turned out to be!

Franzen means to give kudos to Per and Maj's novel and much of what he writes in his foreword is appreciative. But, the above also contains a certain condescension towards the crime-genre as not being equal to great literature, a point many crime authors will vehemently protest. Ian Rankin rightly dismisses the supposed dichotomy between crime fiction and "literary" fiction as a red herring.

I think crime fiction should be taken seriously. I don't think it's any longer about a little puzzle that you read on a train on the way to somewhere and when you're finished it's done and you've not gleaned anything except you've had a nice time solving a puzzle.

Reading the reviews here on Goodreads it is plain to me that many readers do not distinguish between the sub-genres inherent in crime novels (especially in the Wallander series, which are inspired by Per and Maj). The Martin Beck series as with the Wallander series are a series of police procedurals. In a police procedural, it is not about who did it as this is often known near the beginning. It is about why the murder was committed. And how this reason is made clear to a police team. A police procedural focuses on tedious tasks, on beaurocracy, reveals social issues, and concentrates on systemic, rather than individual, dysfunction. In fact, though Martin Beck makes occasional entrances in this novel, the book is primarily about his colleagues Lennart Kollberg and Åke Stenström. It is Kollberg who does most of the work. It is Kollberg's Socialist politics, his disdain for guns, his sexual proclivities which are at the forefront of this novel. And, as readers of this series know well, Beck despises Kollberg.

So, to enjoy crime novels but to dislike and complain about a crime novel such as this or Mankell's because it reveals who did it, or because it contains detailed explanations of investigative techniques, or reveals hours if not weeks of boredom, and that the book does not revolve around the main character, while simultaneously ignoring that what you're reading is a police procedural is only indicative of the fact that you don't like police procedurals and that you're a detective/mystery genre reader. It is a comparison between apples and oranges. In my opinion, this is one of the best police procedurals I've ever read (the best in this series so far) and it does represent great literature.

As the Los Angeles Book Review states: Far from having "wedded the satisfying simplicities of genre fiction to the tragicomic spirit of great literature," as Franzen proposes, Sjöwall and Wahlöö are among those who show that, in the hands of visionary and capable writers, crime fiction can simply be great literature. The only transcendence required is the reader's.

Here's a link to my review of Mankell's The Man Who Smiled.
-------------------------------------------------
Series Review


Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall

Two writers from the left, without too much argument, started it all where it concerns crime fiction in Scandinavia (the books were written in the sixties). Jo Nesbo considers this team of writers the Godfathers of Scandinavia crime fiction. Henning Mankell perhaps the most famous Nordic writer of them all often makes references to Per and Maj as having influenced his work. In the words of Barry Forsaw whose Death in a Cold Climate: a Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction serves as the Bible for Nordic readers says of these authors: "Their continuing influence (since the death of Per Wahlöö) remains prodigious."

Briefly: Wahlöö was born in Tölö parish, Kungsbacka Municipality, Halland. After his studies, from 1946 onwards he worked as a crime reporter. After long trips around the world he returned to Sweden and started working as a journalist again. He had a 13 year relationship with his colleague Maj Sjöwall but never married. Both were Marxists.He has been married to Inger Wahlöö, née Andersson. He was brother to Claes Wahlöö. He died of cancer at Malmö in 1975, aged 48. His work (independent of his collaboration with Maj on the Martin Beck series) primarily consists of his Dictatorship series and the two novels featuring Inspector Jensen.

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 for Best Novel.They also wrote novels separately.

Until recently, it was considered a scandal that publishing houses offered no translations of these two highly influential authors. But as the Nordic crime wave hit British and American soil (beginning in the nineties), this egregious blot on the reputation of publishers was finally remedied...albeit late in the game. There were simply too many crime writers that cited Per and Maj as the fountain head of the socially committed crime novel. Yet one more example that everything starts at the grass roots level and then filters up into the corporate halls of publishing.

Although not as prevelant as in the work of Per Wahlöö (see my review of Murder on the Thirty-first Floor), the left wing ideological views of the pair are common knowledge and can be viewed as interspersed throughout their famous Martin Beck series. I've often spoken in my reviews of Nordic fiction that aside from being excellent and compelling reads in the mystery genre, Nordic writers on the whole use this genre based platform to comment on sociopolitical issues of the day as that takes place in the Scandinavian countries. For their time, this pair of authors were considered the pioneers of this authorial attitude.

Now before you decide to forego this excellent series based on the Marxist ideology of its authors, let me assure you that Per and Maj's views at no point interfere with your appreciation of a good mystery novel. It might be said that their edgy point of view may be considered less important than the telling of a good tale. This too, is a hallmark of Scandinavian crime fiction: sociopolitical commentary never overshadows the story itself (though I would argue that in Per's novels written alone, this might not be the case).

For an understanding of the realism of their work within Scandinavian crime fiction as married to their political attitudes, I highly recommend a reading of these two authors, together, as well as (in the case of Per) his own novels.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are fast becoming my favourite Scandi Crime writing duo. They are touted as the pioneers of Nordic Noir and their Martin Beck ten book series, written between 1965 to 1975, are honestly the books that defined the genre.

The Laughing Policeman is book number 4 in this interconnected series and absolutely epitomises the writing style of Sjöwall and Wahlöö. The scene is set from the word go with chapter 1 devoted to the anti-Vietnam war protests on the steps of the American Embassy in Stockholm. Sjöwall and Wahlöö make their political leanings very clear as they contextualise the era in which this book is set. I love the simplicity and matter of factness of the opening line:

“On the evening of 13 November it was pouring in Stockholm.” Simple, direct, clear and ordinary. That’s what I love.

The story then quickly unfolds with a horrific bus mass shooting, where one of the victims is a fellow police officer, off duty yet armed. Why was he armed? What was he doing on the bus? Where was he going? These questions soon become the crux of the investigation, in an era with no mobile phones, internet or computers.

Eventually a second, cold case, becomes intertwined with the investigation and before we know it two crimes are on the table.

Martin Beck is very much on par with his police colleagues in this instalment. In fact, Lennart Kollberg and Åke Stenström feature just as heavily if not more than Beck. Sjöwall and Wahlöö reveal the humanity of each of these characters as the story unfolds. I love how ordinary everyone is and how everyone has their own secrets and idiosyncrasies. It appeals to me in every way as I interrogate my own humanity and ordinariness.

This is a truly great series. 5 stars of course.

[Maria João Fernandes · Rating 5 out of 5]

"An investigation which didn't even deserve to be called a guessing game."

O quarto do livro da famosa série do Martin Beck é mais uma prova da grandiosidade das mentes do casal Maj Sojwäll e Per Wahlöö.

Uma atmosfera cinzenta acompanha toda esta história. O tempo é horrível: faz frio, muito vento e chove constantemente. A escuridão parece permanente, mesmo durante o dia, como que para igualar a disposição deprimente das pessoas envolvidas.

"The Laughing Policeman" começa por nos mostrar uma das muitas facetas obscuras da força policial. Numa manifestação contra a guerra no Vietname, a policia brutaliza uma rapariga que acaba de fazer 13 anos. E enquanto esta jovem protestante é presa, os olhos são fechados aos ladrões, assaltantes e indivíduos piores. A situação não podia ser mais absurda: todos os reforços estão destacados para lidar com os protestantes, deixando o espaço livre para os verdadeiros criminosos actuarem.

Martin e Kollberg, como já seria de esperar, não se deixam envolver por toda esta histeria. A sua experiência profissional ensinou-lhes a evitar serem arrastados para ajudar neste tipo de trabalhos. Por essa razão, optam por se juntar e jogar xadrez numa noite caracterizada pela escuridão,frio e chuva. Atmosfera esta que se irá repetir várias vezes ao longo das noites seguintes.

Nesta mesma noite, Estocolmo é alvo de um homicídio em massa. Num autocarro oito pessoas são mortas e o único sobrevivente é transportado em estado critico para o hospital. Entre as vitimas mortais encontra-se o ambicioso e jovem detective Ake Strenstrom, que fazia parte da equipa de Martin.

São os irresponsáveis, incompetentes e preguiçosos Kristiansson e Kvant os primeiros a chegar ao local do crime. O duo policial que tive o prazer de conhecer em "The Man On The Balcony", onde a resolução da investigação lhes cai no colo, faz uma contribuição que fica muito aquém da sua anterior e a destruição de provas é apenas uma das consequências do seu comportamento impensado.

Apesar de tudo, a sua inocência é bastante divertida e a relação entre ambos, que apesar de muito diferentes se completam, é simplesmente maravilhosa: um escape aos horrores dos crimes da investigação. Enquanto um fala pelos cotovelos sobre todos os aspectos da sua vida, inclusive sobre detalhes íntimos (como a suspeita de um sinal estranho no peito da sua mulher), o outro é um excelente ouvinte e um homem mais do que paciente, eu diria mesmo, um santo!

Enquanto Martin Beck e a sua equipa investigam minuciosamente e com calma a vida das vitimas, deparam-se com a tragédia do desperdício da vida humana e o efeito da morte nos familiares e amigos que continuam a viver. À medida que a investigação avança, várias situações vêm à luz do dia.

É de destacar a referência a investigações antigas, em particular um caso por resolver duma portuguesa assassinada. Este caso é tão fascinante como o actual sangrento homicídio em massa do autocarro. Entretanto passa o Natal, deprimente tanto para Martin como para Kollberg.

Os detectives da equipa de Martin Beck, bem como ele próprio adquirem contornos mais definidos e a sua maneira de ser é para mim cada vez mais familiar. As suas relações já conhecidas permitem-se compreender as escolhas de Martin Beck no que diz respeito à atribuição de papéis no caso a investigar. Sem dúvida que Kollberg é mais do que um colega, um amigo. Quanto ao chefe Gunvald Larsson continua a ser alvo de inimizade do nosso inspector.

O casal de escritores sueco mostra-nos como a perda de humanidade é sentida pelas pessoas, ano após ano, num ambiente que as sufoca, através das reflexões e atitudes do grupo de detectives direccionadas ao seu trabalho e vida pessoal. Martin Beck está constipado e mais impaciente do que nunca. O seu aspecto não podia ser mais miserável e o seu estado de espírito bateu no fundo. As comuns dores de barriga que o impedem de comer, levando-o a beber e fumar em demasia, estão a piorar mas Martin sofre em silêncio.

No geral, o grupo de policias encontra-se mais sensível e com humores mais imprevisíveis, o que provoca confrontos verbais bastante estimulantes. A ironia e o sarcasmo estão sempre presentes nas conversas entre si, bem como as observações e os comentários impertinentes e irrelevantes que são mais do que ocasionais.

Em "The Laughing Policeman" Sojwähl e Wahlöö exploram o submundo e a faceta sombria da cidade de Estocolmo. Somos confrontados com a forma de viver dos imigrantes e a realidade do mundo da prostituição.

O desfecho é trágico. A verdade chegou tarde de mais e foi descoberta por um homem morto. Tudo porque um caso não foi resolvido há 16 anos atrás.

"The police are a necessary evil."

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a treat I am having reading the Martin Beck series in order; with this book I'm 4 down and 6 to go.
The skill of these writers is creating a brilliant Police procedural and here with The Laughing Policeman you are treated to one of the best.
All the detectives play their part in trying to solve a mass murder as they slowly begin to understand that that horrific crime was committed to stop one of their own from solving a much older murder.
I especially like the gentle interactions between the detectives, where the lack of progress is drawn out and frustration builds, but a sense of duty prevails. It is good old fashioned police work where everyone helps build the case. The skill is bringing these random pieces together and eventually the team formulate the solution to both crimes.
Stockholm is the wonderful setting for these stories and it is again one of the stars of this book. The authors by bringing detectives from various parts of Sweden are able to challenge the ideas of indigenous population against the incomers and other parts of the Nation. I thought it was funny when a policeman helping out from another part of the country poses questions in conversation to conceal is accent and role, only to be spotted and named for what he is, an outsider.
Brilliant reflective writing that tells a story and comments indirectly on a nation and its people. I shall have to continue to ration my pleasure as I'm nearly halfway through these memorable collection of crime fiction.

[Víctor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esta novela negra, ambientada en la Suecia de los años 60, ha sido la primera decepción del año.

No sé si es porque no estoy acostumbrado a este género, pero me ha parecido todo muy cliché, solo me faltaban los anuncios saltando entre capítulos para hacer una inmersión completa a tarde de domingo viendo una película de Antena 3.

Los personajes también son estereotipos con patas y, pese a que tienen su trasfondo y se les da profundidad, me ha costado un mundo encontrarles algo de carisma.

La trama desde un principio me parecía algo surrealista y la investigación del caso como tal se iba emborronando al ir dándole bombo a los protagonistas y a sus vidas.

Pese a ser un libro que no se me ha hecho pesado, en ningún momento me ha atrapado.

[Ben Loory · Rating 5 out of 5]

yet another totally solid, fast-moving, absolutely hypnotic entry in the martin beck series which somehow manages to completely emotionally devastate me at the end (this time, via a joke). these people are insanely good, i have no idea how they did it, these books are all but perfect, i don't in the slightest understand how they work, how they gain their power, but it is tremendous... and what's more, it seems to be cumulative... 6 books left and i'm already starting to worry about withdrawal...

[Calzean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably as good as it gets as far as a police procedural drama goes.
Christmas time in Stockholm 1967, a mass murder on a bus. One of the victim includes a homicide detective. The police squad slowly works around to a connection to a previous unsolved murder of a nymphomaniac part-time prostitute.
Martin Beck is just one of the gang which is about the team working together and not on any individual. The differences between Beck's after-work life (he has none) and that of his friend and colleague Kollberg is one of the other highlights in this little classic.

[The Girl with the Sagittarius Tattoo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my cuppa. Pretty dated, the cops were inept (that last page reveal, ugh!), and the investigation felt spoon-fed.

[Sara the Librarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I call my experience with this book "Catcher in the Rye" syndrome. That's the name I give to any book I read where nothing really happens for like pages and pages and pages and yet I can't put the damn thing down.

If you're a fan of literary history at all and particularly mystery fiction this is a really neat series to check out. The Martin Beck series and its authors Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo are more or less the grandparents of the whole Nordic thriller genre. The series was written in the 60's and Sjowall and Wahloo actually intended it to be a takedown of what they felt was the fall of Swedish society. They wanted to show the damage that a mercenary, capitalist society where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer was doing to their country. Both of them were already writers and had experience in political journalism but they decided to really make their voices heard they insert their message into an already popular literary genre, murder mysteries, and reach their fellow citizens that way.

Pretty neato huh?

Alas, while the series was incredibly popular and has gone on to be translated into a billion languages and adapted all over the place into films, television shows and radio plays they were, as Maj herself pointed out in an interview not too long before her death, "preaching to the choir." Everybody who read and enjoyed their books already knew everything was going to hell and in that same interview Maj actually laughed about everything turning out exactly as she and Per always feared it would.

At least she had a sense of humor about it?

At the outset of The Laughing Policeman it seems like you're going into a more or less standard mystery. A man out walking his dog makes a grizzly discovery late one evening. Someone has opened fire on a public bus leaving eight dead, including a policeman. Who could have done something so heinous and how did they escape?

When Martin Beck and his fellow officers arrive on the scene they're almost immediately stymied. After all its the 1960's and its Sweden! Things like mass murder and serial killers are barely being talked about in the US, there's absolutely no president for anything like this in Sweden. Public hysteria and angry government officials are breathing down the officers necks and no one has any idea where to even start figuring this out.

And that's what happens for pages and pages of this book.

The police sit around going "what in the hell are we supposed to do here!?" I mean they also go out and interview people who are just as confused as they are about what's happened and they follow meager leads but for the most part they sit in the precinct and discuss how insane this all is and how they have no idea what to do.

And for some reason its fascinating as hell.

There's something about the grittiness of the whole situation that really grabbed me. We're not dealing with some elite branch of the FBI where everyone's a genius computer hacker and behavior scientist. These are cops, cops who are certainly perfectly capable, but they're also just people doing their jobs. They've been doing them for years and the wear and exhaustion is pretty palpable. There's something about taking the glamour away that really captured me.

When things do start happening they happen fast and the ending both clever and firmly based in a believable reality. If there's one thing I'm having huge issues with these days its the insistence on everything having a goddamn trick ending. The resolution is as dark and straight forward as the road we take to get there.

I really recommend this fascinating book to anyone who's on board for a quick, dark trip down mystery history lane. And if you'd like to learn a bit more about what went into writing the books the interview I read is linked below. They were two truly unique, gifted writers.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...