The Nature of Things

The Terrorists by Maj Sjöwall My rating: 4 of 5 stars I am in mourning. I've just finished the last of the Martin Beck mysteries. There will be no more regular visits with Beck and his doughty but quirky band of Swedish policemen as they battle to rid their society of the evil that afflicts it. It seems fitting somehow that this last book featured terrorism as its theme, since terrorism has become such an expected part of our lives in the twenty-first century. This book was published in 1975 but it seems as fresh as today's news. Indeed, all ten of the books in this series, starting with Roseanna in 1965, seem current and not at all dated in their outlook. They seem very relevant for the times in which we live. The Terrorists begins and ends with acts of terrorism - the first in an unnamed Latin American country and the second in Stockholm. These acts are committed by a very well organized international terrorist organization for which terrorism is a business. But Sjowall/Wa...

Cop Killer by Maj Sjöwall My rating: 4 of 5 stars I can't help noting the similarity in titles between this book and the first of the Ed McBain books that I read earlier this month. McBain's book was Cop Hater . Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo stated that McBain's work was an inspiration and model for their Martin Beck series, so was this title an homage to McBain? Whether it was or not, Sjowall/Wahloo's writing style continues to owe much to that established by McBain in his police procedurals. The writing is spare and straightforward, although the series does allow for considerable character development. We've gotten to know Martin Beck and the members of his team very well in the course of these books. The books have gotten progressively better as the series has continued, in my opinion, and I have to say that this one, the penultimate entry, is my favorite so far. Cop Killer focuses on the working relationship between Martin Beck and Sten Lennart Kollberg, his most...

The Locked Room by Maj Sjöwall My rating: 4 of 5 stars Each of these reissues of the 1960s-70s Swedish crime series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo has an introduction by a current-day crime fiction writer. This eighth in the ten-part series is introduced by Michael Connelly. In his opening paragraph, he assures readers that, if they are about to "hop aboard" and read this book, they are in for a great ride. He did not lie. This is my favorite Martin Beck book so far. It has all the elements that I find so interesting about the series. Sjowall and Wahloo use the vehicle of the detective novel to examine Swedish society, and, in a larger context, Western society, of the late twentieth century. They do it with the clear-eyed irony that such an endeavor demands and they achieve their goal with a wry humor. These mysteries are always meticulously plotted and, while they examine how crime happens, they also manage to explore how a city, a country, or a society can be complicit in t...

The Abominable Man by Maj Sjöwall My rating: 3 of 5 stars I've come to the conclusion that this series should not be read so much as police procedural mysteries as social studies of Sweden at a particular point in time - the 1960s. So much of the narrative is taken up with the authors' observations about and critiques of the social welfare society that was that country at that time. The central point and organizational theory of this particular entry in the series is the consequence of police excesses. It presents a police department that has lost the respect of the populace because of the rampant corruption and brutality that has become so much a part of that essential organization. We are introduced briefly to a police inspector who is known to be exceptionally cruel in his treatment of the policemen under his command and particularly the prisoners who are unfortunate enough to find themselves under his control. Beatings are routine. Ignoring medical needs is a common occurr...

Murder at the Savoy by Maj Sjöwall My rating: 2 of 5 stars I have tremendously enjoyed reading the books in this series. Up until now. I have to say that this sixth entry in the ten-book series left me scratching my head as to why they even bothered. It seemed as though the authors were simply phoning it in and were not really engaged by the story they were telling. The "mystery" took a back seat to Sjowall's and Wahloo's exploration of Swedish society and all that (they felt) was wrong with it back in the 1960s when they were writing. Reading about the evils of the welfare state that was Sweden was interesting, at least historically, up to a point, but past that point, I frankly just felt that the writers were beating a dead horse. They were definitely beating a reader who had lost interest. The mystery involves who shot Viktor Palmgren, a powerful Swedish industrialist, while he was making an after-dinner speech in the restaurant of the luxurious Hotel Savoy. He ha...

The Fire Engine That Disappeared by Maj Sjöwall My rating: 4 of 5 stars A man commits suicide in a Stockholm apartment. He leaves behind a cryptic note with just two words: "Martin Beck." Later, on the night of that same day another apartment building in Stockholm explodes in flames while the police are watching the building because of a low-level criminal who lives there. Eleven people live in the building and had it not been for the policeman who was watching at the moment of the explosion, Gunvald Larsson, they would likely all have died. Through his heroic efforts, eight of the people escaped, although one later died. One resident, a teenage girl, was trapped and burned in the attic apartment and the man in the apartment where the fire started also died. It turned out that that man was the criminal whom the police had been watching and that an incendiary device had been placed in the man's mattress. However, complicating matters, it seems that the man was dead before...

The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall My rating: 4 of 5 stars 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...

The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjöwall My rating: 3 of 5 stars I'm reading my way through this iconic ten book series by Swedish duo Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. The series was written in the 1960s and is the forerunner of much of modern popular Scandinavian thriller/mysteries. This is the third book in the series which features the morose policeman Martin Beck, now a superintendent in the Stockholm police. This time, we find Martin Beck and his colleagues investigating some particularly heinous crimes. Young girls are being raped and killed, their bodies left in the once-peaceful public parks of Stockholm. We follow the police as they follow their investigatorial procedures, collecting evidence from the scenes of crime, interviewing potential witnesses, checking public records for previously identified or prosecuted sex criminals, pounding the pavement and burning the midnight oil. No one can sleep soundly while this villain walks their streets. At length, the police are able to id...

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke by Maj Sjöwall My rating: 4 of 5 stars Poor Martin Beck. He just can't catch a break. He has just started his month-long summer vacation with his family on a small island off the coast of Sweden when he receives a call to return to duty. It seems that a Swedish journalist has gone missing in Hungary and Beck's superiors want him to go to Budapest to act as liaison to the investigation. He's told that he can refuse the assignment since he is technically on vacation. But, of course, he can't. Not really. So he packs his bag and heads off to Budapest. These books were written in the 1960s and so we find a very different Eastern Europe described here to what we would read in a novel set in the present day. But Beck is struck with the beauty of Budapest and we learn a little bit about its history and the layout of the city. Beck's investigation proceeds slowly at first, but then he meets his local counterpart and is very impressed with the o...

My rating: 3 of 5 stars Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were a Swedish husband and wife writing team, who, between 1965 and 1975, published a series of ten books featuring the detective Martin Beck. In many ways, this was an iconic series, forerunner and progenitor of some of the most popular Scandinavian mystery/thriller series of today. Writers like Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbo, and Stieg Larson certainly owe a debt to the Sjowall/Wahloo team. Over the years, I have seen references to this series in reviews that I've read of other books. Finally, I decided it was time for me to get to know the works and to find out why others spoke of them so reverentially. This Kindle edition of Roseanna that I read had an introduction written by Henning Mankell, in which he acknowledged his debt to the earlier writers. (Mr. Wahloo is now deceased, but Ms. Sjowall is still with us - just not writing mysteries anymore.) He also mentions the influence of American detective fiction on the Sjowall/Wahloo t...