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Review
‘I’ve read “The Laughing Policeman” six or eight times. Each time I reach the final twist on the final page, I shiver afresh.’ Jonathan Franzen
‘Tantalizing…the splendid story of an apparently motiveless crime.’ New York Times Book Review
‘An influential police procedural with a precision-engineered plot that can grip and shock a reader…the plotting, pacing and characterisation are all exquisite: and the halting translation and the dated, just plain weird sexual politics somehow seem only to make it more compelling.’ Independent on Sunday
‘For Beck, as with Maigret, each investigation is less a riddle to be answered than a human situation to be understood…it's all done with immense accomplishment. A welcome addition to the Martin Beck casebook.’ Matthew Coady, Guardian
‘They changed the genre. Whoever is writing crime fiction after these novels is inspired by them in one way or another.’ Henning Mankell
‘If you haven’t read Sjöwall/Wahlöö, start now.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Pick up one book…and you become unhinged. You want to block out a week of your life, lie to your boss, and stay in bed, gorging on one after another.’ Observer
Product Description
The fourth book in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s – the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime writing.
Hugely acclaimed, the Martin Beck series were the original Scandinavian crime novels and have inspired the writings of Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbo.
Written in the 1960s, 10 books completed in 10 years, they are the work of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö – a husband and wife team from Sweden. They follow the fortunes of the detective Martin Beck, whose enigmatic, taciturn character has inspired countless other policemen in crime fiction; without his creation Ian Rankin’s John Rebus or Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander may never have been conceived. The novels can be read separately, but are best read in chronological order, so the reader can follow the characters’ development and get drawn into the series as a whole.
On a cold and rainy Stockholm night, nine bus riders are gunned down by an unknown assassin. The press, anxious for an explanation for the seemingly random crime, quickly dubs him a madman. But Martin Beck of the Homicide Squad suspects otherwise: this apparently motiveless killer has managed to target one of Beck’s best detectives – and he, surely, would not have been riding that lethal bus without a reason.
With its wonderfully observed lawmen, its brilliantly rendered felons and their murky Stockholm underworld, and its deftly engineered plot, ‘The Laughing Policeman’ has long been recognised as a classic of the police procedural.
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Customer Reviews
A gunman shoots all the passengers on a bus with a sub-machine gun killing eight people, one of whom is a fellow detective, Åke Stenström. Martin Beck and his team have remarkably little to go on, since it is not at all obvious what Stenström was doing on the bus in the first place. Though it soon becomes clear that he was investigating something, he has confided in no one, not even his girlfriend, so a major task is to figure out what he was up to and whether or not it involved another passenger.
The investigation is so labour-intensive that help is called in from elsewhere, and in due course a link is suspected to the murder of a Portuguese prostitute which had occurred sixteen years before.
In the first book of the series, Martin Beck is plainly the most important character. By the time of this book, the authors have developed a team of which Beck is but one. For example, in this novel Kollberg is as important as Beck. Other detectives from previous books also figure, including the pipe-smoking Melander, who acts as a human memory bank for the other officers.
The conclusion is wonderful, though I can't say why without spoiling it for the reader. The motivation of the killer is unusually clear and the explanation he gives of his actions is only made possible by a piece of forward thinking by Beck.
Criticism of Swedish society occurs from time to time, brought into focus not only by the motivation of the killer but also by the out-of-town policemen brought in to help. Both are less than impressed by Stockholm and keen to return to their own less metropolitan areas of Sweden.
Given when it was written, there are no computers or mobile phones, all the officers are male and quite a lot of smoking goes on. But this book is entirely convincing and doesn't feel even slightly dated.
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