The Martin Beck series - The Man Who Went Up in Smoke
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Product Description
Review
‘The decalogue about the Swedish Chief Inspector Martin Beck created by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo during the 1960s and 1970s are indeed classic police fiction. They changed the genre. Whoever is writing crime fiction after these novels in inspired by them in one way or another.’ Henning Mankell
‘If you haven’t read Sjowall/Wahloo, start now.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Their mysteries don’t just read well; they reread even better. Witness, wife, petty cop or crook – they’re all real characters even if they get just a few sentences. The plots hold, because they’re ingenious but never inhuman.’ New York Times
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.Product Description
His holiday has just begun: an August spent with his family on a small island off the coast of Sweden. But when a neighbor gets a phone call, Martin Beck finds himself packed off to Budapest, where a boorish journalist has vanished without a trace. Instead of passing leisurely sun-filled days with his children, Beck must troll about in the Eastern Europe underworld for a man nobody knows, with the aid of the coolly efficient local police, who do business while soaking at the public baths--and at the risk of vanishing along with his quarry.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've set myself to read the whole ten books in this series. I love the stripped down nature of the writing and the dialogue is realistic too - sardonic banter among cops, sometimes nonsensical.
It's easy to see where Mankell get his influences from. There's a sadness in the way Beck goes about his life. His marriage doesn't look healthy. He packs a bottle of whisky when he goes travelling.
I think the Budapest passages work well. Beck's alienation is, if anything, made more stark by his being planted in a foreign city.
The solution to the mystery is delivered in dead pan style - Beck, his colleague and the murderer sitting about in a room till the truth emerges. No heroics.
It's easy to see where Mankell get his influences from. There's a sadness in the way Beck goes about his life. His marriage doesn't look healthy. He packs a bottle of whisky when he goes travelling.
I think the Budapest passages work well. Beck's alienation is, if anything, made more stark by his being planted in a foreign city.
The solution to the mystery is delivered in dead pan style - Beck, his colleague and the murderer sitting about in a room till the truth emerges. No heroics.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This second book in the Martin Beck decalogue didn't gel for me. Beck Abroad could be its subtitle - and like Wallander's sojourn in Latvia in Mankell's The Dogs of Riga, it doesn't quite come off. Mainly because the detective work goes out of the window and it becomes a bit of a travelogue.
Plus there are too many characters and the book became a bit incomprehensible until the denouement. But the series gets back on track with the next novel, so don't worry!
Plus there are too many characters and the book became a bit incomprehensible until the denouement. But the series gets back on track with the next novel, so don't worry!
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Book two, and Martin Beck spends a lot of time on foreign soil. Despite this, we get more familiar with all the characters and the whole gestalt... Beck's failing marriage, his closeness with colleagues, especially Lennart Kollberg. Not as great as Roseanna, but still very, very good. Look out for the introduction of that wonderfully goofy pair, Kristiansson and Kvant - "who pop in and out of the series with the grisly inevitability of a pair of Shakespearean gravediggers"!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
No pun intended?
This is the second book in the Martin beck series and, unlike the later novels, the emphasis is very much on Beck himself. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Ragnar
Classic Swedish crime series stands the test of time
The classic series of ten books about Swedish policeman Martin Beck and his team is so often held up as the epitome of crime writing: the turning point between the "golden age" of... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Maxine Clarke
Method acting
Beck goes to Budapest to solve a case deliberately paralleled with the 1945 Wallenberg disappearence, to look for a man who seems to have gone up in smoke. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Officer Dibble
A Swedish/Hungarian Mystery
Having recently discovered the Martin Beck series, I found this an absorbing and engaging read. Martin Beck's holiday is rudely interrupted and he is assigned to invesitgate the... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Caledonia558
Lots of Intrigue in this Second Instalment
The second instalment of the Martin beck series has an international aspect to it with Martin Beck being asked to discreetly investigate the disappearance of a Swedish journalist... Read more
Published 21 months ago by J. Milton
Book Two
Book One was slow going but now I'm starting to get it. The relationships between the various cast members are beginning to fall into place with Martin Beck at the centre of all... Read more
Published on 2 May 2010 by P. G. Strachan
As I was going up the stairs
I met a man who wasn't there.
Summer vacation season is in full swing and Inspector Martin Beck has just arrived in an isolated summer cottage on an island off the... Read more
Summer vacation season is in full swing and Inspector Martin Beck has just arrived in an isolated summer cottage on an island off the... Read more
Published on 11 Jan 2007 by Leonard Fleisig
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
Summer vacation season is in full swing and Inspector Martin Beck has just arrived in an isolated summer cottage on an island off the... Read more
Summer vacation season is in full swing and Inspector Martin Beck has just arrived in an isolated summer cottage on an island off the... Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2007 by Leonard Fleisig
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