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The Abominable Man (The Martin Beck Series)
 
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The Abominable Man (The Martin Beck Series) (Paperback)

by Maj Sjowall (Author), Per Wahloo (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
RRP: £7.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: HarperPerennial (20 Aug 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007242972
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007242979
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 28,969 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Review

Praise for 'Roseanna': 'The writing is elegant and surprisingly humorous -- if you haven't come across Beck before, you're in for a treat.' Guardian 'I have never read a finer police story.' Los Angeles Times '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 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


Product Description

The seventh classic instalment in this genre-changing series of novels featuring Detective Inspector Martin Beck. On a quiet night a high-ranking police officer, Nyland, is slaughtered in his hospital bed, brutally massacred with a bayonet. It's not hard to find people with a motive to kill him; in fact the problem for Detective Inspector Martin Beck is how to narrow the list down to one suspect. But as he investigates Nyland's murder he must confront whether he is willing to risk his life for his job. Written in the 1960s, these masterpieces are the work of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo -- a husband and wife team from Sweden. The ten novels follow the fortunes of the detective Martin Beck, whose enigmatic, taciturn character has inspired countless other policemen in crime fiction. The novels can be read separately, but do follow a chronological order, so the reader can become familiar with the characters and develop a loyalty to the series. Each book will have a new introduction in order to help bring these books to a new audience.

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo - The Abominable Man, 2 May 2008
By RachelWalker "RachelW" (England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
One night, a high-ranking Stockholm police officer is stabbed in his hospital bed, run through with a bayonet. The officer in question has a history of brutality towards those in custody, and as such the list of suspects seems endless. Martin Beck and his team must scour the city for a vicious killer at the same time as delving into the victim's past, which is all too clouded with possible leads.

The Abominable Man is the 7th entry in the prolifically praised Martin Beck series, now reprinted in its entirety by HarperPerennial, each new edition coming complete with a section of goodies at the end (author interviews, essays, recommendations, etc), and seven having new introductions from contemporary authors (though this is not one of those 7). I am slowly making my way through these new translations, and discovering what crime-fiction fans in the 60's and 70's were being shown: that this is one of the most accomplished police procedural series written, certainly then, and, even greater achievement, to this day still. Comprising a decade-long examination of a city, a police force, and its constituent members, by now the decline in Swedish society that the authors wanted to highlight is well-and-truly underway in this entry, one of the most powerful and impassioned in the series so far.

The Abominable Man takes as its victim the traditions and inner cultures of the Swedish police-force, damning the methods often used in the past, the people who they formed (or allowed to become prominent), and the present changes being wrought. The plot is relatively straightforward: a police officer is run through in his sick-bed, and the investigators must find out why. It's not very complex, and as such unfolds over a much quicker period of time than many previous novels in the series, barely 24 hours in fact. As such it is one of the most immediately engaging and exciting to read, and certainly the one that reads the quickest, which made a nice change and helped to make it one of my favourites in the series so far. Admittedly, the lack of complexity in the plot (though the writing, in terms of social and character examination, is as complex as ever) makes it feel a bit slight, but the clear passion in the writing more than makes up for that. It's a short, sharp devastating bullet aimed at the Sweden of the sixties, and it certainly hits its mark. The whole thing is a near-complete triumph - exciting, pacy, interesting, and the climax is brilliant. Onto number 8...


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