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The Laughing Policeman Maj Sjöwall Per Wahlöö 9780679742234 Books

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The Laughing Policeman Maj Sjöwall Per Wahlöö 9780679742234 Books

This is the 4th in a series of 10 murder mysteries "starring" Swedish detective Martin Beck. They were all written by a husband and wife team a substantial time ago; this one takes place in the fall of 1967. (The husband died in 1975). Like the others (I've read the preceding ones, not the ones after this one), they are masterpieces of the genre. In addition to the expected baffling clues and the well delineated characterization of the police officers working on the case, we get elements of local color and possibly even a satiric criticism of Swedish culture of the time. In fact, this theme was present from the first of the books, and evolves as Sweden does, from a relatively obscure place off the beaten track to one where all the world's pathologies are spectacularly on display.

The Sweden I remember best (I spent six weeks there in childhood, in 1963), was different from most European countries. It was proudly "nonaligned" (with Russian caviar readily available in grocery stores, something we couldn't get at home); it was a Socialist welfare state in a time when that wasn't yet very common, with socialized medicine, strict gun control, and very strict rules on violence in movies -- so strict I wasn't allowed to see any movie in English because "barn" (children) weren't allowed to see Hollywood films of the period. While it had borders with its neighbors that didn't strike me as strictly controlled, it had the feeling of being isolated, not just from the Cold War but from a lot of what was happening in more mainstream cultures.

Well, all that was apparently over by 1967, and our authors show us that Swedes cared deeply enough about the US involvement in Vietnam that they staged a demonstration in front of the US Embassy, which the police broke up with unnecessary brutality. I would not have believed that could happen in the Sweden I remember, and I disagree with the author of the introduction who feels the book's authors are trying to condemn the police as narrow minded brutes. Instead, I think they may have been demonstrating that Swedes, absorbing somehow the controversy in the American public, took to the streets and the police didn't really know how to handle it. Looking at the description, there were on the order of 800 demonstrators and 400 police -- hardly the stuff anti-Vietnam rallies were made of in the US, but of course, most of ours weren't held in a cold, steady rain. Both sides bungled their roles and the whole scene was more comic than serious -- although a few people on both sides did suffer minor injuries.

Anyway, the crime happens on page 8, and it's a doozy. In these mysteries, there is a progression, as I've already noted, a decline in the "civilized" Sweden of 1960 as the world's ills spread into the country. Even in the first book, no government beneficence prevents a slightly odd man from deciding that a flirtatious, sexually aggressive woman was immoral, so he strangles her. In the second book, the victim simply disappears. In the third book, a pervert systematically sets out to strangle little girls, randomly selected one after another. As can be seen, there's a steady decline into chaos, or at least human depravity happening, a classical "loss of Innocence" story. Well, in this book, a criminal is being shadowed continually by a policemen trying to solve a closed case on his own time. The criminal reports to his organized crime boss -- this is Sweden, so he doesn't have an Italian name -- and the boss decides to simply assassinate both policeman and his minion. But, he picks a time when they are on a bus together and, having no use for witnesses, he gets on at one of the stops with a submachine gun (How did he get it? Because he'd served in World War II!) under his raincoat ("assault rifle" hadn't been coined yet as a term) and "rubbed out" all the occupants on the bus, including the driver and the policeman, who was armed and just had time to draw his pistol before he was overwhelmed by a storm of bullets.

From the point of view of the police, of course, this presented them with an almost impossible task -- nine victims, with no obvious connections between them. Was one of them intended to be killed and the others just bystanders? Or did the murderer enjoy rolling up a bigger body count? They doggedly follow leads, most of them false, and eventually Martin Beck does figure out that the murders are related to the cold case the police victim was working on. Eventually the key turns on the fact that two makes of car in the period looked very much alike in the front view; alas, the two makes are European and long out of production now, so today's American audiences will have to simply accept that at face value.

However, the book is as absorbing as the others and decidedly worth your time, even if you're not sick -- the writer of the introduction somehow gets stuck on the Swedish winter and everyone in the book nursing colds, and he remarks that if the reader is sick, he can pass the time with this book. It's a very entertaining read and unlike most mysteries it even has theme...not just characters and a solid, absorbing plot, although it has all those too. And you don't need to be sick to curl up with it.


Tags : The Laughing Policeman [Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. With its wonderfully observed lawmen (including the inimitable Martin Beck), its brilliantly rendered felons and their murky Stockholm underworld,Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö,The Laughing Policeman,Vintage,0679742239,Mystery & Detective - General,Beck, Martin (Fictitious character);Fiction.,Detective and mystery stories.,Police;Sweden;Stockholm;Fiction.,Beck, Martin (Fictitious character),Crime & mystery,Fiction,Fiction - Mystery Detective,Fiction Mystery & Detective General,Fiction Mystery & Detective Police Procedural,Mystery & Detective - Police Procedural,MysterySuspense,Police,Sjowall, Maj - Prose & Criticism,Stockholm,Sweden,Beck, Martin (Fictitious chara

The Laughing Policeman Maj Sjöwall Per Wahlöö 9780679742234 Books Reviews

I came to this book after doing a search on the web for some of the best detective fiction. This book kept coming up. Written in the late sixties (it could be any time, since this is not a focus of the story) it takes on a strange (at that time) case of a seemingly random mass killing aboard a city bus. Detectives find that among the victims was one of their own, seemingly investigating, even though there were no current cases he was involved in.

What follows is a pure procedural. This is not your average thrill a minute case where clues and witnesses come forth in new and dramatic ways every chapter. Nope. This book basically brings you into what must be the relatively mundane life of a detective in a city where murder is almost non-existent.

Without spoiling it, the book really does spend most of its time going down useless dead-ends and the frustration the detective squad feels at coming up empty is nothing compared to the frustration the reader feels as he experiences exactly the same thing.

Nothing. For what seems like months.

Eventually they tie together a breaking angle, and investigate it, and the book soon ends with a successful, if very very delayed conclusion.

All without the car chase that happens in the 1973 movie version, filmed in San Francisco.

Do I recommend it?

If you really like police work, and not the made-up TV version, then I think this book may be for you. If you're a Castle fan, or Law & Order fan, this will not likely keep your interest.
This Swedish police procedural novel is one of the best in the series of ten Martin Beck investigative mysteries.
On a bleak, rainy night in Stockholm in 1968, an unknown person opens fire with a submachine gun on a double-decker bus occupied by eight people, including the driver. One of the dead is an off-duty detective from the national homicide squad. The driverless bus glides into a fence and stops in a run-down city neighborhood late that night, only to be found by a man walking his dog.
Chief Inspector Martin Beck and his National Homicide Squad colleagues investigate the case from the crime scene gore through the routine drudgery of following up leads, most of which are dead ends, even as the press and public are putting the police under great pressure to solve the case by making an arrest.
This is the 4th in a series of 10 murder mysteries "starring" Swedish detective Martin Beck. They were all written by a husband and wife team a substantial time ago; this one takes place in the fall of 1967. (The husband died in 1975). Like the others (I've read the preceding ones, not the ones after this one), they are masterpieces of the genre. In addition to the expected baffling clues and the well delineated characterization of the police officers working on the case, we get elements of local color and possibly even a satiric criticism of Swedish culture of the time. In fact, this theme was present from the first of the books, and evolves as Sweden does, from a relatively obscure place off the beaten track to one where all the world's pathologies are spectacularly on display.

The Sweden I remember best (I spent six weeks there in childhood, in 1963), was different from most European countries. It was proudly "nonaligned" (with Russian caviar readily available in grocery stores, something we couldn't get at home); it was a Socialist welfare state in a time when that wasn't yet very common, with socialized medicine, strict gun control, and very strict rules on violence in movies -- so strict I wasn't allowed to see any movie in English because "barn" (children) weren't allowed to see Hollywood films of the period. While it had borders with its neighbors that didn't strike me as strictly controlled, it had the feeling of being isolated, not just from the Cold War but from a lot of what was happening in more mainstream cultures.

Well, all that was apparently over by 1967, and our authors show us that Swedes cared deeply enough about the US involvement in Vietnam that they staged a demonstration in front of the US Embassy, which the police broke up with unnecessary brutality. I would not have believed that could happen in the Sweden I remember, and I disagree with the author of the introduction who feels the book's authors are trying to condemn the police as narrow minded brutes. Instead, I think they may have been demonstrating that Swedes, absorbing somehow the controversy in the American public, took to the streets and the police didn't really know how to handle it. Looking at the description, there were on the order of 800 demonstrators and 400 police -- hardly the stuff anti-Vietnam rallies were made of in the US, but of course, most of ours weren't held in a cold, steady rain. Both sides bungled their roles and the whole scene was more comic than serious -- although a few people on both sides did suffer minor injuries.

Anyway, the crime happens on page 8, and it's a doozy. In these mysteries, there is a progression, as I've already noted, a decline in the "civilized" Sweden of 1960 as the world's ills spread into the country. Even in the first book, no government beneficence prevents a slightly odd man from deciding that a flirtatious, sexually aggressive woman was immoral, so he strangles her. In the second book, the victim simply disappears. In the third book, a pervert systematically sets out to strangle little girls, randomly selected one after another. As can be seen, there's a steady decline into chaos, or at least human depravity happening, a classical "loss of Innocence" story. Well, in this book, a criminal is being shadowed continually by a policemen trying to solve a closed case on his own time. The criminal reports to his organized crime boss -- this is Sweden, so he doesn't have an Italian name -- and the boss decides to simply assassinate both policeman and his minion. But, he picks a time when they are on a bus together and, having no use for witnesses, he gets on at one of the stops with a submachine gun (How did he get it? Because he'd served in World War II!) under his raincoat ("assault rifle" hadn't been coined yet as a term) and "rubbed out" all the occupants on the bus, including the driver and the policeman, who was armed and just had time to draw his pistol before he was overwhelmed by a storm of bullets.

From the point of view of the police, of course, this presented them with an almost impossible task -- nine victims, with no obvious connections between them. Was one of them intended to be killed and the others just bystanders? Or did the murderer enjoy rolling up a bigger body count? They doggedly follow leads, most of them false, and eventually Martin Beck does figure out that the murders are related to the cold case the police victim was working on. Eventually the key turns on the fact that two makes of car in the period looked very much alike in the front view; alas, the two makes are European and long out of production now, so today's American audiences will have to simply accept that at face value.

However, the book is as absorbing as the others and decidedly worth your time, even if you're not sick -- the writer of the introduction somehow gets stuck on the Swedish winter and everyone in the book nursing colds, and he remarks that if the reader is sick, he can pass the time with this book. It's a very entertaining read and unlike most mysteries it even has theme...not just characters and a solid, absorbing plot, although it has all those too. And you don't need to be sick to curl up with it.