The Laughing Policeman (1968)

Warning: this review contains spoilers.

****

Nine people are dead on a double-decker bus in Stockholm, Sweden. One of them is a policeman, Ake Stenström. Naturally, the death of one of their own will spur the force to even greater investigative heights, but their main question is: what was he doing on that bus in the first place?

This was my first Martin Beck and remains my favourite so far. Alan Blair provides a generally solid translation, with only a few non-English constructions ("looking at TV", for instance), possibly left in to give the English a "foreign" feel. (On a side note, I imagine that must be a very difficult task for a literary translator, deciding how much to render idiomatically and how much to leave in a more unusual construction.) In terms of plot, this was realistic in its portrayal of a grinding, wearisome investigation, and the ending, to me, is perfect. I laughed too.

I definitely recommend this if you're interested in the Martin Beck series. It's the fourth book in the series, but I don't think it's strictly necessary to read the preceding volumes first. Maybe Roseanna, since it does refer to events in that book, but the references are peripheral and do not have much of a bearing on the main plot. ( )

Before Stieg Larsson, before Jo Nesbø or Henning Mankell, Scandinavian crime fiction was dominated by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, journalists and common-law married writing partners from Sweden. In the 1960s, the couple set about to write 10 books in 10 years, each 30 chapters long, which they plotted and researched together, then wrote alternate chapters. Because they intended the books as a critique of capitalist society, all the books in their original editions were given the subtitle "Report of a Crime" as a politically double-entendre phrase.

According to Wahlöö, their intention was to "use the crime novel as a scalpel cutting open the belly of the ideological pauperized and morally debatable so-called welfare state of the bourgeois type." The books (all of which have been adapted for film or TV), follow the exploits of detectives from the special homicide commission of the national police, centered around the character of Superintendent Martin Beck of the Homicide Squad. About their main policeman, Ms. Sjöwall said, "We wanted a credible, trustworthy Swedish civil servant with empathy and real concern." The books really should be read in sequential order because the characters of Beck, his family, and Beck's police colleagues change throughout the series.

THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN was the only one in the series to win an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Novel, an honor bestowed in 1971. At the beginning of the book, police are off fighting peaceful Vietnam demonstrators and casually molest a girl demonstrator on her thirteenth birthday. Soon afterward, nine bus riders are gunned down by an unknown assassin on a cold and rainy Stockholm night. Unfortunately for Beck, the two inept patrolmen who stumbled upon the crime scene destroyed much of any useful evidence. The frenzied press, fishing for an explanation for the seemingly random crime, quickly dubs the killer a madman.

With his usual dogged determination, Beck suspects the culprit isn't a madman, after all, upon discovering the apparently motiveless killer has managed to target one of Beck′s best detectives, Ake Stenstrom. But far too many questions remain: why was Stenstrom on that particular bus that night? Why was he sitting next to a young, female nurse? After Beck works with the murdered detective's girlfriend, he's able to piece together his activites right before his murder. Soon enough it becomes clear that Stenstrom was working off the books, and that the attack may be connected to an unsolved cold case.

The Beck novels are filled with brooding, multi-dimensional characters and the settings are equally gritty and dour, pointing out the dark underbelly of Swedish culture and clearly foreshadowing Larsson. There are also other parallels: Sjöwall/Wahlöö and Larsson wrote against the sub-class treatment of women in society, as well as the failings of the capitalistic system to protect its most vulnerable citizens. ( )

I really good who done it, with a in depth look at the detecting process! The title through me off, as I tried to solve it myself, so that was good! It is called a "Martin Beck" mystery, but I found it to be more of an ensemble piece! And I was very interested to read a book written by a husband/wife team! Long story short, I liked it! ( )

As a teenager, I read a lot of police procedurals. My local library was well stocked with the 47th precinct novels by Ed MacBain, Dell Shannon's Luis Mendoza books and the Martin Beck series by Sjowall & Wahjoo.

After so many years the main thing I remember about the Martin Beck books is just how bitter they are about the Swedish establishment. I can't remember any of the plots, although I did remember Beck, his friend and colleague Kollberg and the comic-relief patrolmen Kristiansson and Kvant.

In "The Laughing Policeman", which I don't think I've read before, Beck and his team investigate Sweden's first mass-murder. Late one evening, the driver of a Stockholm bus and seven of his passengers are shot dead as it approaches the terminus, and the one surviving passenger ends up in a coma. One of the dead men is a policeman, but no-one can understand what he was doing travelling on that bus. ( )

A mass-murder on a bus has a team of mostly mediocre police scrambling to investigate. Few clues or leads are demoralizing but eventually all the time spent on leg work, interviews with family / friends of the victims, in-house meetings, and small discoveries yield questions and answers.

Great plot, timing and even better character development. Good read. ( )