First published in 1969 in Swedish, 1970 in English, this classic holds up well. A man not known to the police commits suicide and the only words on the note he leaves behind are 'Martin Beck.' Then a detective conducting surveillance on an apartment building sees it go up in flames; he rescues several people, but not the man under surveillance. The police suspect foul play and slowly begin to piece things together.

Two factors about the story made me think about the genre and the debt current crime fiction owes to this series: the handling of character development and pacing. Very little page time is spent on the lives and thoughts of the detectives, yet somehow by the end one knows them well; they've taken on three-dimensional identities. Second, what's the hurry? The story is not driven by fast paced thrills and moments of peril; it meanders and takes detours and the pieces eventually join up, thanks to quiet persistence. In a couple of scenes the authors' political stance comes through when, in the background, police are battling Vietnam War protesters and once when a very genial and sensible detective from Malmo avoids being an officious, bossy jerk at a crime scene. At times the authors use understated sarcasm to describe the state of their nation: 'Walpurgis Eve is an important day in Sweden, a day when people put on their spring clothes and get drunk and dance and are happy and eat food and look forward to the summer. In Dkane, the roadsides are in bloom, and the leaves are coming out . . . Students put on their white caps and trade union leaders get out their red flags from their moth-bags and try to remember the text of Sons of Labor. It will soon be May Daay and time to pretend to be socialist for a short while again, and during the symbolic demonstration march even the police stand to attention when the brass bands play the Internationale. For the only tasks the police have are the redirection of traffic and ensuring that no one who really wants to say anything has got in among the demonstrators.' You can see the roots of contemporary Scandinavian crime fiction in this story, particularly the broad social canvas of which the crimes are just a piece. But it's certainly not gloomy, introspective, or overly dramatic, and there's none of the psychological analysis of people's lives and motivations which tend to play a large role today. All in all, a well-plotted, cool-handed and often extraordinarily funny procedural with a large cast of characters who aren't given to introspection or angst who you want to meet again.

A naked woman was dredged up from the bottom of Sweden's beautiful Lake Vattern one July day. Where had she come from? How had she got there? And why? . . . a rash of brutal muggings and child sex-murders with the elusive mugger perhaps the only person in Stockholm to have seen the murderer . . . the search for a hard-drinking well-known Swedish journalist in Budapest, who has vanished without a trace . . . eight people were shot to death in a Stockholm bus, with one of the dead being an ambitious young detective whose private life was both perverse and mysterious . . . an incendiary device blows the roof off a Stockholm apartment house one cold winter night interrupting the small, peaceful orgy underway inside, and for reasons nobody could satisfactorily explain - the fire department didn't arrive until too late. How could a regulation-sized ladder truck vanish in the center of Stockholm? . . . the peculiar death of a 46-year-old bachelor whose cryptic suicide note consisted of only two words: 'Martin Beck'? . . . the murder of a powerful Swedish industrialist during his after-dinner speech in the elegant Hotel Savoy with a shot in the head . . . the bloody murder of a police captain in his hospital room by a demented and deadly rifleman exposing the particularly unsavory history of a man who spent forty years practicing brutality and force . . . a decayed corpse with a bullet through its head is found inside a locked room. Suicide? Perhaps - but inside the locked room there is no gun. A young blonde in sunglasses holds up a bank and shoots the hapless citizen who moves to stop her . . . a blond woman in her middle thirties in a small Swedish town is brutally murdered and left buried in a swamp. Some weeks later her decomposing body is found accidentally by a group of hikers. Prime suspects are the convicted sex murderer who was her only neighbor on a lonely country road, and her former husband - a rough, drunken retired sailor. Meanwhile, on a quiet suburban street in another part of Sweden, a midnight shootout take place between three cops and two teenage boys. Dead: one cop and two teenage boys. Wounded: two cops. Escaped: one kid . . . an American senator visits Stockholm and Martin Beck tries to protect him from an international gang of terrorists, while they decide that Beck too should be removed from the scene . . . a millionaire pornographer bludgeoned to death in his own bathtub . . . a young girl, a Swedish hippie, caught up unexpectedly in the maze of police bureaucracy . . . and of course, a homicide detective who is a chain smoker with a graveyard cough and an abused stomach; a 'weekend' sailor who likes to spend what time he has making model ships, living in a gray suburban apartment with his once pretty wife and two children with whom he has few points of contact and little in common. ( )

Another short but dragged out investigation from Martin beck and the team.

It's quiet in the late autimn and Gunvald is transferred to shadow (did police forces ever do this?) a suspect. When the house he is in burns down Gunvar rescues some people but not the suspect whose remains are later found in the house. Case closed. Until the forensics deptment discover some anomolous evidence. Meanwhile a man is found shot in a flat. And some car is later found in a harbour. Is there any connection between these events? Different members of the team are investigating them so it isn't clear.

Didn't enjoy this one as much as the previous offereings, though it isn't clear why. There plot lacked some of the drama and there was once a gain a preponderance of unnecessary though non-graphic sex. There contrasts between the various families seem to exist solely for the sake of contrast. The disconnection between the various plot lines was confusing although ultimately resolved it was hard to keep track of who was important to whom on whic investigation. Stockholm only appears to have two radio officers. Highly unlikely that they'd have been involved (badly) in the last three adventures.

And to round it all off it's a preposterous and badly contrived ending.
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I was a little disappointed with this, the fifth in the Martin Beck series. It’s not that it’s a poor book by any means but it doesn’t reach the heights of the previous two novels, The Man on the Balcony and The Laughing Policeman.

Even the supporting material in the book is a letdown after what’s gone before. Earlier books in the series have begun with insightful introductions from other writers, whose love for the series is obvious, and closed with excerpts from an interview with Maj Sjowall. This book is introduced by Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse series, who admits that he hadn’t read any of the books until he was asked to write the introduction, while the bulk of the postscript is taken up with lists of other books and authors you may like if you liked this one.

The book itself concerns an explosion at a Stockholm apartment building. Present is Gunvald Larsson, a detective from Martin Beck’s team, who is able to rescue many of the building’s tenants. Police had one of the building’s occupants under surveillance and the investigation centres on him. Did he inadvertently blow up the building during a suicide attempt or was he murdered by a bomb? And what’s the significance of a note found beside a suicide in another part of town, a note that reads just “Martin Beck”?
Full review: http://www.26books.com/?p=309

Very good story. ( )