The Man Who Went Up in Smoke is #2 in the series featuring Inspector Martin Beck. It's his vacation time, and his family has taken a cottage on an island off the coast of Sweden. But only a day into vacation time, he's recalled to work for an important case. It seems that the foreign office is concerned about a missing journalist, Alf Matsson, who was last seen in Budapest. While Beck's not clear as to why the foreign office should be so concerned, he takes on the case, starting in Matsson's last-known location. But other than where he was last seen, he really has no clue as to how he's going to find the missing man. He has to solve the case on the fly -- but his questions attract the attention of the police and people who knew Matsson, and he can't decide which group to trust.

To be honest, I liked the previous book (Roseanna) better, but this one was also good, not so much for the mystery, but because of the character of Martin Beck. At times he seems like a bit of a bumbler, but he's very smart, catching criminals off guard with his innate cleverness. There are a few humorous moments as well, and the scenes with his wife are really enjoyable. I can definitely recommend this book to anyone who is considering continuing in the series, or to anyone who enjoys a good mystery which is a cut above the normal stuff out there on the shelves. The Scandinavians can definitely write -- they are fast becoming my favorite group of mystery writers.

Overall -- enough of a good read to make me want to continue the series. ( )

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. ( )

Much Better.

Partly I think the change of translator has helped, but also the prose has improved as well. There is still little sign of the notable social commentry, or the wider focus on larger police deptments.

Beck gets called away from the start of his holiday to hunt for a missing person. A journalist by the name of Mattsson hasn't been heard from for a couple of weeks. He was last seen in Budapest in Hungary. Beck flies out and spends a week exploring and attempting to talk to people. He finds out something about Matteson's character and the local constabulary before returning home.

The descriptions are better, the plot moves faster, Beck's ideosynracies with boats are developed a little more. There seems to be a requirement to invoke graphic sexual scenes into the plot, that these days wouldn't be so comnon in an otherwise dryish crime story. The typical family breakdown is notable again - although at the time it wasn't typical.

Much better than the last but still hardly inspirational. It's short which is an added bonus I suppose, and I can guarentee you won't spot the plot twist until it happens at the end. ( )

The character study of Martin Beck - he’s always “Martin Beck”, never “Martin” or “Beck” deepens further in this book. He has to leave a family holiday to take the case but he seems more alive on his solitary trip than he did at any point in the last book. Perhaps his family, rather than his job, is the source of his strain? It will be interesting to watch him develop in subsequent novels.

It’s a low-key book that works as a part of a larger narrative but would be slightly disappointing as a stand-alone title. The biggest disappointment is the translation. There is some very sloppy grammar in places, which makes me think that some of the other weaknesses in the writing (people are continually saying things “solemnly”, for example) are the fault of the translator rather than the authors.
Full review: http://www.26books.com/?p=223

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