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. ( )

Better yet again.

We are now begining to get some of the social commentary and personal dynamics with the police force. Set within the summer of love the hippies in Stockholm are reduced to selling pictures of themselves to buy a fix. Meanwhile a mugger is taking easier cash in the parks. Martin Beck takes the opportunity to visit a friend - to his wife at least it's in the line of duty - until a girls body is found in the park. Th epolice turn out in full numbers to try and catch him before he strikes again.

We now have more independant action from the various members of Beck's team, Including some actual disgruntled thoughts from them, and Beck on the turns society is taking.
However all this detracts from the plot which slowly winds it way to nowhere as once again clues fail to turn up. Pure chance saves the day in a manner that is annoying to the reader - although probably a much closer reflection of reality than any modern day crime novel would allow.

There is a bit of a dela made about the new computersied records - in those days it must have been the era of punch card records?! a far cry from today's instant analysis' but if the suspect isn't in the database no amount of fancy technology will help.

Readable apart form the annoying resolution - particularly worthwhile commentry on society in some areas.

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Sjowall and Wahloo fashion a classic thriller plot: a mugger who has evaded the police for weeks is a likely witness to one of the killings, as is a three-year-old boy. The mugger can’t be found and the boy can’t make himself understood. But just when you think you know what kind of book this is going to be, the authors sweep away the set-up and bring us back into familiar territory.
Full review: http://www.26books.com/?p=252

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/... ( )

Typical Martin Beck novel. Good crime novel set in late 60's sweden. Read the whole series and watch characters develop ( )