Per Wahlöö (1926–1975)

I first read this book about four years ago but didn't recall a single thing about it. After gulping it down in two days' worth of bus reading, I have to ask myself how that was possible. The murder that opens this book is gruesome, described in chilling detail that had me covering my mouth in horror. The character of the murder is somewhat fitting, though, given that the murder victim was referred to as an Abominable Man himself -- the very worst sort of brutal, heavy-handed policeman. show more Still, it's a nasty way to go, and since the victim is a policeman, Sweden's finest are all over the case.

The investigation is very methodical, but it's not all dull: the last third or so had me leaving little scorch marks on the paper from turning the pages so fast. It was very cinematic -- indeed, one character is accused of getting all his police knowledge from the movies. The book also ends at a good spot, tying up the loose ends but you know life goes on for the characters even after you've closed the book. Very satisfying from an artistic standpoint.

This may also be the funniest Martin Beck novel I've read yet or at least recall. There's plenty of dark humour in the last few chapters, and the narration is very wry, with kudos to Thomas Teal for his translation work. (Maybe the edition I read the first time was a different translator?) There are a few social commentary digressions that could slip into soapbox territory, but the narration manages to poke fun at itself by having one of the characters think these digressions, then he comes sharply back to reality and says, "Why am I thinking about such an odd thing at a time like this?"

I would definitely recommend this book to people who already like Martin Beck, or fans of Wallander. show less

Sooner or later, anyone who loves reading crime fiction will run across the names of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Their books have been recommended to me countless times, and I finally decided that I'd pull Roseanna off the shelf and read it. I wanted to know why the ten Martin Beck mysteries they wrote between 1965 and 1975 are considered to be among the finest ever written in any language. Now I do.

The detailed accounting they give of Beck's work is low on word count and high on facts. show more There is not one wasted word to be found, and as I read, I smiled. I could hear a little Jack Webb voice muttering "Just the facts, ma'am" in my head. All the police work that's done is shared with the reader-- and it's brilliant. Originally published in 1965, all the work done during the course of the investigation is pre-computer, before all the electronic gizmos that we depend on today. By seeing all the work being done, by watching the facts and evidence begin to pile up, by listening to the detectives talk amongst themselves sharing thoughts and ideas, the reader can really get a feel for how the case proceeds.

Time is one of the most important characters in Roseanna. Seasons change. The reader is told how many days it takes for translations to be done and for evidence to be gathered from tourists who have returned to their homes around the world. We see how a stakeout is planned and carried out. The time involved is always logged. There's a stopwatch ticking away, and we are never allowed to forget it.

While the investigation is being carried out, we also learn about the melancholic Inspector Beck with the iffy stomach, who obsesses about finding the killer of this young free spirit, and who can't stop mourning the fact that he and his wife have grown apart over the years. Arguments with the spouse? Chronically upset stomach? Dismal days of rain? Everything that's disagreeable just gets plowed under as Beck focuses on his case load... and on a young woman he simply cannot forget.

I now see why Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are considered by many to be the masters of crime fiction. Roseanna is a brilliant and hypnotic piece of work that refuses to turn loose of a reader's mind. From the very beginning, the momentum slowly gathers like snowfall in the mountains until Martin Beck recognizes the killer... and the avalanche begins. show less

According to Henning Mankell’s introduction, ‘Roseanna‘, the first of ten Martin Beck books, re-wrote the rules for Swedish crime novels by making the plot more realistic and the policemen more human, paving the way for the emergence of Nordic Noir.

I think the realism part worked better than the making the policemen more human part. The novel offered a realism that might have crossed the threshold into mind-numbingly dull had it not been for how much fun it was to see how times have show more changed since 1965. Everyone smokes all the time. When Becks wants to know where Lincon Nebraska is, he has to visit a reference library and consult and atlas. When he gets a call from the US, he's given a thiry minute warning before the connection is made. The only female police officer is seconded in to act as bait. For some reason, the authors seem to have decided that the best way to make Beck more human was to have him feel sick most the time. Even drinking coffee can knock him off his game. He is almost phobic about using the train, is unable to communicate with his wife and seems unable to sleep through the night. He also has no ability to talk to his colleagues about anything. If making Beck seem like he needs counselling made him more human then this was a comlete success.

The adoption of realism means that for long periods of time, nothing much happens and when it does happen it takes forever to cross check and verify. I chafed at the pace at first Then, I realised that the book set out to show that a key virtue for a policeman was patience. In doing so, it requited the same virtue of the reader.

I enjoyed the painstaking effort Beck and his team put in over many months to gather evidence of a murder for which there were no witnesses and for which they had no viable suspects. I liked the use of transcripts of interviews conducted in Americ and the examination of holiday snaps for clues. I suspect both were innovative at the time.

I slow and realistic relating of events reminded me of the Maigret stories, except without Maigret's gnomic mutterings and inexplicable insights. Beck does do insight, he does facts.

I liked the unfiltered picture that Beck built up of Roseanna as a young woman who mostly enjoyed her own company, needed solitude but liked to have sex with an attractive man from time to time as long as he didn't get too clingy. Beck seems to make no judgement on her character or her lifestyle. For him, it seems all to be data to be ground through his analytical mind. I wonder how Roseanna was viewed by readers in 1965.

In the last fifteen per cent of the book, the pace changed. The tension rose. The action happened quickly, offering the possibility of a disastrous and violent ending. This was well done and gave the book an exciting finish, but I was a little disappointed that the denouement didn’t maintain the slow but inexorable pace of the pursuit of justice that made the book so distinctive. show less

The Terrorists is one of the better pieces of plotting you're likely to find in detective fiction. The book opens with a courtroom scene, a young woman accused of robbing a bank at knife point. Martin Beck has been called to testify for the defense. In a scene designed to make Sweden's justice system cringe, the defense is able to prove that a woman who walked out of a bank with a canvas bag full of bills that were not hers was completely innocent of any wrong doing. At first, while I show more enjoyed the scene, I felt it a bit unfair and a bit artificial, inserting an apparently superfluous subplot just to make the justice system look bad. Were Sjowall and Wahloo extending their critique of Sweden's police force to the judicial system just to get in a few bonus before the series ended? As soon as the girl left the courtroom a free woman, the plot shifted into the story of an American senator, visiting Sweden and the terrorists who have threatened to kill him. I should have trusted Sjowall and Wahloo more. There never was any chance that they would let the reader down in this the final Martin Beck book. The girl comes back in a shocking way that I really should have expected all along. That's the best possible ending for a story like "The Story of a Crime," a shocking finish that should have been expected.

This is not to say that the authors don't allow themselves a little bit of self-indulgence in The Terrorists. After nine books, I think they're entitled. Chapter 16 opens with an assessment of what makes Martin Beck such a good detective. It's easy to imagine that the authors were responding to critics and fans of their books alike in this couple of pages spent reviewing their detective's career. They admit that some argue he has very few cases and that they are easy to solve. But they also lay out a their case for why he is a good detective, and I imagine by extenstion a good case for what makes a good detective in general. He has a "systematic mind, common sense and conscientiousness," "his good memory; his obstinancy, which was occasionally mulelike; and his capacity for logical thought. Another was that he found time for everything that had anything to do with a case, even if this meant following up small details that later turned out to be of no significanse. Occasionally these minute considerations led to important clues."

This description of what makes Beck a good detective could easly be a description of what makes Sjowall and Wahloo's detective stories so good. Consider it advice for the would be writer of police procedurals. You won't find anyone escaping from a moving freight car via a hole in the floor, or an intricately planned revenge plot involving bondage and tatoos in anything by Sjowall and Wahloo. What you will find is attention to detail, logical thought, conscientiousne, stories and people much closer to Simenon's Maigret than to the Hollywood plotlines so typical in today's crime fiction-- crime fiction Sjowall and Wahloo helped make possible.

You'll also find a wicked sense of humor. The kind of humor that manages to end a ten volume critique of Sweden's socialist government with the phrase "X as in Marx." I think that's pretty good. show less