The Laughing Policeman

Setting the tone for some of the later Martin Beck novels, the opening of this book sees the Swedish police force distracted from its normal tasks by the much more entertaining pastime of beating up peaceful anti-Vietnam demonstrators outside the US embassy. But then Beck and his team are called in to investigate Sweden's first mass shooting incident: nine people have been shot on a Stockholm bus, one of them a detective from Beck's own squad. The absence of the shooter seems to rule out an American-style episode of random killing, whilst political terrorism doesn't figure either as a serious possibility (probably the most obvious thing that dates the book!), so the police are faced with a painstaking investigation into all the show more passengers and why they were there. It's maybe a bit of a detective story cliché that the mystery turns out to revolve around an old, unsolved case, but it's a typical Sjöwall & Wahlöö touch that there's a clue to this back-story that the investigators have missed the first time around by sheer bad luck... show less

It really is amazing that such enlightened countries as those comprising Scandinavia produce so many excellent crime and mystery writers. The husband and wife team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo can be added to the list that includes Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and others. In fact, Sjowall and Wahloo could be said to head the list since many modern writers credit them with inventing Nordic noir.

Late on a rainy and cold November night in Stockholm a man walking his dog discovers a horrific scene. A double decker bus has gone off the road and crashed through a fence. Everyone inside is dead but not from the crash; they were all murdered with a machine gun. One of the people on the bus is a police detective. Detective Ake Stenstrom had show more pulled his gun but had not had a chance to use it. The police pull out all the stops to find the killer but the investigation languishes. No-one, not Stenstrom's superior, not his girlfriend, not his co-workers know what Stenstrom was doing on the bus. If they could just find that out they might be closer to finding the killer.

This book was written in 1968 (and it won the Edgar in 1971) but it really doesn't seem dated if you ignore the fact that no-one uses mobile telephones and nothing is on computer. Instead there are detectives who ferret out information by interviewing people and following clues and using their memory about previous crimes. Great stuff. show less

Best yet. 4th book so the series and the authors are beginning to really hit their stride.

In the days of Vietnam war protests the police have their hands full with civil issues. When someone guns down a busload (nine) passengers the homicide team led by Martin Beck once again have their hands full to try and trace the culprit when there are few clues to be found. It's all made more complicated when it is discovered that one of the dead is a policeman from the homicide squad.

The writing is much better. There is a distinct build up of tension in the early sections and the character development proceeds through the book. Particularly noteworthy is the contrast between Beck's family and his colleagues'. There is also plenty of commentary on show more how the police are viewed by the citizens and what actions they can take to change this - something that still rings true 40 years later.

Like all of the series so far the plot itself is very slow moving. Much of the police work is hampered by the lck of modern high speed communications we take for granted, but even so cases proceed slowly over weeks and months with the coppers involved not seeming to do anything in-between. A chance thought sparks a new line of inquiry and eventually Martin beck laughs. show less

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 show more 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. show less

This was only the second of the Edgar Best Novel winners so far that I knew for certain I had read before. But, I decided it would be worthwhile to reread it, and how right I was. Martin Beck, the protagonist of this series, is the spiritual ancestor of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander. He pretty much bears out any stereotype you may have about gloomy Swedes. But he's a heck of a policeman.
One thing I don't recall noticing when I first read this book back in the 1970s was how it is set in a definite time -- 1967, with protest demonstrations worldwide about America's involvement in Vietnam. The book opens with such a demonstration in Stockholm, with most police detailed to keep order. Shortly, however, Beck is called to a crime scene -- show more someone has shot all the passengers and the driver of a city bus. And one of the victims is one of his own homicide detectives.
The solution of the case leads to the solution of a "cold case" from the early 50s, and owes more to good, solid, routine police investigation than to any stunning intuitions on the part of Beck or his colleagues. (As is my wont, I had forgotten "whodunnit" long ago so that I enjoyed not only the writing, but the mystery.) I very seldom reread mysteries, but the Sjowall and Wahloo series is well worth a reread, or a first read if you haven't encountered them yet. show less

I can’t really explain the circumstances that led me to read a Swedish police procedural published in 1970, but I’m glad I discovered this gem of a book. It is written in a straightforward style with spare, precise language that propels the story along. The mystery begins with the discovery of a bus on which all of the passengers have been brutally shot. One of the passengers is a police detective who didn’t belong on the bus in the first place. A team of detectives take on the case, and despite the absence of leads, eventually work out the convoluted solution. The resolution may seem like a bit of a stretch, but it’s the getting there that provides all of the enjoyment. I had some difficulty following the plot with all of the show more unfamiliar Swedish names and the roundabout way the case was solved, which only means that this may be worth rereading someday. show less

The Laughing Policeman is the fourth in the Martin Beck series, and so far it is my favorite from this writing duo.

While the police in Stockholm are busy at the American Embassy where a protest against the Vietnam War has turned very ugly, patrolmen Kvant and Kristiansson, the Keystone Cop-ish police officers who just so happened to have inadvertently solved the case in The Man on the Balcony, are just biding their time until their shift is over. Crossing from the municipality of Solna into Stockholm, they're flagged down by a man walking a dog who reports an accident. The two drive on over and discover a doubledecker bus with lights on and doors open off the road. Inside the bus are several dead bodies, all gunned down in their seats, show more and the scene looks like a massacre. The homicide squad headed by Martin Beck arrives and discovers that one of their own is dead on the bus -- a young police inspector named Ake Stenstrom. There are very little clues on the scene, thanks to Kvant and Kristiansson, and as far as motive, until Beck and his men can go through the list of victims, it is not readily apparent. To bring the gunman to justice and close the case Beck and his team will have to put in long hours and examine the lives of all of the dead. To discover why this happened, the most important fact they need to discern is the identity of the intended target, not a simple task in the least.

Sjöwall and Perlöö's plotting and storyline are not the only reasons this book and the series work so well. The authors also continue to develop their characters' personalities so that the people in the Stockholm homicide squad become more and more familiar to the reader as time progresses. Those two factors, along with their ability to evoke what they consider the social ills and the events of the time period make these short novels so compelling. In the space of only 211 pages the authors manage to set up the plot, detail the often-frustrating investigation, catch up on what's going on with Beck, Kollberg and the other main players, and wrap things up in a more than satisfying conclusion. They keep the superfluous prose away, giving the reader only what's needed to keep the story going. There are no torrid love affairs, no in-depth soul searching or major subplots to sidetrack the reader -- Sjöwall and Perlöö are probably among the best crime writers in terms of their focus on the crime at hand, while still managing to continue the growth of their beloved characters. The time frame is well established through their use of current events like the Vietnam War protests and American serial killers of the time (especially Charles Whitman and the U of Texas shootings). They also have this ability to make the reader laugh in the midst of terrible crimes; here they go on about psychologists and profiling of serial killers in a discussion that was priceless.

I'd definitely recommend this book and the entire series to anyone who wants to read something intelligent in the realm of crime fiction, and to readers of Scandinavian crime fiction in particular. You can't read just the current popular authors and feel like you have experienced the best that the Nordic countries have to offer -- this series is a no miss, for sure. show less