The Fire Engine That Disappeared

The fifth in the Martin Beck series sees the Chief Inspector take much more of a back-seat role as the latest investigation unfolds. Gunvald Larsson decides to check on a surveillance mission he's in charge of and offers temporary relief to the young policeman on watch. So not even supposed to be there, it's just his luck that the house converted into apartments suddenly explodes. Larsson manages to save several people from the property that is readily becoming engulfed in flame but there are three that don't manage to escape the inferno. One of which is the petty criminal that was the object of the surveillance in the first place. Initial investigations suggest a suicide by this very man much to Larsson's consternation who, after a show more short spell in hospital due to concussion, decides to take matters into his own hands and pursue enquiries on his own.

This instalment focuses more on the team around Martin Beck and offers glimpses into their personal lives and motivations as well as the social commentary of Sweden at the time these books are set (late sixties/early seventies) that this series has become known for. Again it is the painstaking work of the detectives involved that help to progress the investigation, following all of the clues even if they're heading nowhere. There is no quick fix or momentary flashes of brilliance that help solve the case. Instead it's the knocking on doors, finding the right people, asking the right question and sifting through the clues that will get them to the right outcome. If you want your crime fix to be thrill a minute then you should look elsewhere but if you like a well plotted police procedural then you could do a lot worse than picking up this series. show less

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are not only the grandparents of the Scandinavian crime novel, but there 10-volume series of novels (known in English, somewhat misleadingly as the “Martin Beck” series) pretty much (with some influence from Ed McBains 87th Precinct series) defined the shape of contemporary police procedurals.

What the series basically does is to combine social realism with the mystery novel – it takes an unflinching look at Swedish society from the early sixties to the early seventies, a look that becomes increasingly tinged with bitterness as a supposedly welfare state lets go more and more of its promise to build a better future for everyone, and instead continues to privilege the rich and powerful. Which would be show more very depressing stuff, if it wasn’t made readable, enjoyable even (to some degree at least) by the mystery plot that keeps readers turning the pages even as they are confronted with a sheer endless parade of human misery and mean-spiritedness. Formally considered, this is very 19th century, as Sjöwall / Wahlöö use mystery in very much the same way as Dickens or Zola used melodrama, and I would not be at all surprised if that was a tradition they intentionally decided to place themselves in.

The Fire Engine that Disappeared is the fifth volume in the series, and it continues its general trend to become increasingly focused on the character’s private lives and on giving a picture of Swedish society at the time. There is more space given to the character’s concerns outside of their police job than before, and the narrative is even more de-centralized, Martin Beck becoming almost a minor figure as the novel follows his colleagues Larsson and Kollberg as well as Mansson from Malmö and newcomer Skane. That emphasizes one of the distinguishing features of this series, the utter ordinariness of its protagonists which are not only not outstandingly good-looking or intelligent, but frequently not even particularly good policemen, but just civil servants that do their job without any particular enthusiasm and who get results not so much by brilliant deduction than by luck or sheer dogged persistence.

The latter is particularly ironic if one considers how many of the cases could just as well have occurred in a classical mystery novel. While the puzzle element is not as strong here as in the previous novel, the investigators find themselves confronted by the corpse of someone who apparently committed suicide as well as being murdered. The Fire Engine that Disappeared takes its time in solving the crime, both in that the investigations span several months and in that the novel is not what anyone would call a page-turner. It’s not slow either, however, but moves along at a steady, comfortable speed, giving readers the chance to take in the scenery along that way, as bleak as that proves to be. And it’s precisely this view of the scenery that will likely linger longest with the reader, Sjöwall/Wahlöö’s hard and uncompromising perspective on a welfare state coming apart (a perspective which I’m convinced they developed not in spite of but because of their Marxist views – something I might return to in a post on a later volume) will remain in most readers’ memory even when the details of the crime plot have faded. show less

While reading this, I was noting down that it was a well captured snapshot of workplace camaraderie and boredom. But then that ending! This is the best one so far.

The crime itself isn't particularly mysterious and the ending sort of whiffs out a bit. But it keeps your interest enough and as others have said it's mainly about the characters, which are well written and believable.

The book is full of a sort of understated and sometimes grim humour which makes it pretty enjoyable to read. The characters feel very real and a lot is made of their daily routine, their home life, what they like to eat and drink, their frustrations with police work... it gives it an edge over much of the "gritty" stuff that usually turns me off because it's super unrealistic and macho. Also I feel justified in thinking some of the characters are utter pricks and bad and I feel the author agrees with me on that. I dunno, show more it's just a refreshing change of style. There's a few crappy moments here and there but nothing too awful.

Also it's really interesting reading a book where the Greek junta is talked about as present but without it being a plot point. A lot of late 60s politics appears as background in these books and it interests me show less

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 show more 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 Day 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. show less

'The fire engine that disappeared' is the first of the Martin Beck series that I've read, though it's the fifth in the series. I've been meaning to try one for a while, and I'm not disappointed.

Though a book recognisably 'of its time', it's none the worse for it and I can understand why Henning Mankell was influenced by these authors. The style is concise and direct, has dry humour, and an almost perverse delight in detail and character foibles. Best of all is the way that the crucial conclusions come from gradually discerning a pattern where none seemed to exist before, rather than fiendish sleuthing or the obvious. Very enjoyable.

This fifth novel in the series continues the gradual process of building up a bleak, composite view of the failures of 60s/70s Swedish society whilst deglamourising police work, and at the same time pokes a little fun at one of the favourite tricks of technically sophisticated detective fiction, the death that looks as though it could equally well have been murder, suicide or accident. Sjöwall and Wahlöö take it a step further by providing us with deaths that seem to fall into more than one of these categories at once. And a title that looks like a complete red herring but might not be...