The Laughing Policeman: A Martin Beck Police Mystery (4)

George Santayana On a rainy Stockholm night a gunman opens fire on Stockholm bus, killing eight passengers and critically wounding a ninth. The crime scene is bloody and chaotic. Critical clues may have been destroyed when the first police officers arrive on the scene and trample through the bus. Police Superintendent Martin Beck is placed in charge of the investigation. There appear to be no clues and no apparent motive. His task is the monumental one of taking this chaotic scene and imposing enough order on it so that clues may be found, leads followed, and the criminal or criminals brought to justice. The physical and mental burdens of the job are compounded by emotional burdens once Beck discovers that one of the victims happens to be a detective who worked in Martin Beck's unit. That is the plot that unfolds in the opening pages of Per Wahloo and Maj Sowall's remarkably well-crafted "The Laughing Policeman". The Laughing Policeman, published in Sweden in 1968 and in the U.S. in 1971 (winner of that year's Edgar Award for Best Novel), was the fourth in a series of ten Martin Beck mysteries written by the Swedish, husband and wife team of Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall. The plot and structure of the four Beck mysteries I've read to date do not deviate from the standard format found in any well-written police procedural. However, what sets the Beck mysteries apart is their location and character development. Naturally enough, each book is a small window into Swedish life and culture in the 1960s and 1970s when the books were written. Further, as the series develops the character of Beck and his colleagues evolve and the reader slowly obtains a real feel for Beck and his fellow police officers. By the fourth book, the personalities of Martin Beck and his police colleagues have developed to the point where the reader almost has an instinct for how each will react to a given situation. At the same time the characters, especially Beck, remain far from predictable. However, they are already fully formed in the authors' minds and for that reason I suggest reading these books in order. I do not think it appropriate to divulge any details about a police procedural such as this so I will leave it to the reader to see how Martin Beck and his crew slowly put together the pieces of the puzzle behind the killings. The authors are quite good at keeping the pot boiling. They don't reveal too much too early and they do not rely on Sherlock Holmes-like deductions to take the place of crafting a story. Additionally, the writing is filled with funny moments and asides. In its own way the Beck mysteries provide a very interesting glimpse into Swedish life and culture in the 1960s and 1970s. In the hands of Wahloo and Sjowall, Beck's conversations are filled with both blunt exchanges and very sly, sardonic comments that kept me chucking throughout. I was also impressed with how the authors have slowly continued to build up their protagonists back stori

The Laughing Policeman is the best known book of the multi-volume Martin Beck series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Despite the title there is little laughing in this grim and gloomy yet classic police procedural. The book is marked by the sparse dialogue and buttoned-down personalities of the Swedish characters. (The book was later made into a movie of the same name starring Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern, but set in San Francisco!) The entire detective force of Sweden is assigned to solve the murder of 9 people on a Stockholm bus in 1968 (an anti-war - Vietnam that is - demonstration is the backdrop for the book's opening). One of the murdered is Ake Stenstrom, a Stockholm detective. His presence on the bus begins to unravel the mystery of this seemingly random and insane mass murder. Insane it may be, but never random. Each detective obsessively follows their own path and the paths lead into Stockholm's underworld. Could an old unsolved murder somehow be related to this insane bloodshed many years later? Mass murder so un-Swedish after all - the police don't even have any psychological profiles they can use. Can the always miserable Beck or his top-notch partner Lennart Kollberg crack the case? Highly recommended for fans of detective stories with an international bent.

The Laughing Policeman will satisfy anyone searching for a classic crime novel with a truly original and engaging storyline, but the most satisfaction comes in its subtle social commentary. Ace detective Ake Stenstrom has been murdered in the deadliest case of mass murder in Stockholm (the detectives on the case have only heard of such atrocities happening on the violent soil of America). But the husband-wife co-authors present more than an intriguing knot of clues to demand the reader?s intellect?they present characters as complex and worthy of unraveling as the murder case itself. Chief Inspector Martin Beck, former boss and close friend to the victim, is the foremost example. He not only leads us to the solution of the mystery with intelligence and compassion, but through Beck and the other detectives, we begin to see the condition of man, as well as the sacrifices made to improve society. Perhaps Detective Beck articulates this condition of the policeman: the dehumanizing effect of seeing the most brutal, violent and loathsome aspects of society. But despite the police officer?s submersion in this victimized, grotesque reality, the Stockholm Homicide Squad is able to maintain (not without sacrifice) the ideals of justice. Even the brutish Gunvald Larsson expresses his sympathy for the victimized lower class?including victims and petty lawbreakers alike: ?I feel sorry for nearly everyone we meet in this job. They?re just a lot of scum who wish they?d never been born. It?s not their fault that everything goes to hell and they don?t understand why.? From page one till the final climax, The Laughing Policeman provides the customary suspense and entertainment of a detective novel, as well as lucid glimpses of the complex relationship between Man and Law.

What is it that attracts readers to a volume by an unknown author who has had no publicity, only to discover some exquisite reading? My little library branch displayed among its new arrivals "Somewhere In France" by Gardiner. What led me to check it out I don't know. But I was glad I did.In 1990 I was waiting to be checked out at a bookstore when my eye fell on Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander," displayed alongside his "Post Captain" on a shelf below the counter. I'm not a big fan of sea stories. Had never heard of O'Brian (and wouldn't hear a peep about him out of the reviewers for a year). But I bought the book for reasons I'll never fathom. Next day I returned in a great fever to get "Post Captain." Like a literary Johnny Appleseed, I have been turning friends on to O'Brian ever since.In the early seventies I had never heard of the Swedish husband/wife writing team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo -- names that should have put me off. But some cosmic force compelled me to open their "Roseanna" and I was hooked. Still am.For years, while re-reading their exquisite novels, I pondered what it is about them that is so satisfying to me. Their contempt for many police officers is one attraction. There are pilots who should never leave the ground, doctors who should never touch a patient, and so on. So it is not surprising there are police officers who belong in another line of work.These novels describe fine detective work AND contemptible police work in delightful detail. It is often subtly hilarious if you are paying attention. In one of the stories a body was found in an enclosed snow-covered yard. A fine opportunity to examine clues, us armchair detectives note. Unfortunately, the two beat-cops who found the body idly strolled over every inch of the yard while waiting for the detectives to get to the scene.There are reporters (probably a majority) who should be reading the news instead of trying to write it. Woven into these stories are scenes that describe the incompetence of members of the press - high-up detectives have a lot of intercourse with the press.An example is offered in a press conference early in "The Laughing Policeman." A Stockholm bus is found with the driver and passengers dead. Among the passengers was a detective. One of Martin Beck's Homicide Division officers volunteered for the unpleasant task of conducting a press conference. The crime has only just occurred and little is yet known about it. Some of the questions are illustrative the Sjowall's and Wahloo's view of the press. (Sjowall was himself a reporter.) Some of the answers reveal the detectives' compulsion to play with their questioners. A few examples from a long conference:Q: How many persons were in the bus?A: Eight.Q: Were they all dead?A: Yes.Q: Was their death caused by external violence?A: Probably.Q: Were there signs of shooting?A: Yes.Q: So all these people had been shot dead?A: Probably.Q: Are there any traces or clues that point to one particular person?A

I read a LOT of mysteries, but I usually either donate them to the library book sale afterwards, or wait to take them out of the library in the first place. The Martin Beck series is one of the few that I've bought, kept for years, and reread numerous times. This novel is probably the best of the bunch: not only is it well plotted and suspenseful, but the characters are people you grow to care about, and their environment (Stockholm in the '60's) is vividly depicted. The authors' political agenda is clear, but they're not simplistic: the police bureaucrats may be idiots, but there are still competent, conscientious policemen with a sense of responsibility and the desire to see justice done; and the authors are no kinder to the misguided social reformers whose starry-eyed zeal led to the excesses of the welfare state. Setting the central events of the novel at Christmas is a nice ironic touch. I highly recommend the whole series, but especially this one. (The film made from the book is a bomb, however: transplanting the story to San Francisco works well at first, and Walter Matthau is convincing as Martin Beck -- but the screenwriters just strung together all the sensational scenes in the novel with no attention to the authors' careful plotting, and the result is a disaster. View it and weep.)