The Laughing Policeman

One of the things I dig most about the "Martin Beck" mysteries is that they are only named "Martin Beck" mysteries out of convenience. He's the highest ranking policeman in Sjowall and Wahloo's Stockholm Homicide Division, and a couple of the early books tended to focus on him, but as the series goes on the books can be <i>about</i> any of the men who work with Beck.<br /><br /><a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/927672.The_Laughing_Policeman__Martin_Beck___4_" title="The Laughing Policeman (Martin Beck, #4) by Maj Sjöwall" rel="noopener">The Laughing Policeman</a> revolves around two of the detectives: Lennart Kollberg and Åke Stenström. In fact, the central mystery of the book is the shooting of Stenström and seven others on a double decker bus on the edge of Stockholm and Solna. No one has any idea what Stenström is doing on the bus, and the hunt for a mass murderer in 1968 Sweden is all a bit surreal to the detectives who expect that kind of thing in Vietnam war torn USA, but not late-sixties Sweden.<br /><br />The investigation (refreshingly bereft of the "cop killer" chest beating we've come to expect from our police procedurals) digs deep into the life of Stenström, trying to figure out what he is doing and why he is on that bus. We meet his girlfriend and future cop Åsa Torell, we discover their sexual proclivities, Stenström's love of guns, and his lofty ambitions.<br /><br />It is Kollberg who does most of the work on this front, befriending Åsa Torell after Stenström's death and going so far as to invite her to stay with him, his wife, Gun, and their baby (only one at this point) for a while. We discover much more about Kollberg's Socialist politics, his disdain for guns, his and Gun's sexual proclivities, and that he is a damn good detective. No wonder he and Beck get along so well.<br /><br />The Kollberg and Stenström stuff is exactly the kind of stuff I love. Getting to know characters in the midst of whatever it is they are <i>supposed</i> to be doing. But what Kollberg is supposed to be doing, along with Beck and Melander, Larsson and Rönn, is finding a mass murderer. And that part of the story is as satisfying as it can possibly be. If you love mystery novels, and if you're even mildly interested in Swedish crime fiction, you will love this book. I did.

Just reread this for work, but it's reminded me that I meant to go after the others in the series and work my way through them. I really do have to, because they're brilliant, and decades ahead of their time. Sorry the US, but your classic hardboiled fiction really does pale into insignificance next to Nordic Noir. Give me Sjöwall and Wahlöö every time.

There aren’t a lot of laughs in The Laughing Policeman, which is the best known and most acclaimed of the Martin Beck detective series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, set in Stockholm. Published in 1968 in Sweden, it was translated into English in 1971, when it won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery. Part of the reason for its being the best known in the ten book series is that it was the first book (loosely) adapted into an American film, featuring Walter Matthau. The rep of the book far exceeds the American “adaptation” of it, I’m sure. <br /><br />A double-decker bus crashes on a rainy night in Stockholm, with eight people aboard shot to death, and one left clinging to life. One that was killed was a detective, Åke Stenström. The book is otherwise not sensational; it’s a straight-up police procedural with a team approach. Calling it the Martin Beck series is almost a misnomer, as the team solves the (mass) murder, including clearly defined and interesting characters: Lennart Kollberg, Gunvald Larsson, Einar Rönn, Benny Skacke, Fredrik Melander.<br /><br />Some things are a little funny along the way--early on, two cops who trampled through the scene of the crime are screamed at for being idiots, for example; some of the cops are a bit bumbling or quirky--but it is just ordinary cops doing police work. Beck would almost never seem to smile; he’s not happily married. He’s not happily anything. These books serve as the model for much “nordic noir,” chiefly (for me) the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell. Social critiques through the lens of the police procedural. Ordinary guys doing a job well and not Poirot-brilliant. They make mistakes in their personal and professional lives. Flawed. I found this from one interview with Sjöwall:<br /><br />“There is no one hero. The policemen irritate one another in the same way that anyone who has ever worked in an office will recognise. Mannerisms grate. Tempers flare. Yet they spend more time with one another than they do with their wives – those who can hold down a marriage, that is.”<br /><br />There's a bad intro by Jonathan Franzen who thinks this books is funny?! Not a bit of it.<br /><br />What do we learn? That the victim Åke Stenström was sort of privately investigating a cold case involving sex and pornography. The woman is sort of self-identifed as a “nymphomaniac,” which is probably no longer a real category, disrespectful of women, of course, as men have gone on talk shows as “sex addicts.” I suppose the sex angle might be seen in 1971 (Swedish girls! Sexual freedom! Free love! I Am Curious Yellow!--a 1967 sexual revolution-oriented Swedish film), as really racy, but this angle is not as sensational in 2022 as it was in 1971, probably.<br /><br />The best reason to read this book is that this is just a terrifically written detective story, a model for others to follow.<br /><br />Kohlberg gets to be the chief social critic, speaking from a socialist point of view: anti-guns, anti-drugs, anti-inequities, anti-materialism. He sees America (in 1968) as a violent country, capitalist, creating more social problems than it solves. The culprit here is rich, entitled, selfish, Kohlberg notes, vs. the vast number of crimes committed by the poor that they see and can better understand.<br /><br />A song that partly inspired the title, “The Laughing Policeman,” by Charles Jolly/Penrose:<br /><br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI1nPd7hezM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI1nP...</a><br /><br />There’s a 1955 Swedish version of the song, a recording of which Beck’s daughter gives him for Christmas, that Swedish readers would also have been familiar with. The mopey Beck doesn’t find the song or the gift funny, as he is not a generally humorous man. The only time he laughs is in the last sentence of the story, when his colleague Stenström is vindicated.

After finishing <i>The Man on the Balcony</i>, I decided to go back for more of Martin Beck and his colleagues, and I'm so happy I did. <i>The Laughing Policeman</i> is the fourth in the Martin Beck series, and so far it is my favorite from this writing duo.<br /><br />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 <i>The Man on the Balcony</i>, 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, 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.

<br />The fourth book featuring Stockholm Police Commissioner Martin Beck is probably the best known, due to a movie adaptation with Walther Matthau in the main role. I can understand its popularity, as it is my favorite so far in this ongoing police procedural series.<br />It is important to accentuate the procedural nature of the story, in order to give a warning to readers who expect all crime stories to have a super smart detective who solves cases by smoking a pipe ot twirling a moustache while the author goes to great lengths to hide the true culprit. Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo write about the real thing, where results refuse to come, frustrating weeks are spent chasing fruitless interviews and poring over mountains of archive records. I find it impressive how many modern authors of crime novels, in the foreword of each Martin Beck novel, mention the importance of this 50 years old series, and how it influenced them in their own writing.<br /><br />The plot is a dark one. On a late autumn evening, a double decker bus is the scene of a mass murder, all passengers victims of a machine gun attack. Nobody has seen or heard anything. One of the victims is a young officer in Martin Beck's unit. The only avenue of investigation is to gather all the information available about the victims, trying to find a motive for the attack and hope it was not the work of a random madman.<br /><br />Beyond the details of the investigation, the authors did a great job at rendering the tediousness of the work and the dismal atmosphere of the city on the brink of winter.<br /><br /><i> Monday. Snow. Wind. Bitter cold. </i><br />or:<br /><i> The hours dragged past and nothing happened. Day was added to day. The days formed a week, and then another week. Once again it was Monday. </i><br /><br />Martin Beck is the same taciturn, slightly hypochondriac and manic depressive self that I have known in the first three novels. Here is how he describes himself at one point:<br /><br /><i> He looked in the mirror as recently as the evening before and seen a tall, sinister figure, with a lean face, wide forehead, heavy jaws and mournful gray-blue eyes. </i><br /><br />Hard to imagine him as the laughing character from the title. In fact his daughter has one of the most heart rending conversations with him one morning over breakfast:<br /><br /><i> "What are you thinking about, Daddy?" Ingrid asked.<br />"Nothing," he said automatically.<br />"I haven't seen you laugh since last spring" </i><br /><br />Readers will have to wait until the last page of the novel to have him finally laugh, but for me it was well worth the journey.<br /><br /><br />More than the previous novels, The Laughing Policeman stresses the importance of team work, and puts the spotlight on each member of Martin Beck's team - each one with his strengths and limitations, quirks and affectations. Most of the novel has a downbeat tone, which makes even more precious the little flashes of humor in the banter between the investigators. The blackest kind of humor, gallows style, but still it shows the human side of these people who take their job seriously. So seriously that this passage I have extracted as illustration could apply to any of them:<br /><br /><i> It was true, however, that a few months earlier he had lain awake at night going through the investigation into the murder of a taxi driver twelve years before. </i><br /><br />What I love about Wahloo and Sjowall characters is that the job hasn't turned them into bitter cynics. My favorite scene involves not Beck, but his colleague Lennart Kollberg and Asa Torrell - the fiance of one one of the victims, a reminder that they are dealing with human persons and not with cold facts.<br /><br /> I would recommend this novel to all readers who have, at one time or another, been angry at the local cops and joined the "F..k the Police!" angry crowd. Yes, there usually are bad apples in the force, but some of them are heroes and we have them to thank for a tranquil sleep at night and for a continuing faith in justice.

Another super book in the series about the morose, melancholy and mirthless detective Martin Beck - though it is an ensemble piece in reality as his colleagues are heavily involved as well rounded totally believable characters in their own right.<br /><br />Who has machine gunned nine people on a Stockholm bus late one evening? Why is an off duty policeman one of the victims? How is this case linked to an unsolved murder mystery?<br /><br />There are no witnesses save a man in a coma who expires after waking briefly and speaking a few words of gibberish, no real clues and a compromised crime scene, but Beck and his team painstakingly solve the case by following the minutest of clues to a surprising conclusion.<br /><br />An evocative thriller, easy to read and enjoyable in the extreme. We even have a dose of slapsick in the incompetent beat cop duo of Kvant and Kristiansson.<br /><br />This was written in the 60s and in a few places it shows - everyone smokes all of the time and it is less than PC on occasion - but this is certainly a good read.

This book won the Edgar Award for best novel in 1971 and it is easy to see why. It is a mesmerizing tale right from the first sentence, maybe the best in this series that I have read so far. <br /><br />As with the three earlier books, this one is deceptively simple in construction. It is told in laconic "this happened, then this happened" fashion, and it is hard for an amateur such as myself to deconstruct just why it is so good. But if the object of a writer is to entertain and hold the interest of the reader, this book - and this series - succeeds admirably.<br /><br />Once again we have the ever-morose and ever-dyspeptic Swedish policeman Martin Beck, now risen to the rank of superintendent, along with his cohorts in the Stockholm police department, trying to solve an unprecedented crime where clues are few. A city bus has been found abandoned on the streets with everyone on board, including the driver, dead. They have all been shot with a submachine gun.<br /><br />One of those killed, it turns out, was one of Martin Beck's men, the youngest detective in his squad, Ake Stenstrom. There had been no murders in Stockholm recently and all the detectives were working on old cases, but no one knew exactly which one Ake was working on. The question, of course, is whether he was the unfortunate victim of a random mass murder - a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time - or was his re-investigation of the old case somehow tied to his death? Was the murder of all those other people simply window dressing, a red herring to misdirect the police's interest?<br /><br />From this point, the investigation proceeds in classic police procedural fashion. Martin Beck and his compatriots are convinced that their colleague's presence on the bus was no coincidence and that his was the death which the murderer sought. Trying to discover what might have been stirred up by his investigation, they retrace his steps and look again at old clues to a crime that has been long thought to be unsolvable. <br /><br />The reader can be forgiven for wondering whether Sjowall/Wahloo had any affection at all for poor Martin Beck. They certainly don't give him any especially sympathetic characteristics or any redeeming qualities. Except maybe one. We get a hint here of his care and concern for his two children, especially for his teenage daughter with whom he seems to enjoy a certain rapport. Perhaps more will be developed in later books regarding his family relationships in order to give his moroseness and dyspepsia more context. Certainly what we know of his wife indicates that he may have good reason to be morose.<br /><br />As ever, Martin Beck is not the hero or even the main focus of <i>The Laughing Policeman</i>. Indeed there is little reason for any of the policemen in this tale to crack a smile even, but we get to know and understand each member of the squad just a little better through their participation in this investigation. Each of them doggedly plays his part in pursuing the killer even when they can really see no reason for the line of inquiry they are following. In the end, each of them will have contributed a piece of the puzzle. No one is a standout. It is, in every sense of the word, a team effort.<br /><br />One of the reasons that I like this series so much is the sly humor which is so much a part of the narrative. It's hard to give a specific example of this; it is a situation where "you had to be there." But, trust me, there is humor here, as there are clear-eyed observations of Swedish society in the 1960s. Indeed, in many ways, this isn't so much a police procedural as a sociological study.<br /><br />And, yes, finally, Martin Beck does laugh, for the first time that I remember in this series. It comes on the very last page, the last paragraph. It's worth reading that far to see it. <br /><br />

<b>The Story of a Crime Book 4: The One With A Mass Murder, a Cop Killing and Beck Takes a Back Seat</b><br /><br />Simenon aside I don't think there are any other crime writers who have managed to capture so much in so few pages, once more Sjowall &amp; Wahloo have written fantastic piece of genre fiction whilst holding a mirror up to society, it's failings and its strengths. Yes it is from their own particular Marxist viewpoint but they are not dogmatic about it.<br /><br />This case is set in the winter of 1968, Europe is protesting American involvement in Vietnam and authority figures in Stockholm, including the police department of Martin Beck, are finding themselves labelled as the villains of society. Nine people are murdered by a gunman on a bus who then flees the scene of his crime leaving Martin Beck and his homicide department to investigate the death of one of their own team, shot whilst off duty.<br /><br />The authors seem to be using the weather to set the tone for their novels so far and what is remarkable is that each of them have been unique in approach to storytelling whilst consistently adding something to the body of work as a whole. The meandering daze of The Man Who Went Up In Smoke replaced by an oppressive heatwave leaving everybody on edge throughout The Man On The Balcony and now a long, cold, grey and snowy winter adding to the pervasive mood of depression that falls on the detectives, the case and the novel. The slow, methodical and everyday nature of the investigation is what really shines through in this case and should work as a glowing example of what crime fiction should be.<br /><br />Martin Beck takes a back seat in this investigation, marshalling his troops to great effect but on the whole adopting a more Socialist approach towards solving the case. This allows us to get to know other members of the team that have only had passing roles in previous cases. Kollberg is the major benefactor from this decision from Sjowall &amp; Wahloo, the recipient of more case time as we meet his wife and child (in direct contrast to Beck's failing private life) and witness his own peculiarities when investigating a crime; it is his hard work and dedication to catching his colleagues murderer that finally pays off and it is his relationship with Martin Beck that seems to be more and more at the heart of these novels.<br /><br />This one feels like new heights have been reached once more in a series that has gotten consistently better from book one and it's surely not going to be long before a five star reaction is had to one. If you haven't read Sjowall &amp; Wahloo yet I feel you could easily start here but taking the complete journey from start to finish has it's own rewards too.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/324150061" rel="nofollow noopener">Part 1: Roseanna</a><br /><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/401048760" rel="nofollow noopener">Part 2: The Man Who Went Up In Smoke</a><br /><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/411085131" rel="nofollow noopener">Part 3: The Man On The Balcony</a>

Sjöwall/Wahlöö's 4th book has never been made into a Swedish movie, but was filmed starring Wather Matthau in 1973 (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070292/" rel="nofollow noopener">The Laughing Policeman</a>). If you happen to have caught that one, please know that, even if the story (more than the characters) survived the relocation to the States, it doesn't really hold a candle to the original. This story, starting off with the shocking mass murder of a number of people on a night bus in central Stockholm, is one of, if not <i>the</i> top of the series.<br /><br />Note: Not all the others where filmed in Sweden either, no. 8 - <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/6149871.Det_slutna_rummet__Martin_Beck__8_" title="Det slutna rummet (Martin Beck #8) by Maj Sjöwall" rel="noopener">Det slutna rummet</a> was a Dutch movie and the last one - <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/6149894.Terroristerna__Martin_Beck__10_" title="Terroristerna (Martin Beck #10) by Maj Sjöwall" rel="noopener">Terroristerna</a> - was only in very small parts incorporated in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111292/" rel="nofollow noopener">Stockholm Marathon</a>.

La cuarta entrega del comisario Martin Beck combina la sencillez de la novela de género policial clásica con la tragicomedia de la buena literatura.<br /><br />El sufrido Beck se encuentra peor en cada novela. Ahora tiene catarro y tos, duerme separado de su mujer y no quiere saber nada de la navidad. Se equivoca y acierta en su trabajo mientras la sociedad sueca de los sesenta se describe como sucia, con frustraciones y en decadencia. Igual que el comisario.<br /><br />Los vientos gélidos y la nieva se abaten sobre Estocolmo y dos casos, uno del pasado y otro del presente se mezclan en esta agradable y bien escrita historia. Los autores, de nombre impronunciable en español saben lo que hacen. Te entretienen y te sacan un par de sonrisas. <br />Para seguir leyendo la serie. <br />