Gunvald Larsson sits carefully observing the dingy Stockholm apartment of a man under police surveillance. He looks at his watch: nine minutes past eleven in the evening. He yawns, slapping his arms to keep warm. At the same moment the house explodes, kil
The masterful second novel in the Martin Beck series of mysteries by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, finds Beck searching for a well-known Swedish journalist who has disappeared without a trace.Inspector Marti
The chilling third novel in the Martin Beck mystery series by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, finds Martin Beck investigating a string of child murders.In the once peaceful parks of Stockholm, a killer is stal
When Viktor Palmgren, a powerful industrialist, is shot during an after-dinner speech, the repercussions - both on the international money markets and on the residents of the small coastal town of Malmö - are widespread. Chief Inspector Martin Beck is ca
The masterful first novel in the Martin Beck series of mysteries by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, finds Beck hunting for the murderer of a lonely traveler. On a July afternoon, a young woman's body is dredge
On a quiet night a high-ranking police officer, Nyland, is slaughtered in his hospital bed, brutally massacred with a bayonet. It's not hard to find people with a motive to kill him - in fact, the problem for Detective Inspector Martin Beck is how to narr
In one part of town, a woman robs a bank. In another, a corpse is found shot through the heart in a room locked from within, with no firearm in sight. Although the two incidents appear unrelated, Detective Inspector Martin Beck believes otherwise, and sol
A woman is found dead in Anderslöv, a small village in southern Sweden. While Martin Beck investigates her murder, his colleague Larsson becomes embroiled in the hunt for two men responsible for the death of a policeman during a shoot out on the open roa
With its wonderfully observed lawmen (including the inimitable Martin Beck), its brilliantly rendered felons and their murky Stockholm underworld, and its deftly engineered plot, The Laughing Policeman is a classic of the police procedural and "must readi
