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Roseanna

Maj Sjöwall

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Harper-perennial

The Man On the Balcony: The Martin Beck Series

Per Wahlöö

Harperperennial

The Laughing Policeman: The Martin Beck Series

Mystery

The Fire Engine That Disappeared: The Martin Beck Series

The shocking sixth novel in the Martin Beck mystery series by the internationally renowned crime writing duo by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, finds Beck investigating a brutal assassination. With an introduction by Arne Dahl. When Viktor Palmgren, a powerful Swedish industrialist is shot during his after-dinner speech in the luxurious Hotel Savoy, it sends a shiver down the spine of the international money markets and terrifies the tiny town of Malmo. No one in the restaurant can identify the gunman, and local police are sheepishly baffled. That's when Beck takes over the scene and quickly picks through Palmgren's background. What he finds is a web of vice so despicable that it's hard for him to imagine who wouldn't want Palmgren dead, but that doesn't stop him and his team of dedicated detectives from tackling one of their most intriguing cases yet.

Murder at the Savoy (The Martin Beck)

Martin Beck faces one of the greatest challenges of his professional life when his investigation unearths evidence of police corruption and brutality in this incredible seventh novel in the Martin Beck mystery series. The bloody murder of a police captain in his hospital room exposes the particularly unsavory history of a man who spent forty years practicing a horribly brutal brand of strong-arm police work. Nonetheless, Martin Beck and his colleagues scour Stockholm for the murderer, a demented and deadly rifleman. As Beck is gripped by an increasing feeling of impending danger, his investigation unearths evidence of police corruption. That's when an even stronger sense of responsibility, and something like shame, urges him into taking a series of drastic steps, which lead to a shocking disaster.

The Abominable Man: The Martin Beck Series

In the penultimate installment of this masterful crime-fiction series, Martin Beck, now head of the National Murder Squad, is called in to a sleepy part of the countryside to investigate a woman's disappearance. What Beck doesn't know is that the woman has already been murdered, her body dumped in a swamp. At the same time, a midnight shoot-out between three cops and two teenage boys ends with one policeman dead. As Beck and his partner, Lennart Kollberg, investigate both cases, they encounter two figures from their earlier cases. Folke Bengtsson, the convicted killer from the first novel of the series (Roseanna), has been recently released. Since that murder shared many characteristics with Beck's present case, Beck comes under pressure to arrest Bengtsson. But Beck has begun to doubt that Bengtsson was guilty of any murder at all. The media swarms over the little town and among the journalists is the man who was convicted of murder in the second novel of the series (The Man Who Went Up In Smoke). The presence of these two killers, one who may not be guilty at all and another who killed by accident, raises a theme from previous books: there are different kinds of murder and different kinds of guilt.  The fugitive ''cop killer'' will accidentally provide the solution to Martin Beck's murder case but that's not really important. What matters is the juxtaposition of the sleepy countryside with the violent city and the tension between the ever decreasing number of capable police officers and the growing number of incompetent or corrupt ones.

Cop Killer: The Martin Beck Series

The Locked Room

Harpercollins

The first book in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s -- the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime writing. Hugely acclaimed, the Martin Beck series were the original Scandinavian crime novels and have inspired the writings of Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbo. Written in the 1960s, 10 books completed in 10 years, they are the work of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo -- a husband and wife team from Sweden. They follow the fortunes of the detective Martin Beck, whose enigmatic, taciturn character has inspired countless other policemen in crime fiction; without his creation Ian Rankin's John Rebus or Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander may never have been conceived. The novels can be read separately, but are best read in chronological order, so the reader can follow the characters' development and get drawn into the series as a whole. 'Roseanna' begins on a July afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from Sweden's beautiful Lake Vattern. Three months later, all that Police Inspector Martin Beck knows is that her name is Roseanna, that she came from Lincoln, Nebraska, and that she could have been strangled by any one of eighty-five people. With its authentically rendered settings and vividly realized characters, and its command over the intricately woven details of police detection, 'Roseanna' is a masterpiece of suspense and sadness.

Roseanna. Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

HarperCollins Publishers, Limited

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (A Martin Beck Novel)

Fourth Estate

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Books by Maj Sjöwall