The husband and wife team that gave us the ten Martin Beck novels just might the best writers of the police procedural ever, and this book just might be the the best of them all. Despite being the fourth book in the series it is the book I most often recommend starting with. ( )

Quality police procedural/mystery type novel. Does a kind of "gritty realism" thing but in the opposite direction to the "loose cannon"/gruff spoken detective who witnesses a ton of violence. Here the police officers are very average and get to the solution through hard work, procedure and good luck (and a little bad luck, too). The sort of grittiness is all about sleepless nights and frustration. I'm usually not too big on that sort of thing but the police's fallibility makes it work because it's a very human fallibility - no sudden insights, mistakes are made, but mostly they work hard and things eventually fall into place even though it's a struggle and life sucks. The book often is pretty funny in a very dry way (sometimes less dry) which helps keep it from being depressing. The case resolves in a very satisfying way and it keeps you hooked even without any real action happening. There's a leftist bent to it that appeals to me, as well. Some criticism of the police in general even as you sympathise with who you're seeing.

I will say I thought the treatment of some of the women is pretty misogynistic - some of it can be put down to the misogyny of the men but the treatment of Theresa, for example, feels very unfair and it's a bit gross in places. I don't think it ruins the book but it's a bit of a shame. There's also a 1 sentence description of something that's clearly rape but isn't described as such. That the author could have not noticed that makes me feel very uncomfortable, especially given that it's about a character who's incredibly sexualised (a nymphomaniac). It's 1 sentence so I don't like to make a big deal out of it but I guess I just think the way Theresa is talked about is gross and that was just too much. ( )

plodding police work finally pays off in mass killing that includes a police officer. Tensions of 70s Sweden

Much better than The Man Who Went Up in Smoke. It makes me want to read synopses just to find out if our protagonist Martin Beck has stomach cancer or what. I like the Swedish setting. ( )

Very, very good though oddly enough Beck features very little in this one and the plot reminds me of one of Henning Mankell's Wallander books. ( )