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A review by tfitoby
The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjöwall
4.0
Part three of The Story of a Crime sequence sees the series really take off.
Martin Beck is back in Stockholm and has been promoted to Detective Inspector, a year after the events in The Man Who Went Up In Smoke and it is The Summer of Love as seen through the eyes of a tired and stressed Homicide Department.
This time Beck and his colleagues are trying catch two criminals, a mugger and a murderer who preys on very young girls, violating and then killing them. With the summer sun baking the city and causing tempers and passions to flare, the police desperately struggle to track down the killer before another young victim is sacrificed. They have two possible witnesses, but neither is particularly reliable. One is a three year old boy and the other is the mugger.
That's the plot, they must catch the mugger to catch the child killer but what it doesn't tell you is that Beck's city appears to be collapsing around him in a haze of vice and debauchery. Stockholm, and as an extension Sweden, has taken the hippie ideals of free love et al and boiled them down to sexual encounters without feeling. It is a theme that runs throughout, from a teenage girl selling naked photos of herself at a train station to a peeping tom witnessing a brisk encounter in a park, a woman comfortable with her naked body to the extent that she doesn't even consider putting on clothes whilst being interviewed by the detectives and the disturbing behaviour of the sexual predator they are trying to catch. Then there's the casual mention of recreational drugs, the teeming masses of homeless people apparently let down by the inefficient and bungling welfare state and the overworked and underpaid nature of being a police officer. This is definitely not a warm and fuzzy picture of Sweden that Sjowall & Wahloo are painting.
This is a pretty intense read thanks to some excellent plotting and pacing, the reader is presented with a vital clue right at the beginning which is dismissed by an overworked and rude detective as irrelevant and a waste of police resources and is the dangled in a teasing manner throughout as Beck scratches the itch in his brain to remember "that vital something" he'd witnessed. There is an oppressive atmosphere throughout as every available officer is put on the case with seemingly no time off to sleep and a only cigarettes to smoke for sustenance, washed down by cold coffee. The fear in the minds and on the faces of the detectives adds an edge to every conversation and every wasted minute that they don't catch the killer is another minute in which another innocent girl could have been murdered on their watch.
It has been mentioned that the case is solved thanks to a fair amount of coincidence and there is a certain amount of 'luck' involved in solving the case I admit BUT the husband & wife author team discussed this within the text; the detectives are aware that their efforts will be seen as luck by the media but point out that this is the inevitable outcome of intelligently planned hard work on their part as the net closes on the villain. Journeying alongside the cops as they close that net you appreciate the work involved and as such the coincidence plays less like a miraculous deus ex machina photograph of a murder in progress and more as a well deserved reward.
The Man on the Balcony is very effective as a police procedural first and foremost and, as intended by the authors, from the outset it is a subtle piece of social commentary second. Three books in and I cn see why this series is so highly thought of.
Part 1: Roseanna
Part 2: The Man Who Went Up In Smoke
Martin Beck is back in Stockholm and has been promoted to Detective Inspector, a year after the events in The Man Who Went Up In Smoke and it is The Summer of Love as seen through the eyes of a tired and stressed Homicide Department.
This time Beck and his colleagues are trying catch two criminals, a mugger and a murderer who preys on very young girls, violating and then killing them. With the summer sun baking the city and causing tempers and passions to flare, the police desperately struggle to track down the killer before another young victim is sacrificed. They have two possible witnesses, but neither is particularly reliable. One is a three year old boy and the other is the mugger.
That's the plot, they must catch the mugger to catch the child killer but what it doesn't tell you is that Beck's city appears to be collapsing around him in a haze of vice and debauchery. Stockholm, and as an extension Sweden, has taken the hippie ideals of free love et al and boiled them down to sexual encounters without feeling. It is a theme that runs throughout, from a teenage girl selling naked photos of herself at a train station to a peeping tom witnessing a brisk encounter in a park, a woman comfortable with her naked body to the extent that she doesn't even consider putting on clothes whilst being interviewed by the detectives and the disturbing behaviour of the sexual predator they are trying to catch. Then there's the casual mention of recreational drugs, the teeming masses of homeless people apparently let down by the inefficient and bungling welfare state and the overworked and underpaid nature of being a police officer. This is definitely not a warm and fuzzy picture of Sweden that Sjowall & Wahloo are painting.
This is a pretty intense read thanks to some excellent plotting and pacing, the reader is presented with a vital clue right at the beginning which is dismissed by an overworked and rude detective as irrelevant and a waste of police resources and is the dangled in a teasing manner throughout as Beck scratches the itch in his brain to remember "that vital something" he'd witnessed. There is an oppressive atmosphere throughout as every available officer is put on the case with seemingly no time off to sleep and a only cigarettes to smoke for sustenance, washed down by cold coffee. The fear in the minds and on the faces of the detectives adds an edge to every conversation and every wasted minute that they don't catch the killer is another minute in which another innocent girl could have been murdered on their watch.
It has been mentioned that the case is solved thanks to a fair amount of coincidence and there is a certain amount of 'luck' involved in solving the case I admit BUT the husband & wife author team discussed this within the text; the detectives are aware that their efforts will be seen as luck by the media but point out that this is the inevitable outcome of intelligently planned hard work on their part as the net closes on the villain. Journeying alongside the cops as they close that net you appreciate the work involved and as such the coincidence plays less like a miraculous deus ex machina photograph of a murder in progress and more as a well deserved reward.
The Man on the Balcony is very effective as a police procedural first and foremost and, as intended by the authors, from the outset it is a subtle piece of social commentary second. Three books in and I cn see why this series is so highly thought of.
Part 1: Roseanna
Part 2: The Man Who Went Up In Smoke