A review by macloo
The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjöwall

4.0

I thought this was the SECOND Martin Beck book — not the third. My Black Lizard edition says it is the second. It was first published in Swedish in 1967, and it refers to the crime case of the first book, Roseanna (1965), very specifically. This is a very different case for Beck and his Stockholm police colleagues. Someone is killing girls in the age range of 9 to 11 years old, and there are just no clues. Grimly, the detectives do what they can, but as more girls are murdered (all in public parks), the detectives seem to despair. When they finally get a break, it's almost random — a member of the public reports someone else for a different crime altogether. There's also one of those special Martin Beck moments when he puts two seemingly unrelated things together in his mind, and that turns out to be quite important.

This is the quiet, dogged, hardworking version of crime-solving. No glamour. No glory. Determination, lots of overtime, and plain coincidence turn out to be the best tools for catching a brutal predator. Well done.