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.

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 called in to help catch a killer nobody, not even the victim, was able to identify. He begins a systemic search for the friends, enemies, business associates and call girls who may have wanted Palmgren dead. But in the process, he finds to his dismay that he has nothing but contempt for the victim and sympathy for the murderer.

This is the sixth thrilling installment in the Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s, the novels that have inspired all crime fiction written ever since.

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. As the melancholic Beck narrows down the list of likely suspects, he is drawn increasingly to the enigma of the victim, a free-spirited traveler with a penchant for the casual sexual encounter, and to the psychopathology of a murderer with a distinctive–indeed, terrifying–sense of propriety.

With its authentically rendered settings, vividly realized characters, and command over the intricately interwoven details of police detection, Roseanna is a masterpiece of suspense and sadness.

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.

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. At that same moment, the house explodes, killing at least three people. Chief Inspector Martin Beck and his men don’t suspect arson or murder until they discover a peculiar circumstance linking the explosion to a suicide committed that same day. The dead man left a note consisting of just two words: Martin Beck.

This is the excellent next installment of the genre-pioneering Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s, widely recognized as the greatest masterpieces of crime fiction ever written.

On a cold and rainy Stockholm night, nine bus riders are gunned down by an unknown assassin. The press, anxious for an explanation for the seemingly random crime, quickly dubs the killer a madman. But Superintendent Martin Beck of the Stockholm Homicide Squad suspects otherwise: this apparently motiveless killer has managed to target one of Beck’s best detectives, young Åke Stenström. Reasoning that Stenström would not have been riding that lethal bus without a reason, Beck retraces his steps and chases year-old clues to a crime long thought unsolvable.

With its wonderfully observed lawmen (including the inimitable Martin Beck), its brilliantly rendered felons and their murky Stockholm underworld, and its deftly engineered plot, this is another incredible installment in the acclaimed Martin Beck mystery series.

The eighth classic installment in this genre-changing Martin Beck series of novels starring Detective Inspector Martin Beck is a masterful take on a classic locked-room mystery.

A young blonde in sunglasses robs a bank and kills a hapless citizen. Across town, a corpse with a bullet shot through its heart is found in a locked room—with no gun at the scene. The crimes seem disparate, but to Martin Beck they are two pieces of the same puzzle, and solving it becomes the one way he can escape the pains of his failed marriage and the lingering effects of a near-fatal bullet wound. Exploring the ramifications of egotism and intellect, luck and accident, this tour de force of detection bears the unmistakable substance and gravity of real life.

Someone is killing young girls in the once peaceful parks of Stockholm—killing them after “having his way” with them. The people of Stockholm are tense and fearful. Police Superintendent Martin Beck has two witnesses: a cold-blooded mugger who won’t say much and a three-year-old boy who can’t say much. The dedicated work of the police force seems to be leading nowhere, and with each passing day, the likelihood of another murder grows. But then Beck remembers someone—or something—he overheard…

A quietly relentless thriller, The Man on the Balcony juxtaposes the most inhuman of crimes with the humanity of the men who must solve it—their perseverance, frustration, and horror—resulting in a police procedural that is as moving and credible as it is enthralling.

His holiday with his family has just begun, but a phone call sends Martin Beck packing off to Budapest, where a boorish journalist has vanished without a trace. With the aid of the coolly efficient local police, who do business while soaking at the public baths, Beck must troll about in the Eastern Europe underworld for a man nobody knows–while he is at the risk of vanishing along with his quarry.

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke gives us the dedicated Beck at his most engaging: indulging in the sumptuous Hungarian cuisine, longing for a decent cigarette, and evading a predatory nymphet, even as he pursues a case whose international boundaries grow with every new clue.

The Terrorists is the last Martin Beck mystery, finished just a few weeks before Per Wahlöö’s death. The book is, in effect, a marvelous summing up of the series. The story centers on the visit of an American senator to Stockholm. Martin Beck tries to protect him from an international gang of terrorists, while they decide that Beck too should be removed from the scene. Interwoven with this basic story are two fascinating subplots. One, a classic mini-mystery, is the story of a millionaire pornographer bludgeoned to death in his own bathtub. The other is the story of a young girl, a Swedish hippie caught up unexpectedly in the maze of police bureaucracy. As in other Martin Beck books, the plot comes together in a totally unexpected climax.