The Locked Room (A Martin Beck Police Mystery)(Library Edition) [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Maj Sjowall (Author), Per Wahloo (Author), Tom Weiner (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 2009

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Swedish husband and wife team who have yet to write a dull book and have the prizes to prove it again provide supercop Martin Beck with an impossible murder to solve.... Don't miss any of it. --Chicago Tribune

Admirers of the series - and who is not an admirer? - will find the usual deftness, the fine shades of characters. --New York Times

Language Notes

Text: English, Swedish (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.; Unabridged library edition (October 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1433263599
• ISBN-13: 978-1433263590
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,347,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another solid entry in the Martin Beck series, June 29, 2002

By 

J. Mullin (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Locked Room (Paperback)

I have recently become a fan of this series of twelve detective novels, written in the late 1960's and early 1970's in Sweden by husband and wife team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Wahloo, who died in 1975, did some reporting and the no-nonsense style of these novels reminds one of good reporting.

The Locked Room is somewhat unique to the series, in that the authors frequently shift their focus to the minor characters and criminals, in omniscient narrator style, giving the reader more perspective than is usual. The novel involves two crimes, a bold bank robbery in which a bank customer is killed, and the discovery of a retired man's decomposed body in his apartment, which appears to be locked from the inside. Beck, who recently returned to the force after recovering from a shooting, is assigned the locked room case and we see him trying to fit the pieces together of a seemingly impossible crime to solve.

A NY Times critic has recently praised the grim realism of these novels; if Beck drinks too much coffee on an empty stomach, his gets sick. After a broad daylight bank robbery, the police get starkly different eyewitness accounts, leading to a morass of seemingly unrelated clues, some of them way off. The reader is constantly reminded that in the real world, this is how crimes are really solved by big city police forces.

Some readers are a little put off by the Socialist leanings of the authors, which rises to the surface occasionally as they discuss current events of Stockholm 30 years ago including strikes, poor health care/benefits for workers, etc. However the rantings never seemed to me to get in the way of their story, and the novels are all written in a lean, sparse style with few wasted scenes or verbal flourishes. I recommend the series highly, beginning with the great Roseanna.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great, September 27, 2002

By 

daveklein222 (New Brunswick) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Locked Room (Paperback)

The seventh Martin Beck novel. Recovering from his misadventures in "The Abominable Man", Beck takes up a seemingly unsolvable case: a friendless, elderly miser, shot one time in the head in a one-bedroom apartment, with locked doors and locked windows, and no gun in sight. Meanwhile, his colleagues are investigating the high-profile shooting of a security guard during a daring bank robbery conducted, apparently, by a beautiful blonde woman.

Although the authors begin to get a little too heavy-handed in their social commentary, this is still one of the better Beck novels (in fact it is regarded by many as the best, though I think its predecessor is better.) The dual plot structure and the improbable connection between the crimes make for a great thriller. The characters are engaging, and the ending is wonderful. Read it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Martin Beck is Still a Winner, February 22, 2002

By 

Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Locked Room (Paperback)

The Locked Room by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo is not quite as strong as their wonderful The Laughing Policeman but will be a delight to any of their fans. The premise is classic murder mystery but the development is unique. The authors cut from one chararcter's perspective to another quickly and often, including many of the criminals, in a way that can be sometimes disconcerting but frequently fascinating. Their creation, Martin Beck, is the star and the book is dazzling when he is centre stage (which is not often enough, in my opinion). This is not the typical mystery nor the typical police procedural but its examination of personality and crime in seventies Sweden is captivating. This sense of time and place is so strong it becomes the core of this novel. An interesting read.