Customer Reviews

The Locked Room

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The characteristic of a murder mystery that I have always loved is the way the sharp edge of a murder investigation slices through the layers of society. In this book, we have a decaying police force depicted with all of its warts and heros, and a group of common criminals who know no other means of support. The murder mystery ambles along at a comfortable pace, as we watch the police investigation of bank robberies become hopelessly boggled. The description of the takedown led by the district attorney had me howling with laughter, much to the annoyance of my wife who expects me to be quiet when reading by the fire. I have enjoyed many of the other books by this pair in decades gone by and was thrilled to learn that there was at least one more that I hadn't read. If you have any interest in police murder mysteries and haven't read books by these authors, this book is very highly recommended.

this is a very good book. If you like the other martin beck books you will enjoy this one as well. This book is one the books that hasn't been made into a film wich is good I think. No fillm really does the characters justice.

I'm assuming that this series is so intelligent and underappreciated that I'm preaching to the converted, however, I've read em all and this and Fire Engine That Disappeared are the best

you can grasp hold of it and show off what you can do." Mickey Friedman


There is no mystery formula more traditional than the locked door mystery. It is almost as old as the genre itself. So, when an author(s) writes a book in which the central plot device is a murder committed in a locked room it can best be judged not for originality but for the panache (or lack thereof) with which it is carried off. Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall get high marks for performance in "The Locked Room".

"The Locked Room", published in Sweden in 1972 and in the U.S. in 1973 was the eighth in a series of ten Martin Beck mysteries written by the Swedish, husband and wife team of Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall. The plot and structure of the four Beck mysteries I've read to date do not deviate from the standard format found in any well-written police procedural. In fact, and as noted, this plot seems to pay homage to police or detective procedurals generally. What sets the Beck mysteries apart is their location and character development. Naturally enough, each book is a small window into Swedish life and culture in the 1960s and 1970s when the books were written. Further, as the series develops the character of Beck and his colleagues evolve and the reader slowly obtains a real feel for Beck and his fellow police officers. At the same time the characters, especially Beck, remain far from predictable. However, they are already fully formed in the authors' minds and for that reason I suggest reading these books in order. (Unfortunately, although Vintage Crime/Black Lizard has republished some in this series a few of the books are currently out of print.)

In "The Locked Room" Inspector Martin Beck has just returned from an extended leave while he recovered from gunshot wounds. (The shooting takes place in The Abominable Man) and is tasked with investigating the death of a man found dead in a locked room. At the same time, the rest of his squad are investigating a bank robbery in which a masked, robber has managed to shoot and kill one of the bank's customers. The investigations are, or appear to be, unrelated and the rest of the book is devoted to the parallel investigations.

One of the pleasures of reading these Martin Beck stories is the way in which the reader sees the process of the investigation. There are no Sherlock Holmes-like flashes of genius. Rather, we see how Beck and his colleagues struggle (sometimes comically, sometimes incompetently) to put together the jigsaw puzzle of a crime. At the same time we catch glimpses of Beck's personal life and the lives of his fellow detectives.

Like a good gymnast "The Locked Room" succeeds is showcasing how well Sjowall and Wahloo can work within a tried and true formula. The ending, which I found a bit surprising and thought-provoking, was more than satisfying if more than a bit ironic. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

This book is a delight on so many levels, I hardly know where to start.

There are two investigations afoot. A special squad is looking into a rash of bank robberies. And Martin Beck is working by himself on a classic locked room mystery.

The bank robbery inquiry is headed by a madly exuberant district attorney and staffed by detectives we know and love from previous books: most notably Beck's able associates Kollberg and Larsson, but also a trigger-happy junior. With this promising crew, Sjöwall and Wahlöö deliver their most hilarious scenes ever.

Meanwhile Martin Beck is just back from fifteen months of recuperation from a bullet to the chest. The locked room mystery is a kind of therapeutic welcome-back gift from the homicide squad. It's a puzzle. A pensioner who locked and bolted himself into his room, and locked or taped both windows, has been shot to death. But no weapon, bullet or casing can be found.

At this point in his life, Beck is also living in a locked room. Sleeping alone, eating alone, listening to music alone. Happily his new case is engrossing, requiring both brainwork and fieldwork. And it may give Beck the key to his own locked room.

The Locked Room is a real showcase for the comic genius of Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö. It's all here - from subtle ironies to downright slapstick. Even the plot is a kind of joke with ludicrous twists and turns and quite a number of amusing characters. The technical fiascos rival the human errors.

You could read this book on its own with great enjoyment. But reading it in the context of the whole series is even better.

I have enjoyed all 10 of the Sjowall Wahloo series featuring Martin Beck as the Stockholm detective of murder mysteries. However, this one's plot is just so brilliant and ironic, it has to be the best. Not only the plot but also the development of both major and minor characters, the way the social commentary is integrated here, and the subplot of the landlady who seems to mean more to Martin Beck than he realizes himself, make this for me the outstanding one.
I've kept rereading not just this one but the entire series for many years, it's a monumental achievement by these authors simply because nothing like it has ever been done before or since.

I recently re-read this book because I had difficulty wading through the detail of some portions previously. I didn't review the book initially but just read most of the reviews and would advise any potential new reader to keep a couple of things in mind.

This is one in a series of police procedural books written in Sweden prior to 1975 - as such, anyone who noted they were "dated" is correct. This, as with the entire series, is not a current book. I believe they could be and well may be considered historic "classics". My rating takes that into consideration. As a further comment to that point, in the forward section of the book, the well regarded Swedish author Henning Mankell stated that the authors (in writing these books) changed "the genre".

The book consists of two sets of crimes being solved by different police department detectives at the same time. There is no indication that the crimes are related . The name of the book is derived from the fact that one of the crimes involved a man who may have been murdered in a room well locked from the inside. The same approach of "multiple crimes" being solved by different people is seen in many detective and police procedurals written by popular American authors writing more recently. These books may well have been the forerunners.

I found the book entertaining, although a bit detailed in some places, but challenging enough to keep my attention until both crimes were solved. The ending did have a bit of a twist