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
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.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great, September 27, 2002
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.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Martin Beck is Still a Winner, February 22, 2002
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.
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