Book 73: "The Locked Room" by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 19:38![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeFrom the window he had a view out over an immense hole in the ground - out of which the gigantic showy building of the National Police Board would in due course rise up and obscure the view. From this ultramodern colossus in the heart of Stockholm the police would extend their tentacles in every direction and hold the dispirited citizens of Sweden in an iron grip. At least some of them. They couldn't all emigrate or commit suicide.
On his return to work 15 months after being shot, Martin Beck is broken in gently by being assigned the case of a man found dead of a gunshot wound in a locked room with no gun anywhere to be found. Beck's colleagues Kollberg and Larsson have been assigned to a special bank robberies squad under district attourney Bulldozer Olsson.
The police are demoralised, undermanned and riven by politics, and they make some big errors in their investigations, but it is rather amusing how characters come in pairs with matching names. As well as the police patrolmen Kristiansson and Kvastmo, there are the Swedish bank robbers Malmström and Mauser and the German bank robbers Hoff and Hauser.
On his return to work 15 months after being shot, Martin Beck is broken in gently by being assigned the case of a man found dead of a gunshot wound in a locked room with no gun anywhere to be found. Beck's colleagues Kollberg and Larsson have been assigned to a special bank robberies squad under district attourney Bulldozer Olsson.
The police are demoralised, undermanned and riven by politics, and they make some big errors in their investigations, but it is rather amusing how characters come in pairs with matching names. As well as the police patrolmen Kristiansson and Kvastmo, there are the Swedish bank robbers Malmström and Mauser and the German bank robbers Hoff and Hauser.
