The Locked Room

A Martin Beck Police Mystery

By: Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

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.

Crack another case with Martin Beck.©1972 Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö; Translation copyright © 1973 by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

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

Great plot

The authors weave a great and realistic narrative where the intersections of the various crimes are never fully understood except by the reader. It was very humorous how they described the bumbling actions of the Stockholm crime squad and how they were tricked by the bank robbers.

One of the best in this series

Clever and amusing. Sometimes the social commentary gets heavy handed. Appreciated the ending! Justice done, mostly, though with an ironic twist.

Best

So far - have liked them all. But thought this was great. Well plotted and nice balanced use of characters

My favorite of the Beck books so far

There's a lot to like about this one: Beck is back on the job after his previous injury, and he's working alone on case that previous members of the force have bungled. The rest of cast of characters are working (bungling) at trying to foil/capture bank robbers. As expected, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö tell a good story that also funny and which contains a number of interesting characters. I'm giving the authors perfect marks although I'm not all that enamored with their social and political commentary, and I might have cut the last scene (as I felt it was overkill, and they had already done justice to that particular character's haunting bafflement already. This just cheapened it).

Wonderful, but better in print

These are very short concise books. Per and his wife Maj, wrote a series of ten, one a year in the late sixties and seventies. They are absolutely the best procedurals ever written. They capture a time of cynicism and doubt in the so-called Swedish society perfectly. They are best savored in print, the read version is too quick and does not well translate the atmosphere of these books.