Martin Beck is the central figure of this detective series by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall. He’s a Swedish detective, and bears plenty of resemblance to Kurt Wallander, the detective in Henning Mankell’s books.
Both are team players, the lead investigators of police teams, not the individualistic, lone-wolf, man-against-the-system types common among American detective fiction. Both Beck and Wallander are pretty much anti-heroes. The Martin Beck books, I should mention, were written first (in the 1960s and 1970s).
I read “Roseanna” and “The Locked Room” back to back a couple weeks ago, having previously read two other Martin Beck books: “The Laughing Policeman” and “The Man Who Went Up in Smoke.” Of the four, I would say “The Locked Room” is probably the best, with some very interesting twists and resolutions that surprised me. Plus, Beck was almost an incidental figure through parts of the book, as two plots converged. “Roseanna” may have been the weakest. But all were good reads.
