Book Review: The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
It is June 2, 1967 in Stockholm, Sweden. A man stands on his balcony, smoking and watching the street as the sun rises. It’s going to be a scorcher today. A peaceful enough scene, but the calm of the city is going to be shattered, first by a mugger that seems able to effortlessly evade the police–and then the brutal sexual assault and murder of a child.
Superintendent Martin Beck works homicide, so he isn’t really involved in the mugging case, just kibitzing, and he goes off on vacation that same day, so isn’t notified when the first body is found. But by the time he gets back, there’s two little girls dead and the city is having nightmares.
This is the third Martin Beck book, but the second released in the United States (Up in Smoke takes place primarily in Hungary and is atypical for the series, so the American publishers initially skipped it.) It’s a police procedural, emphasizing the patient legwork involved in tracking down and interviewing potential witnesses and suspects, sending odd bits of evidence to the experts for analysis, and following up every civilian tip, no matter how obvious a waste of time it is. (And it turns out an initially ignored civilian tip is crucial.)
While Martin Beck has hunches sometimes, and his colleague Melander has a trick memory, they only help solve the mysteries, not allow the detectives to shortcut investigations.
In addition to the main crime story, there’s social commentary on the changing culture of Sweden at the time, both in the increased use of recreational chemicals, and a loosening of sexual mores. A teenage girl tries to sell Superintendent Beck pictures of her unclad body to get money for drugs, and later a college woman sees nothing wrong with hopping into bed with a stranger provided she’s using birth control. That stranger thinks nothing of cheating on his current girlfriend, but she does not reciprocate the sentiment.
It’s also briefly noted that there are “Negroes” living in Stockholm in 1967, and that the city swimming pools are integrated, but that’s more of a fact than a commentary in context.
Martin Beck is depicted as being a good enough police officer (though he sometimes gets imposter syndrome), but not good at maintaining his marriage. He spends as little time at home as he can manage, and we only know he has a daughter because he estimates another girl’s age in relation to her.
Content notes: Rape and murder of children (off-page).
It should be noted that 1967 Sweden had very different ideas about what the police were legally allowed to do than 21st Century United States; the police interrogate a suspect for hours before allowing the presence of an attorney, and contemplate the use of violence to force a confession (discarded as not likely to be effective, rather than illegal.)
The translation by Alan Blair is decent, and the writing is good. There were ten Martin Beck books written by this wife/husband duo before Mr. Wahloo died.
Recommended to fans of police procedurals and Scandinavian mystery novels.
