The Locked Room (The Martin Beck series, Book 8)
By (Author) Maj Sjwall
By (author) Per Wahl
Introduction by Michael Connelly
Book 8
HarperCollins Publishers
Fourth Estate Ltd
27th March 2012
7th April 2016
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Fiction in translation
839.7374
Paperback
288
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 22mm
250g
The eighth book in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s and 70s the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime writing.
Hugely acclaimed, the Martin Beck series were the original Scandinavian crime novels and have inspired the writings of Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbo.
In one part of town, a woman robs a bank. In another, a corpse is found shot through the heart in a room locked from within, with no firearm in sight. Although the two incidents appear unrelated, Detective Inspector Martin Beck believes otherwise, and solving the mystery acquires the utmost importance. Haunted by a near-fatal bullet wound and trying to recover from the break-up of his unhappy marriage, Beck throws himself into the case to escape from the prison that his own life has come to resemble.
I have never read a finer police story. Los Angeles Times
If you havent read Sjowall/Wahloo, start now. Sunday Telegraph
Their mysteries dont just read well; they reread even better. Witness, wife, petty cop or crook theyre all real characters even if they get just a few sentences. The plots hold, because theyre ingenious but never inhuman. New York Times
They changed the genre. Whoever is writing crime fiction after these novels is inspired by them in one way or another. Henning Mankell
Pick up one bookand you become unhinged. You want to block out a week of your life, lie to your boss, and stay in bed, gorging on one after another. Observer
The godparents of Scandinavian crime fiction Jo Nesbo
'Some of the most gripping crime fiction ever written' Michael Connelly
If you havent come across Beck before, youre in for a treat. Guardian
Maj Sjowall is a poet. She lives in Sweden.