Sjowall, Maj and Wahloo, Per. Roseanna. New York : Random House. 1967. Print
First Sentences:
They found the corpse on the eighth of July just after three o'clock in the afternoon.
It was fairly well intact and couldn't have been lying in the water very long. Actually, it was mere chance that they found the body at all. And finding it so quickly should have aided the police investigation.
Scandinavian detective literature absolutely fascinates me. From Steig Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series to the wonderful Henning Mankell Kurt Wallendar series, to the newest arrivals from Jussi Adler-Olsen in The Keeper of Lost Causes, there is something engrossing and utterly foreign about these crime mysteries that they have a special lure. Of course, they all revolve around solving horrendous crimes and countering evil, they depict uniquely interesting characters, and usually have awful weather. But there any similarity to Western crime fiction ends.
It this book interests you, be sure to check out:
They found the corpse on the eighth of July just after three o'clock in the afternoon.
It was fairly well intact and couldn't have been lying in the water very long. Actually, it was mere chance that they found the body at all. And finding it so quickly should have aided the police investigation.
Description:
Scandinavian detective literature absolutely fascinates me. From Steig Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series to the wonderful Henning Mankell Kurt Wallendar series, to the newest arrivals from Jussi Adler-Olsen in The Keeper of Lost Causes, there is something engrossing and utterly foreign about these crime mysteries that they have a special lure. Of course, they all revolve around solving horrendous crimes and countering evil, they depict uniquely interesting characters, and usually have awful weather. But there any similarity to Western crime fiction ends.
Roseanna opens with a body discovered in the water, with no identifying clothing, papers, or marks to assist investigators. The autopsy reveals death by strangulation with evidence of a possible rape. That's it. It's up to Martin Beck and his Swedish homicide unit to begin at that point and unravel the case. Where even to start? Who is she? What was her life about? Who knew her? And how did she end up in the water.
Beck is a taciturn, middle aged head of a Swedish homicide unit in Stockholm. He is also a man slowly becoming more disillusioned by his society, alienated from his wife, and confused by his children.
His refuge is the police world of crimes, leading a select group of men expert at their profession of solving murders. Much time is spent with these men in police headquarters working to find the criminal: discussing the case, sharing theories, exploring or abandoning clues, and generally going about the mundane tasks required to unravel a crime.
His refuge is the police world of crimes, leading a select group of men expert at their profession of solving murders. Much time is spent with these men in police headquarters working to find the criminal: discussing the case, sharing theories, exploring or abandoning clues, and generally going about the mundane tasks required to unravel a crime.
This slow progress might sound like a tedious read, but we learn to care for Beck and the other members of the homicide unit. Roseanna shows all of these detectives as completely human with varying degrees of commitment and skills along with shortcomings, proclivities, and tempers. This ordinariness of the police force helps us identify with them and their struggles to find leads. They are not super brains or renegade cops, just men with perseverance and the resources of their minds and those of a 1960's police force.
Day to day, slowly, unsteadily, they explore, eliminate, re-calculate, and start again their dogged pursuit of what happened and why. We simply cannot help but silently root for them as they explore every new lead, interview, and theory.
Roseanna is the first of ten police procedural crime novels written by husband and wife journalists Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo which focus on Martin Beck and his Swedish homicide unit. The authors planned and wrote these police procedural novels to document the decline of Swedish society from the first book to the last. They use the depressing environments, the police errors, the witnesses' lies, and the crimes themselves as examples of the new age of immorality and bureaucratic breakdown.
The Martin Beck series are engrossing tales, short on violence (except the crime itself) and long on personalities, intelligence, and even ironic humor. Read them in order (The Man Who Went Up in Smoke is the second book) as the books do build on the previous ones, referring to people or events from past crimes. Characters change as well, taking new roles and having other relationships as the series progresses. If you only want to read one more, try my favorite, The Laughing Policeman, the fourth in the series.
Call me crazy but there are no better books to read than Martin Beck and his Swedish homicides unit "whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul" (Moby Dick, of course). These are times when it is comforting to follow good, solid people patiently trying to solve crimes and make things a bit better in their cold and dreary world.
Happy reading.
It this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Sjowall, Maj and Wahloo, Per. The Man Who Went Up in Smoke
(Second book in the series.) Martin Beck and his fellow detectives must search for a reporter who has suddenly and without a trace disappeared.
Sjowall, Maj and Wahloo, Per. The Laughing Policeman
(Fourth book in the series.) Late one night a double-decker bus crashes with all passengers and driver killed by gunfire. The work of a madman or a targeted killing? Beck must identify all passengers, their doings, and relationships with possible killers. One of my favorite Martin Beck police procedure novels.
Adler-Olsen, Jussi The Keeper of Lost Causes
(First book in the Q-Department series.) Finland's homicide detective Carl Mørck and Assad, his mysterious assistant, investigate the unsolved case of a high profile politician. Tremendous writing, great characters, and exciting plots make this a must-read for any fans of police procedure or Scandinavian crime writing
