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Martin Beck is Swedish. Strong-jawed. Laconic. With stomach pains. Out of love with an ever-plumper wife. And senior man in the Stockholm Homicide Squad. Unusually for a fictional detective, he changed a good deal during his recorded life, growing older, growing wiser, at one time trying to take all the guilt for wrongful police action on to his thin shoulders, later taking a new view of the work he has to do. If the picture seems dreary, it sometimes is, though the dreariness is toughened by strong views on the failings of society and, thank goodness, swept away by the moments of wild farce that are apt to befall him. |
