The masterful first novel in the Martin Beck series of mysteries by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, finds Beck hunting for the murderer of a lonely traveler. On a July afternoon, a young woman's body is dredged from Sweden's beautiful Lake Vattern. With no clues Beck begins an investigation not only to uncover a murderer but also to discover who the victim was. Three months later, all Beck knows is that her name was Roseanna and that she could have been strangled by any one of eighty-five people on a cruise. As the melancholic Beck narrows the list of suspects, he is drawn increasingly to the enigma of the victim, a free-spirited traveler with a penchant for casual sex, and to the psychopathology of a murderer with a distinctive—indeed, terrifying—sense of propriety..

His holiday has just an August spent with his family on a small island off the coast of Sweden. But when a neighbor gets a phone call, Martin Beck finds himself packed off to Budapest, where a boorish journalist has vanished without a trace. Instead of passing leisurely sun-filled days with his children, Beck must troll about in the Eastern Europe underworld for a man nobody knows, with the aid of the coolly efficient local police, who do business while soaking at the public baths—and at the risk of vanishing along with his quarry.

Someone is killing young girls in the once-peaceful parks of Stockholm—killing them after having his way. The people of Stockholm are tense and fearful. Police Superintendent Martin Beck has two a cold-blooded mugger who won't say much and a three-year-old boy who can't say much. The dedicated work of the police force seems to be leading nowhere, and with each passing day, the likelihood of another murder grows. But then Beck remembers someone—or something—he overheard. A quietly relentless thriller, The Man on the Balcony juxtaposes the most inhuman of crimes with the humanity of the men who must solve it—their perseverance, frustration, and horror—resulting in a police procedural that is as moving and credible as it is enthralling.

With its wonderfully observed lawmen (including the inimitable Martin Beck), its brilliantly rendered felons and their murky Stockholm underworld, and its deftly engineered plot, The Laughing Policeman is a classic of the police procedural and "must reading for anyone who claims to be [a student] of the best detective fiction" (Saturday Review).

Gunvald Larsson sits carefully observing the dingy Stockholm apartment of a man under police surveillance. He looks at his watch: nine minutes past eleven in the evening. He yawns, slapping his arms to keep warm. At the same moment the house explodes, killing at least three people. Chief Inspector Martin Beck and his men don't suspect arson or murder until they discover a peculiar circumstance and a link is established between the explosion and a suicide committed that same day, in which the dead man left a note consisting of just two words: Martin Beck.

The shocking sixth novel in the Martin Beck mystery series by the internationally renowned crime writing duo by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, finds Beck investigating a brutal assassination. With an introduction by Arne Dahl. When Viktor Palmgren, a powerful Swedish industrialist is shot during his after-dinner speech in the luxurious Hotel Savoy, it sends a shiver down the spine of the international money markets and terrifies the tiny town of Malmo. No one in the restaurant can identify the gunman, and local police are sheepishly baffled. That's when Beck takes over the scene and quickly picks through Palmgren's background. What he finds is a web of vice so despicable that it's hard for him to imagine who wouldn't want Palmgren dead, but that doesn't stop him and his team of dedicated detectives from tackling one of their most intriguing cases yet.

On a quiet night a high-ranking police officer, Nyland, is slaughtered in his hospital bed, brutally massacred with a bayonet. It's not hard to find people with a motive to kill him - in fact, the problem for Detective Inspector Martin Beck is how to narrow the list down to just one suspect.

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.

A woman is found dead in Anderslöv, a small village in southern Sweden. While Martin Beck investigates her murder, his colleague Larsson becomes embroiled in the hunt for two men responsible for the death of a policeman during a shoot out on the open road. Are the two cases related?

Finished just a few weeks before Per Wahloo's death, The Terrorists is the last Martin Beck mystery, a marvelous summing up of the series. The series finale finds Beck attempting to save an American diplomat from the bloody hands of a terrorist group. The book is, in effect, a marvelous summing up of the series. The story centers on the visit of an American senator to Stockholm. Martin Beck tries to protect him from an international gang of terrorists, while they decide that Beck too should be removed from the scene. Interwoven with this basic story are two fascinating subplots. One, a classic mini-mystery, is the story of a millionaire pornographer bludgeoned to death in his own bathtub. The other is the story of a young girl, a Swedish hippie caught up unexpectedly in the maze of police bureaucracy. As in other Martin Beck books, the plot comes together in a totally unexpected climax.