The Man on the Balcony

[sawyl]

The third of Sjöwall and Wahlöö's Martin Beck Mysteries, The Man on the Balcony shakes things up a bit by introducing a couple of new regulars and injecting a note of antagonism into the relationship between the public and the police.

A young girl is killed in a Stockholm park and a second girl is killed a day later in the much the same fashion. The only witness to the first murder is a violent mugger who has been confidently evading the police for some time. The only witness to the second murder is a three year-old child who can barely speak. Martin Beck, now a Chief Inspector, tackles the boy while his boorish but efficient colleague Gunvald Larsson tries to turn the tables on the mugger. The public, meanwhile, shows its contempt for the slow progress of the police investigation by organising groups of vigilantes to patrol the parks — one of which attempts to attack Kollberg as he investigates the scene of one of the crimes.

The story feels fresh and timely, despite substituting radios for mobile phones. The police profile of the murderer also feels very modern, even if they don't talk about it in terms of victimology and geographical profiling. Both Gunvald Larsson and Einar Rönn are good additions to the team: Larsson and Kollberg cordially loathe each other, while Rönn's quiet and insular character means that he doesn't work particularly well with the introspective Beck. The book also introduces light relief in the forms of Karl Kristiansson and Kurt Kvant: a pair of incompitant and lazy patrolmen whose policy it is to see and hear as little as possible of anything they might be required to report.