The Laughing Policeman

[sawyl]

Onwards to the fourth Martin Beck novel, The Laughing Policeman, which features the death of one of the regular cast members.

A bus crashes late at night. A pair of inept detectives quickly arrive on the scene and find all the passengers have been shot dead. Among the passengers is a young policeman, Åke Stenström. Was Stenström deliberately targetted by the murderer? Was the crime committed because of one of his active cases? Or did it have something to do with the nurse sitting next to him? Or was one of the other people on the bus the target? Gradually, as the mystery unfolds, it becomes clear that quite a few of the people on the bus have something in their past that have lead them to be the killer's target. Even Stenström, who seems to have been lying to his girlfriend, Åsa Torell, about his whereabouts.

One of the book's great strengths is the way the different characters respond to the sudden crisis. When Beck is called late at night and told that one of his colleagues has been killed in a crash, he immediately tries and fails to get in touch with Kollberg, prompting a sudden fear that his best friend is dead. Åsa Torrell's initial acceptance completely collapses as the case progresses and it is only when Kollberg and his wife take her in that she starts to put herself back together, eventually telling them that she thinks she might join the police. Melander and Larsson are, as ever, largely unaffected by the emotional pressure affecting their more sensitive colleagues.