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The Man Who Went Up in Smoke by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo Widely recognised as the greatest
masterpieces of crime fiction ever written, these are the original detective stories that pioneered the detective genre.
Written
in the 1960s, they are the work of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo – a husband and wife team from Sweden. The ten novels
follow the fortunes of the detective Martin Beck, whose enigmatic, taciturn character has inspired countless other policemen
in crime fiction. The novels can be read separately, but do follow a chronological order, so the reader can become familiar
with the characters and develop a loyalty to the series. Each book will have a new introduction in order to help bring these
books to a new audience.
‘The Man who went up in Smoke’ starts as Martin Beck has just begun his holiday:
an August spent with his family on a small island off the coast of Sweden. But when a neighbour gets a phone call, 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. |
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Reviews
‘The decalogue about the Swedish Chief Inspector Martin Beck created by
Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo during the 1960s and 1970s are indeed classic police fiction. They changed the genre. Whoever is
writing crime fiction after these novels in inspired by them in one way or another.’ Henning Mankell
‘If
you haven’t read Sjowall/Wahloo, start now.’ Sunday Telegraph
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