The Locked Room by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

The bells of St. Maria struck two

as she came out from the subway

station on Woomar Yxkullsgatan.

Opening to

The Locked Room

by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Translated from the Swedish by

Paul Britten Austen

WARNING:  REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.


The Locked Room presents a classic murder mystery scenario--a victim found inside a room securely locked from the inside.  Classic Agatha Christie territory.  To help ease Inspector Martin Beck, who has recovered from the gunshot wound that nearly killed him in the previous book, back into his job as chief inspector, the detectives he works with have saved this special case for him.  This case is one a detective usually only gets a chance to read about.

Inspector Beck is not the sort of man who takes his work lightly, but his the case piques his curiosity so he takes it out of an honest desire to see police work done correctly and a desire to solve a classic murder.  He finds that before he can begin true detective work, he must undo the shoddy job the local officers did before the case fell on his desk.  For example, how is it the officers on the scene managed to convince the coroner the victim was a suicide by gunshot to the heart when no weapon was found inside the locked room?

While Detective Beck works his case, another group of detectives is investigating a recent string of bank robberies which have left one bystander dead.  Through this group of inept detectives Ms. Sjowall and Mr. Wahloo present a biting critique of the Swedish police force of their day.  These detectives are Keystone Cops.  In one botched attempt to capture the bank robbers they break into a fifth floor apartment by charging full force into an unlocked front door which swings open at just the right moment resulting in the lead detective falling out an open window. He survives by hanging onto the ledge, legs flailing, while he waits for rescue.

Sjowall and Wahloo have been far from light-handed in their criticism of Sweden's police force up to now, but in The Locked Room they take their gloves off.  Every opportunity to criticize the Swedish police is seized and exploited until the book begins to turn polemic.  By the end of the novel, I began to feel sorry for the cops.  Things couldn't possibly be as bad as the authors portray.  Could they?

The Locked Room presents two alternatives for the Swedish police force: a highly competent dedicated  detective determined to find the guilty party even if it costs him career advancement and a group of uneducated, slipshod, ruffians unable to function in anything but a comically incompetent fashion.  At the top of the police force, a group of careerist politicians more concerned about Sweden's image than the lives of the country's citizens consistently fail to correct this situation.  In a rather brilliant plot twist Martin Beck solves his case but fails to get the evidence needed to convict the killer due to police incompetence while the Keystone Cops investigating the bank robbery successfully point the finger at the wrong man who just happens to be the killer in Beck's case.  The killer ends up serving a life sentence for a murder he didn't commit.

That's justice in Sweden circa 1973.

Here's hoping things have improved since then.