Book 10: The Man on the Balcony

The book opens with a man on a balcony watching children at play. He glances over to notice another man.

This other man is a professional mugger. He has been comitting a rash of muggings in the area. He is careful taking great pains to observe his targets. To make certain the timing is "safe" to make certain the target is wealthy to make certain he can get away.

The mugger is a major concern for the police of Stockholm and as such he's a concern for Inspector Martin Beck and the men of his department.

Until the dead girl appears. Raped, strangled and no pants.

Then the hunt is on for the new menace.

This is the third book in Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Martin Beck mysteries series entitled A Story of Crime. Once more the book is a look at specific social issues with occasional policework, but this time the story is incredilby well done. Whereas the previous two books were told only from Beck's POV, this book has a shifting series of characters who see different things, think differently about the same things, and all make up important aspects of the story.

I was constantly wowed by this book, especially when contextualized against the previous works. I have the fourth book, The Laughing Policeman, ready to go, and it's routinely called the best of the series but I'm holding off on reading it for now.

I also found out while doing a bit of research on this book that the authors were life long leftists. This was something I didn't really pick up on during the reading of these books, but now that I know that, it does make sense.