The Laughing Policeman

Book sales are a wonderful opportunity to pick up usually unaffordable coffee table books (or the complete works of Sherlock Holmes with the original typescript & illustrations). To me, they also provide occasion to pick up stuff that is not on my books-i-must-read or books-that-sound-vaguely-familiar list - a reasonably interesting storyline with the bonus of nice paper, a nice or unusual typescript or an attractive cover is usually enough to seduce me.

This year at the Landmark sale, my focus was on light reading – which means a bit of fantasy and a lot of detective fiction. I wanted something different from the variety that I usually read, and it was sheer coincidence that I stumbled upon The Laughing Policeman on my way out to the billing counter.

The blurb sounded interesting, the paper was slightly yellow (I dislike Rin-white paper), the type just the right size (not scrimping on paper), there was a lovely green hard bound cover and a recommendation from Sunday Telegraph on the authors (the Swedish communist couple Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo). On a depressing Wednesday evening when the inclination to cause serious bodily damage – to your boss, spouse/boyfriend, parent or self – is at its peak, the perfect antidote to the unfortunate realization that you cannot commit murder is to read about one.

It turned out to be a delightfully different read. The authors’ communist leanings are revealed in the first chapter itself when the police are reported to be busy because “they were obliged to protect the American ambassador against letters and other things from people who disliked Lyndon Johnson and the war in Vietnam”. And so a small girl holds up a placard that says “DO YOUR DUTY! KEEP FUCKING AND MAKE MORE POLICE!” while an old woman waits in vain for a patrolman to smile and take her across the street. Meanwhile we meet Superintendent Martin Beck and Lennart Kollberg playing chess – with the former attributing his inability to win to a lack of chess sense!

Soon, the crime takes place in the cold November rain and we are slowly introduced to the other policemen - Kristiansson & Kvant, Gunvald Larsson, Hammar, Ake Stenstrom, Melander, Ek and Ronn. As the investigation unfurls at an excruciatingly slow pace, the reader becomes better acquainted with these men as their characters (and personal lives) are slowly revealed in vivid detail.

Almost the entire story unravels through the actions of the officers, either in the police station or on the beat – and the wry humor and commentary on world happenings during the conversations is what makes the book transcend an ordinary thriller. There are digs at America (the frequent mass massacres there and how it is possible to ‘order a gun by mail order’, Vietnam – the book was written in the 60’s), the press, The Great Detective General Public, politicians, bosses and consumerism. The sentences are short and simply worded (possibly because it’s a translation) with barely concealed irony.

The policemen are painted as ordinary humans, with their foibles and special talents and stupidities. As the photographic memory man Mellander remarks on the public’s distrust of the police: The reason is that the police are a necessary evil…The crux of the problem is, of course, the paradox that the police profession in itself calls for the highest intelligence & exceptional mental, physical and moral qualities in its practitioners but has nothing to attract anyone who possesses it.

And so, when Ronn is dispatched to get a possible statement out of the dying man who was still dying at XX Hospital:

(Ron) had carefully thought out two questions, which for safety’s sake he had written down in his notebook.
The first one was:
Who did the shooting
And the second:
What did he look like

Or, the reflection on the personal lives of Beck & Kollberg:

She (Gun) was exactly what he (Kollberg) wanted, but it had taken him over twenty years to find her and another year to think it over.
Martin Beck had not spent twenty years in search of his wife. He had met her seventeen years ago, made her pregnant on the spot and married in haste. He had indeed repented at lesire, and she was standing at the bedroom door, a living reminder of his mistake, in a crumpled nightdress and with red marks from the pillow on her face.

The title is derived from a record named The Adventures of the Laughing Policeman by Charles Penrose – a Christmas gift to Beck by his daughter that is unsuccessful in her attempt to make him laugh. Beck does laugh at the end of the book though. After the mystery is solved, he discovers that the answer lay all along on the desk of his murdered colleague - Beck & Kollberg had forgotten to check under the blotter when they kicked off their investigations in Stenstorm’s office. An appropriately self mocking conclusion to a book that refuses to take anything too seriously - a good lesson for life, or something like it!