Maj Sjöwall

Per Wahloo

Detective Martin Beck has just begun his holiday 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.

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

Per Wahlöö

His holiday has just begun: an August spent with his family on a small island off the coast of Sweden. But when a neighbor gets a phone call, Martin 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.

The Man who Went Up in Smoke

Gavin

Acclaimed yet somehow awful pioneers of Scandinoir. I couldn’t stand the prose – uniformly banal, full of aimlessly detailed descriptions of rooms never returned to, and, the weirdest thing, they’re in the habit of repeating the protagonist Martin Beck’s full name, eight times a page, which reminds me of nothing but preschool stories. 

Maybe this translation is just terrible.

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

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