Scan barcode
A review by shepcatzero
The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö
2.0
I wanted to like The Laughing Policeman more than I did, but it was sort of a dumpster fire. It was a slog to begin with, almost willfully dragging out the story without adding any real local color or texture or depth of character — all the cops feel more or less interchangeable, and despite this being billed as "a Martin Beck police mystery," Beck himself seems more like a spectator or supporting character. It's heavy on pointless detail, describing a lot while telling the reader nothing important. The mystery itself is compelling enough; if only the authors and their cops felt any urgency to solve it.
Then I ran into the line, "To use a hackneyed phrase, they were thunderstruck," which is an unforgivable meta-failure in any language.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö also suffer tremendously by theirs being the next book in my queue after an Elmore Leonard novel (Riding the Rap), though virtually any novel suffers as a counterexample of how Dutch never wastes the reader's time.
Then I ran into the line, "To use a hackneyed phrase, they were thunderstruck," which is an unforgivable meta-failure in any language.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö also suffer tremendously by theirs being the next book in my queue after an Elmore Leonard novel (Riding the Rap), though virtually any novel suffers as a counterexample of how Dutch never wastes the reader's time.