A Good Read - The Laughing Policeman

I don't consider myself a great fan of "crime novels" or "mystery fiction", but I just read one of the best endings to a novel, contained at the end of the very last sentence, on the last page of the plot. So elegant, so simple, four words seamlessly rearrange the entire conceptual significance of the story, and bring things to a satisfying end. The book is "The Laughing Policeman", by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, husband and wife, who wrote the Martin Beck police mystery series, ten books altogether. Almost all of the stories are set in Sweden, in Stockholm, starting in the 1960s. The characters are constantly grumpy, terse, with each other -- Swedish, I guess. This directness in dialog and the unflinching characterization it creates, is refreshing. I particularly like the series because, if you don't watch out, the authors have a way with lulling the reader into making assumptions where the plot is going, only to reveal a stunning surprise (or two) along the way that completely levels you. Often also, it is what is not described, or exactly the opposite of what is being said, that is the reality in a key scene. Sjöwall and Wahlöö are not demanding for the sake of it, but rather they expect the reader to be perceptive, and to be thinking. I was introduced to Martin Beck quite by accident, when I found a copy of "The Fire Engine That Disappeared", left behind on a train in the 1990s in San Francisco.