The Laughing Policeman

Начало книги

The Laughing Policeman is the only Swedish novel ever to have been made into a Hollywood movie. The film appeared in 1973, five years after the book's Swedish publication, and starred Walter Matthau, transposing the story to San Francisco. It's not hard to see what attracted Hollywood's attention. In an austerely realistic setting, Sjöwall and Wahloo begin their story with a tour de force. A bus crashes in a quiet Stockholm street On board are the driver and eight passengers. All of them are dead, except for one critically injured passenger. They have all been shot. One of the dead is Åke Stenström, a young police detective. He was off-duty but carrying a pistol. What was he doing on the bus? Was his presence there a coincidence? He was sitting next to a young nurse: did he know her? Was he having an affair with her? (Absurdly, the filmmakers dispel much of the mystery in advance by beginning not with the bus crash but with the events leading up to it, answering questions in the opening sequence that, in the book, are only answered late in the story.)

Читать дальше →