The Laughing Policeman

A Martin Beck Police Mystery

De: Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö

Narrado por: Tom Weiner

On a cold and rainy Stockholm night, nine bus riders are gunned down by an unknown assassin. The press, anxious for an explanation for the seemingly random crime, quickly dubs him a madman. But Superintendent Martin Beck of the Stockholm Homicide Squad suspects otherwise. This apparently motiveless killer has managed to target one of Beck's best detectives - and he, surely, would not have been riding that lethal bus without a reason.©1998 Random House (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

• Edgar Award, Best Novel, 1971

"I've read The Laughing Policeman six or eight times. Each time I reach the final twist on the final page, I shiver afresh." (Jonathan Franzen)
"A tantalizing, intricate tale." (New York Times Book Review)

Good book, awful narrator

I really wanted to like it, but it's impossible. No idea of what the narrator was trying to do, slurring word endings an mispronouncing in a monotonous annoying voice. Skip it and read the book.

Review - Laughing Policeman

It's a classic, but a little too much pausing the action to denounce the real criminals - capitalists. Very late 1960s. Dreary too, and sexist. But hey, it moves right along. I don't regret buying it. Narrator ok.

Surprise me

I really didn’t expect this to be as good as it was lots of twist interns a bit of humor and a good story great decoration I enjoyed it.

Another good Martin Beck

Excellent performance of a very good follow-up to the previous Martin Beck procedurals. Great series.

Enjoyable

An absorbing fast paced story; well written. The implied social commentary is a little depressing.

The Laughing Policeman

A fine tuned spy caper by Maj & Per, Every character has unique edges & nuances of style. 😎

one of the great Martin Beck stories

This is a wonderful novel, one of the best in a great series. Unfortunately the narration leaves a lot to be desired - in particular the voicing of the various characters is forced and unnatural. Pity.

hard-boiled genre, not nordic noir narrator

Wrong pronunciation of Swedish names and places, slurring words and even whole sentences when imitating either Humphrey-Bogart-hard-boiled-detective-style accents or British accents. Only God knows how he even made the match between accents and characters (neither hard-boiled nor British accent have anything to do with Swedish characters). In order to understand his staccato narration + the slurred words I had to listen to this audiobook at 0.85 speed and only sometime near the end of the book I managed to figure out the names of some (not all) of the detectives (except for Martin Beck, who, luckily enough, has a very simple name). You can actually hear when he stumbled over Swedish names and had to do the recording over again. This is something I might expect from a mediocre volunteer on Librivox, not from a professional narrator working on a commercial production.

Bleak view of Swedish society, unique take on police.

The reader tried to speak differently for each character. Some of the voices were clearly fake and irritating. I won’t listen to him again.

Boring

Don't waste your time. The narrator warns you in the prologue that the authors were Marxists, and cautions that we now consider the hippy era free love to be normal behavior, blah, blah. sorry, I don't need anyone to tell me how to listen to a book.