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    The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (The Martin Beck series, Book 2)
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (The Martin Beck series, Book 2)
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    The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (The Martin Beck series, Book 2)
    Ebook249 pages3 hours

    The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (The Martin Beck series, Book 2)

    By Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 3, 2009
    ISBN9780007323555
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (The Martin Beck series, Book 2)
    Author

    Maj Sjowall

    Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, both left-wing journalists and politically radical, met in 1961 while working for magazines published by the same company. They married the next year and together created the Martin Beck crime series, famously writing alternate chapters at night after putting their children to bed. Wahloo died at the age of 49 just as their 10th book was going to press. Sjowall currently lives in Sweden and continues to work as a writer and translator.

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    Reviews for The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (The Martin Beck series, Book 2)

    3.5/5

    322 ratings18 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I'm starting to get used to the audio narration on this series, but I wish I could read the print versions. I really think I'd like them better. A lot was lost in translation for me in this book in the series, and it was important stuff apparently. I understood the ending of the story and the wrap up, but I have no earthly clue how Martin Beck ended up at the killer's house. I mean, what made the light bulb go on and say, "That's who did it!" But, I still like the characters of Martin Beck and his cohorts in the Swedish police department so I'll try again.
    • 2/5
      This book came as rather a disappointment. I had read numerous critical appraisals of the series of ten novels by Swedish husband and wife team, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, featuring the reserved Inspector Martin Beck, and had also enjoyed the first instalment in the series, 'Roseanna'.Here, however, Sjowall and Wahloo seemed to lose their way, being bogged down in laconic observations about the perceived quaintness of Budapest in the late 1960s, to the detriment of the plot development and characterisation. It is, of course, always difficult to establish to what extent any such shortcomings are the fault of the original book or inadequate translation. Such divination is, however, rather academic - I didn't enjoy the book and won't trouble myself with any of the others in the series.
    • 4/5
      A Swedish journalist, Alf Matsson, has gone missing in Budapest and Martin Beck is asked to go and investigate and try to locate or discern what happened to him. Having only a month long vacation on a remote island with his wife and children to look forward to, Beck readily accepts the case and after a quick investigation of the events prior to the journalist's departure he's soon following in Matsson's footsteps by jetting off to Hungary. Initial enquiries seem to lead nowhere and it's not long before it all seems like a complete waste of time. But why is someone following him around everywhere he goes?Budapest gives a great setting allowing the reader to dissect the character of Martin Beck while he struggles to be enthused by this new investigation. Later in the story we get to see more of the teamwork and camaraderie that was shown in the first book, Roseanna, as well as the dogged nature of the policework involved in actually solving a case like this. It's quite a low-key, almost meandering, plot and those who want a wham! bam! thank you, ma'am approach to their crime novels will probably be disappointed but for those looking for a series that develops it's leading characters as it progresses then you could do a lot worse than this one. My copy of the book came with a nice little introduction by Val McDermid and features about the book and on the authors (including a Q&A) and an if you liked this then you might like... snippet too. Well translated by Joan Tate.
    • 4/5

      2nd read: part of my 12x10 challenge, to read all of this series in order. Here I feel I got deeper into the story and characters, Martin Beck's peevishness at being called away from his holiday and his settling in to an investigation in Budapest, where he doesn't speak the local language. Despite that, his keen observation and methodical thinking take in enough information to make progress when he returns to Sweden. While he doesn't come over as a particularly likeable or brilliant man, a more steady respect for him is building.

      1st read:
      Interesting enough, but I read the blurb saying unputdownable, and that I will want to rush out & buy/read the decalogue... not so much. I read that Martin Beck's character develops over the books, which is good because at the moment he's a bit blank, dull.
      Coincidence time, I recently saw a tv show in Budapest, and the May picture in the calendar in the office is Budapest also...

    • 4/5
      Enjoyed this, but not as much as the first one in the series. Will definitely read number three though... the reviews of the series are always great and they all seem to clock in at 200 or so pages, so it's certainly worth it to give the next couple a shot.
    • 4/5
      A very enjoyable read. A journalist from Sweden goes missing in mid-1960s Budapest. Martin Beck must travel there on the behest of the foreign service department to see what happened to the man who went up in smoke - disappeared from his hotel with his luggage and passport still there. Good police procedural - but it is the writing and the characters that stick with you, rather than the plot.
    • 5/5
      Martin Beck circled the police station and took another route home, all the time with an unpleasant feeling he was being watched. This was something quite new to him. During his twenty-three years with the police, he had many times been involved in keeping a watch on suspected persons and shadowing them. Only now did he understand to the full what it felt like to be shadowed. To know that all the while one was being observed and watched, that every movement one made was being registered, that all the time someone was keeping himself hidden somewhere in the vicinity, following every step one took.A quite different entry in the series, in which Martin Beck is sent to Budapest on an ‘unofficial’ mission to find out what happened to a Swedish journalist who has gone missing there and has, to negotiate his way through communist society.
    • 4/5
      Beck travels to Budapest to resolve the mystery of a missing Swedish journalist. As usual, he meets an interesting set of characters, including a police inspector who he takes a while to figure out. Meanwhile sinister forces are afoot. Back in Sweden, his team continues on-the-ground research, and the small details begin to add up to possible resolutions. This isn't quite as good as the first book in the series, perhaps because of its ending and Beck's reaction to it, but the continuation of the story of Beck and his colleagues is compelling, as is the Budapest setting, which does a good job of invoking the city. The audiobook is a fine way to experience this and the length is just right. No padding here.
    • 4/5
      Jugoslavien, Budapest, juli 1966.Martin Beck er på vej på en måneds ferie med familien, men kaldes tilbage af Hammar for at undersøge en journalist, Alf Sixten Matsson, som er forsvundet i Budapest i Jugoslavien. Martin Becks børn Ingrid og Rolf er 15 og 13 år gamle.Matsson har været væk i 10 dage. Hans blad truer med at lave en ny Wallenberg sag ud af det og derfor bliver Beck sendt afsted for at se det. Matsson er separeret fra konen og hun ved i alt fald ikke hvor han er. Han ser ud til at være checket ind med bagagen på et hotel, men han har aldrig boet på værelset. Nøglen til værelset blev afleveret dagen efter af en politibetjent som hittegods. Kollberg opsporer at Matsson havde en kæreste i Budapest, men det er vist en and, for pigen Ari Boeck kender ham ikke. En ungarsk politibetjent Major Vilmoz Szluka hjælper/overvåger Beck. Det er klogt for Beck bliver overfaldet af Tatz Radeberg og Theibor Fröber (og påstår at Ari har bedt dem om det). Det viser sig at være en smuglerbande med Tatz, Theibor og Alf, som formidlere af hash og narkotika. Men selv om det er opklaret, mangler Matsson stadig, så Martin Beck kigger nu igen på Stockholm. Matsson har været et meget irriterende bekendtskab, når han var fuld og det viser sig snart at en bekendt Gunnarsson har kvalt Matsson, gemt ham i et hus - som brandvæsenet efterfølgende har brændt ned som øvelse - og har brugt hans billet til en sviptur til Ungarn. Efterfølgende har han så sneget sig hjem på et andet pas og en ny billet. Konfronteret med indicierne tilstår han.Glimrende politiroman med Beck på udebane.Oversat af Grete Juel Jørgensen, som har gjort et glimrende arbejde.
    • 4/5
      Combining the everyday drudgery of police detective work with the daily life of a police detective who has a hard time making the two fit together was, according to the notes, a departure for the genre in the 1960s. Certainly this novel, interesting if low key, is far from the English parlour detectives or the hardboiled American ones. By comparison with the flawed detectives of modern fiction, this is a slow, even plodding, story, although filled with detail that seems typical for the times. The procedural and psychological detail gives the story interest, in spite of its lack of action. Instead of a gruelling cross-examination, for example, the detectives sit in the suspect’s room for half an hour saying nothing, as the suspect grows increasingly nervous and finally accepts that he has to explain what he did. Since most criminals are not masterminds, I think that is a more likely outcome in the circumstances than the notion of a criminal toying with the detectives, leaving clues or holding out until the lawyer comes to save him.I thought the homey details were interesting – ironically, except for the place names, the Stockholm scenes could have been taking place in London or its suburbs. However, the picture of Budapest, an urbane tourist destination even under the Stalinist regime of the 1960s, with an efficient and helpful police department, was slightly surprising (possibly because of the authors’ Marxist interests). They make Budapest seem more attractive than Stockholm, which perhaps it is. Another reflection of the authors’ Marxist thinking lies in the crime and the perpetrators. There are no clever criminals here, just an unlikeable victim who got pretty much what he deserves, and a bunch of ordinary, competent people who get caught up in some unplanned violence. This is what the vast majority of crime involves. The attention that crime writers give to masterminds and elites reflects their own job as entertainers, and I do find it absurd and a little tiresome when improbable criminals are the main focus of crime writing. Interestingly, a theme in some modern crime fiction is not so much the elites committing crimes against each other, but the crimes perpetrated through pharmaceutical or industrial companies to generate wealth for the elites. Such stories, however, reflect a contemporary sentiment of mistrust against corporate elites rather than a mistrust of the corporate system. Sjöwall and Wahlöö seem to be more interested in exploring the circumstances of realistic crime and how decent, self-respecting police officers respond to it.It will be interesting to see what themes they develop in their other novels.
    • 4/5
      Another early Beck story, and the only one where the authors resort to the characteristic Simenon dodge of sending their detective off to investigate a possible crime in an exotic foreign location on a flimsy pretext. Beck is sent to Budapest to look into the disappearance of a Swedish journalist, and Sjöwall and Wahlöö take the opportunity to show us an efficient, modern socialist state being subverted by evil capitalist criminals. The story is engaging and ingenious and the tour of Budapest's most famous tourist spots is fun, but for once the political propaganda comes over as a bit too heavy-handed. Sjöwall and Wahlöö seem to be blithely oblivious to the fact that they are writing less than ten years after the brutal repression of 1956.
    • 4/5
      My local library has several BBC radio dramatizations and I usually enjoy them. This one was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on November 3, 2012. The Man Who Went Up In Smoke is one of the only two Martin Beck mysteries I have, but it's been more than two years since I read the book. The mystery itself involves a Swedish journalist who vanished without a trace while visiting Budapest, Hungary. Martin Beck is called away from his family holiday to make some discreet inquiries. (Mrs. Inga Beck obviously believes that a policeman's wife's lot is not a happy one. Her role is to complain over the phone.) Back in Sweden, Kollberg, Beck's partner does some research on his own initiative and calls Martin about the results. Martin is being followed, which has him wondering, especially after he meets Szluka, a Hungarian policeman. IHappily, I'd forgotten the solution, so I got to enjoy being surprised all over again. If you enjoy radio drama mysteries, are a Beck fan, or just like police procedurals, you might like this one. If you're not sure you want to make time to listen to this, it's only 75 minutes long.If you wish to know who played which character, this is the cast list from the back of the case:Martin Beck: Steven Mackintosh / Lennart Kollberg: Neil Pearson / Narrator 1: Lesley Sharp / Narrator 2: Nicholas Gleaves / Gunnarson: Justin Salinger / Ari Boek: Georgia Groome / Szluka: Patrick Brennan / Fröbe: Joe Sims / Inga Beck: Lucy Black / Molin: Robert Blythe / Foreign Office Man: Sam Alexander / Embassy Man: Harry Livingstone / Frau Boek: Christine Absalom / Steffi: Amaka Okafor / Radeberger: Don Gilet, and Sally Orrock as Gun Kollberg.
    • 4/5
      Poetess Sowell and her husband wrote a series of ten detective stories featuring police inspector Martin Beck. They have been well translated from the Swedish and are delightful. In this, the third of the series, Beck has abruptly been recalled from his vacation by his chief to investigate the strange disappearance in Budapest of a journalist. Afraid they might have another Wallenberg case on their hands, the Swedish Foreign Office has asked the Swedish police to begin an investigation – unofficially, of course. Beck flies off to Budapest where he is followed by the police, propositioned by a woman who claims not to have known the missing man, and where he generally stumbles around having no clue as to how to begin the investigation. The local police pretend to be unconcerned about the disappearance. The inspector becomes intrigued by the growing puzzle. Finally his poking around provokes an attempt on his life, the would-be assassins are caught, they know of the missing man and the case begins to come together. The writing in Sowells books reminds me very much of the great Maigret stories by George Simenon, one of my favorite authors. These are extremely enjoyable mysteries.
    • 4/5
      Crime was much more tawdry 1969. Today a crime novel is likely to begin with an incident of domestic violence or a drunken brawl and end with the exposure of an international drug ring that's used as a front to raise money for former Nazi officers now secretly carrying out experiments on the children of illegal immigrants. Since the detective novel became respectable literature, the crimes contained there-in have grown more despicable. One senses that each generation of novelists feels that have to go to greater lengths to find readership and respectability. Since detective novels follow a largely pre-determined format, one of the few variables available is the intensity and extent of the crime under investigation. This is probably a much more significant issue for police procedurals than other detective novels. There are all sorts of oddball characters one can turn into detectives in a pinch, but for a modern police procedural, the detective, by definition must be a police officer. This leads to the invention of crimes so creative that they strain credulity. Joseph Mengele hiding out in the Brazilian rain forest raising an army of Hitler clones. Honestly. It's just gotten worse since Boys from Brazil.This is a long way of working around to the main reason why The Man Who Went up in Smoke was such a refreshing novel, though it was first published in 1969. Instead of a small crime leading to the exposure of an international ring of evildoers, it takes the opposite arc. Police Detective Martin Beck is called in to investigate the disappearence of a newspaper journalist who left for a trip to Hungary and never returned. Evidence points towards his involvement in an international drug ring among other possiblities, but in the end Detective Beck discovers the journalist fell victim to baser passions. These baser passions turn out to be nothing out of the ordinary. In reality, most murders are tawdry affairs. Fights that could have been avoided. Simple revenge over petty greiviences. Domestic arguments that went much too far. If money is involved at all, it's usually not very much. An attempt to rob a convenience store gone horribly wrong.In a way, that fact is much more shocking than an interantional ring of drug trading fascists. Murder at its most fowl is also at its most ordinary.
    • 5/5
      Martin Beck has just begun his holiday: an August spent with his family 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. 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.Martin Beck could not remember ever being given such a hopeless, meaningless assignment and there are several times after he arrives in Budapest when he feels useless, directionless, as if there is something he ought to be doing, but has no idea what. He contrasts it with his previous case where his involvement in solving a murder had become a personal need. Inwardly he cursed the strange impulse that had made him take on this pointless assignment. The possibilities of his solving the case became more and more remote. He was alone and without an idea in his head. And if, on the other hand, he had had any ideas, he would have lacked resources to implement them.He knows of course why he has taken this case on - "a kind of occupational disease that forced him to take on all assignments and do his best to solve them." And then he realises he is being followed and the followers make the mistake of attacking him. Beck realises he is on the track of something even though at that point he is not sure what. What he refers to as his "policeman's soul" kicks in, and he begins to see connections, and ideas begin to generate.This is a fascinating read. At about the same time as Martin Beck comes alive with this case, the author tricks the reader into seeing what Beck sees, coming to a similar conclusion. It is hard to explain how this happens, but the story proceeds with pace from that point. And then it all comes together!
    • 4/5
      The Man Who Went Up in Smoke is #2 in the series featuring Inspector Martin Beck. It's his vacation time, and his family has taken a cottage on an island off the coast of Sweden. But only a day into vacation time, he's recalled to work for an important case. It seems that the foreign office is concerned about a missing journalist, Alf Matsson, who was last seen in Budapest. While Beck's not clear as to why the foreign office should be so concerned, he takes on the case, starting in Matsson's last-known location. But other than where he was last seen, he really has no clue as to how he's going to find the missing man. He has to solve the case on the fly -- but his questions attract the attention of the police and people who knew Matsson, and he can't decide which group to trust. To be honest, I liked the previous book (Roseanna) better, but this one was also good, not so much for the mystery, but because of the character of Martin Beck. At times he seems like a bit of a bumbler, but he's very smart, catching criminals off guard with his innate cleverness. There are a few humorous moments as well, and the scenes with his wife are really enjoyable. I can definitely recommend this book to anyone who is considering continuing in the series, or to anyone who enjoys a good mystery which is a cut above the normal stuff out there on the shelves. The Scandinavians can definitely write -- they are fast becoming my favorite group of mystery writers. Overall -- enough of a good read to make me want to continue the series.
    • 4/5
      Much Better.Partly I think the change of translator has helped, but also the prose has improved as well. There is still little sign of the notable social commentry, or the wider focus on larger police deptments.Beck gets called away from the start of his holiday to hunt for a missing person. A journalist by the name of Mattsson hasn't been heard from for a couple of weeks. He was last seen in Budapest in Hungary. Beck flies out and spends a week exploring and attempting to talk to people. He finds out something about Matteson's character and the local constabulary before returning home.The descriptions are better, the plot moves faster, Beck's ideosynracies with boats are developed a little more. There seems to be a requirement to invoke graphic sexual scenes into the plot, that these days wouldn't be so comnon in an otherwise dryish crime story. The typical family breakdown is notable again - although at the time it wasn't typical.Much better than the last but still hardly inspirational. It's short which is an added bonus I suppose, and I can guarentee you won't spot the plot twist until it happens at the end.
    • 3/5
      Okay, I guess, but for my initial Sjöwall and Wahlöö read I was thoroughly underwhelmed with Martin Beck and the book as a whole. There is a lot of high praise between the Introduction and best-selling author quotes so I expected much, much better.I found none of the characters particularly likable or interesting, they were fairly one-dimensional, although Kollberg and Major Szluka had potential as did the German baddies in Budapest. Kollberg aside, I wouldn’t think any of the others would reappear in the series (unfortunately).On the plus side, it was a shorter story so a fast read.