In want of some light reading material for a vacation my wife and I had planned to take back in March to visit family, I opted for a few of the Martin Beck mystery novels I hadn’t read before. It’s a ten-part police procedural series known as The Story of a Crime, written by the legendary Swedish-Marxist couple Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Incidentally, Sjöwall recently died, though it wasn’t Covid-19 related. Set in 1960s Sweden, each installment, not unlike the TV show The Wire, tackles a different sociological problem through the lens of Marxism, while still managing to follow traditional detective tropes. In short, perfect for beach reading!
Of course, the vacation never happened, postponed indefinitely. I made my way through the books not on the beach but at our kitchen table, or on the couch, or lying in bed, in between working from home, which I began deeming homing-from-work (due to the near impossibility of demarcating workspaces in in our small, one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment.)
Murder at the Savoy tells of the assassination of a powerful businessman looped in illegal arms dealing, and how the perpetrators get away largely because instead of making a crucial arrest, the cops were arguing with the father of a toddler who supposedly shouted an insult at them in passing (“pigs!”). The Locked Room reads at times like a metafictional commentary on that classic subgenre. In this case, a suicide that wasn’t, that occurred in a locked apartment. But it’s a passage from the Abominable Man that I’ve found myself returning to several times now, which is perhaps not surprising since the novel takes up the perennial problem of police brutality as its subject. The conversation between Beck and another officer below is as relevant today as it was back in the late '60s (in Sweden, no less!), especially in light of the recent protests and demonstrations in solidarity for black communities.
"Because everyone knows it's pointless to report a policeman. The general public has no legal rights vis-a-vis the police. And if you can't win a case against an ordinary patrolman, then how in the world could you win a case against a chief inspector?"
"You're exaggerating."
"Not much, Martin. Not much, and you know it as well as I do. It's just that our damned solidarity has become some kind of second nature. We're impregnated with esprit de corps."
"It's important to keep up a good front in this job," said Martin Beck. "It always has been."
"And pretty soon it'll be the only thing left."
Kollberg caught his breath before he went on.
"Okay. The police stick together. That's axiomatic. But stick together against whom?"
"The day someone answers that question ..."
With serious conversations now happening in regard to the reallocation of resources, budget cuts, and other measures of police reform, let us hope we can answer that question one day soon.
Christopher Urban is a writer living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in n+1, The Threepenny Review, The Paris Review Daily, Los Angeles Review of Books, The TLS, and elsewhere.
Of course, the vacation never happened, postponed indefinitely. I made my way through the books not on the beach but at our kitchen table, or on the couch, or lying in bed, in between working from home, which I began deeming homing-from-work (due to the near impossibility of demarcating workspaces in in our small, one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment.)
Murder at the Savoy tells of the assassination of a powerful businessman looped in illegal arms dealing, and how the perpetrators get away largely because instead of making a crucial arrest, the cops were arguing with the father of a toddler who supposedly shouted an insult at them in passing (“pigs!”). The Locked Room reads at times like a metafictional commentary on that classic subgenre. In this case, a suicide that wasn’t, that occurred in a locked apartment. But it’s a passage from the Abominable Man that I’ve found myself returning to several times now, which is perhaps not surprising since the novel takes up the perennial problem of police brutality as its subject. The conversation between Beck and another officer below is as relevant today as it was back in the late '60s (in Sweden, no less!), especially in light of the recent protests and demonstrations in solidarity for black communities.
"Because everyone knows it's pointless to report a policeman. The general public has no legal rights vis-a-vis the police. And if you can't win a case against an ordinary patrolman, then how in the world could you win a case against a chief inspector?"
"You're exaggerating."
"Not much, Martin. Not much, and you know it as well as I do. It's just that our damned solidarity has become some kind of second nature. We're impregnated with esprit de corps."
"It's important to keep up a good front in this job," said Martin Beck. "It always has been."
"And pretty soon it'll be the only thing left."
Kollberg caught his breath before he went on.
"Okay. The police stick together. That's axiomatic. But stick together against whom?"
"The day someone answers that question ..."
With serious conversations now happening in regard to the reallocation of resources, budget cuts, and other measures of police reform, let us hope we can answer that question one day soon.
Christopher Urban is a writer living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in n+1, The Threepenny Review, The Paris Review Daily, Los Angeles Review of Books, The TLS, and elsewhere.
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