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Roseanna | 
| Authors: Maj Sjowall, Per Wahloo
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
Buy Used: $3.75
You Save: $9.20 (71%)
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Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 62016
Media: Paperback
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.8 x 0.5
ISBN: 067974598X
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.7374
EAN: 9780679745983
ASIN: 067974598X
Publication Date: June 29, 1993
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Cover shows some wear fast ship Cheap!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
According to Per Wahloo, the ten books he wrote with his wife, Maj Sjowall, about Inspector Martin Beck were intended to be a left-wing assault on the sacred cows of Swedish society. They are also, however, entertaining tales of mystery that allow non-Swedes to slip under the skin of another culture while having a frighteningly good time. In this first book of the series, the body of a young woman is discovered as a dredger digs a canal. There seems to be little chance of Beck identifying the woman, let alone discovering who killed her. But by combining time-honored methods of police procedure with a few local twists, Beck manages to do just that.
Product Description
On a July afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from Sweden's beautiful Lake Vattern. Three months later, all that Police Inspector Martin Beck knows is that her name is Roseanna, that she came from Lincoln, Nebraska, and that she could have been strangled by any one of eighty-five people. With its authentically rendered settings and vividly realized characters, and its command over the intricately woven details of police detection, Roseanna is a masterpiece of suspense and sadness.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 A current crime novel written in the 60's September 24, 2008
Denise Escamilla Ortiz (Mexico City, Mexico)
Although this crime novel was written in the 60's, it's still current, and yes, amazingly it doesn't feel outdated at all. It pulls you and you just have to keep on reading. You might at times get stressed thinking how come it takes so long to do this or that because we forget it happend in the 60's and there was no DNA testing back then, no mobil phones, not even fax machines! And still it is well written and the story really catches you.
 Martin Beck's a hottie! April 19, 2008
The Seeker (Washington, DC United States)
You can't beat Sjowall and Wahloo for police procedurals. This book is pretty old, but great on the 4th (and 5th and 6th) reading. Great service and price on these reissues. ~ Anne, DC
Forerunners of Henning Mankell August 21, 2007
Professor Joseph L. McCauley (Austria+Texas)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
For those who have read all of Commisar Wallender's cases there are two directions to go in. One is forward, to Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridasen, another is backward in time to the mysteries of Sjoewall and Wahloeoe. both paths should be taken! S & W write clearly in a psycho-sociological vein that must (as he admits) have influenced Mankell. In S & W there is less introspection on the part of Inspector Beck, and no parallel description (until the end) of the mentality of the criminal. But like Mankell, the criminal paints a clear psychological picture of why he acted as he did. I'm now reading my second S & W, have bought four.
This review is based on the Norwegian translation of Roseanna.
"Well, intuition isn't much help in police work January 4, 2007
Leonard Fleisig (Washington, D.C.)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
facts are what we need." Crane Wilbur
Facts are few and far between for Detective Inspector Martin Beck in "Roseanna". A girl's body is found by a dredger in a lock near Sweden's Lake Vattern. The body is naked and there are no clues as to her identity and the reasons for her death. Martin Beck is called up from Stockholm to assist the local authorities in their investigation. Through a process of time-consuming grunt work and dogged determination Beck and his colleagues try first to find the pieces to this jigsaw puzzle of a mystery. They first have to identify the dead girl. Next they have to identify the crime scene (one of a number of passenger ferries). Finally the have to identify a possible suspect out of more than eighty potential killers.
The pace of the book tracks the pace of the investigation. In the first few months of the case little progress is made. However, this affords the readers the opportunity to get a glimpse of Beck and his colleague's character and personalities as they go about the daily grind of their police work. The pace quickens and the excitement mounts as the jigsaw puzzle pieces begin to fall into place.
Roseanna was the first in a series of ten Martin Beck mysteries written by the Swedish, husband and wife team of Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall. The plot and structure of the four Beck mysteries I've read to date do not deviate from the standard format found in any well-written police procedural. However, what sets the Beck mysteries apart is their location and character development. Naturally enough, each book is a small window into Swedish life and culture in the 1960s and 1970s when the books were written. Further, as the series develops the character of Beck and his colleagues evolve and the reader slowly obtains a real feel for Beck and his fellow police officers.
Roseanna was not the best of the Beck books I've read but it was good enough that I stayed up a bit later than I should in order to finish it. Even thought this may not be the best of the bunch I do suggest that any reader new to the series start with Roseanna in order to appreciate the evolution of Beck and his family and fellow officers.
If you like police procedurals with a bit of an exotic flair you should enjoy the Martin Beck stories. They rank alongside Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin series set in Russia and Georges Simenon's Maigret stories set in France as enjoyable, well-written stories set on distant shores. Recommended. L. Fleisig
Solid Beginning to This Swedish Series February 21, 2005
A. Ross (Washington, DC)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I've long intended to check out the 10-book Martin Beck series by Swedish husband/wife team Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, and the 40th anniversary of this first book in the series seems like a good excuse. For some reason, some readers seem to think the book takes place in the '70s or late '60s, but it was written in 1963-4, published in Sweden in 1965, and appeared in English in 1967. The story begins with the discovery of a woman's corpse in Lake Vattern in central Sweden, roughly equidistant from Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Oslo. The police from the nearby town of Motala start investigating and when it's established that the woman was strangled, the homicide experts from Stockholm are called in.
Enter Martin Beck, a chain-smoking homicide detective roughly in his late 30s. Beck is a classic example of the workaholic policeman that one can find in crime fiction and film the world over. He barely speaks to his wife and children, and prefers long hard hours at the office to a home life that offers him nothing. It's such a bleak portrait that the reader is hard-pressed to imagine Beck's marriage (or lungs) surviving the series. The story is a very straightforward, and almost dry procedural account of the case. The first problem the team encounters is in identifying the victim, as she doesn't match any missing persons reports and as part of the route for touring the Gota canal system, Lake Vattern is a high-traffic tourist area, with lots of tour boats coming through. The second hurdle is that once she is identified, months have passed, and tracking down everyone who was on her tour cruise and taking statements proves very difficult. Finally, even once a suspect is identified, there's no physical evidence or eyewitness, so Beck and his laconic team must somehow force the murderer into revealing himself in another way.
As a procedural, this is a very strong book, illustrating all the police methodology available at the time. It also does a good job of showing how important it is for the detective to form a psychological portrait of the victim, a concept that was not particularly widespread forty years ago. The combination of procedure and psychology make for a decent crime novel, although the bone dry prose isn't going to enthrall anyone. The authors famously said that their books were intended to challenge conventional Swedish morality, and without revealing anything, the murder and motive in this book are clearly built around this premise. A solid beginning to a promising series.
This book was made into a film twice in Sweden, once in 1967, and again in 1993. Sadly neither of these appear to be available in English in any format.
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