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Written by: Lauren Valerio
Murder? Check. Mystery? Check. Twist Ending? Two thumbs up! If anything should be acknowledged about Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s police mystery novel, The Locked Room, the authors’ psychological presentation of each character’s ending should be noted.
The novel begins in Sweden circa the early 1970’s. It follows two storylines: one being a murder-robbery combination which is followed by detective inspectors, Gunvald Larsson and Einar Rönn, and the second being a “suicide” mystery which is followed by detective chief inspector of the National Homicide Squad, Martin Beck.
The first storyline was my favorite. The story followed the tale of an unknown “female” character who has committed both a robbery and a murder within the first ten pages. After this occurrence, you never see or hear from this girl again. The story then follows the two inspectors and their two suspects, Malmström and Mohrén.
Malmström and Mohrén are both previous criminals who have committed crimes in a similar fashion before. This leads the inspectors to believe they are partially, if not entirely, involved with the planning of the murder-robbery.
This case takes up a majority of the novel and, upon finishing the book, it is evident as to why the background of this story is significant.
The second storyline was my least favorite and portrayed the tale a dead man, Svärd, who was found shot in his apartment. The catch? Every single door and window in the apartment was locked from the inside and there is no gun or weapon found anywhere within the room.
The police squad writes this off as a minor detail and entitles the report a suicide. Martin Beck, on the other-hand, will not believe this to be a suicide for one second, but how can he prove it otherwise?
This storyline for the case was extremely clever and well presented, while the storyline following the chief inspector on the case, Martin Beck, seemed a bit out of place. His determination as a character is his only admirable quality. His interaction with other characters is usually short with flairs of his aggressive side.
This contradicts one main interaction he has while obtaining information about the murder/suicide suspect, Svärd. This interaction between Svärd’s previous landlord and Martin Beck, besides what is needed for the case, is completely unnecessary.
There are random scenes of her standing naked in front of Beck, which does not add to the murder case and does not add to the relationship later formed by the two characters. Unfortunately, this storyline was lost quite a couple times throughout the novel to the previous robbery case. This occurred so many times that references to specific people involved in this case could potentially be forgotten by readers.
Overall the book is well presented. Chapters are typically short and easy to read for those not interested in long chapters.
The only chapter that was fairly long occurred towards the end where the evidence of the two cases is presented and the cases are brought to an end.
Most chapters end with cliffhangers, questions or new information which catches a reader’s attention and has them crazing for more.
The authors’ writing creates so much suspense with mysterious characters, unknown storylines and occurrences that are later explained to the reader.
One thing that I liked about the authors was how a situation would be presented that a reader would formulate questions about and sometime after, these questions would be addressed. A reader was never left to ponder what the author was talking about.
The novels portrayal of the psychological habits of characters truly made the novel an enjoyable read, especially at the end of the novel.
In the end, the book presents a different side to the criminal murder-mystery novel that this reader had never encountered before.
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