Maj Sjöwall has 11 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 9 ratings. The most-rated is Roseanna.
Roseanna
Summary
On a July afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from Sweden's beautiful Lake Vättern. 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 85 people. As the melancholic Beck narrows down the list of likely suspects, he is drawn increasingly to the enigma of the victim, a free-spirited traveler with a penchant for the casual sexual encounter, and to the psychopathology of a murderer with a distinctive - indeed, terrifying - sense of propriety. With its authentically rendered settings, vividly realized characters, and command over the intricately interwoven details of police detection, Roseanna is a masterpiece of suspense and sadness.
©1967 Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (P)2008 Blackstone Audio
The Laughing Policeman
Summary
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.
The Locked Room
Summary
A young blonde in sunglasses robs a bank and kills a hapless citizen. Across town, a corpse with a bullet shot through its heart is found in a locked room - with no gun at the scene. The crimes seem disparate, but to Martin Beck, they are two pieces of the same puzzle, and solving it becomes the one way he can escape the pains of his failed marriage and the lingering effects of a near-fatal bullet wound.Exploring the ramifications of egotism and intellect, luck and accident, this tour de force of detection bears the unmistakable substance and gravity of real life.
©1972 Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö; Translation copyright © 1973 by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke
Summary
His holiday with his family has just begun, but a phone call sends Martin Beck packing off to Budapest, where a boorish journalist has vanished without a trace. With the aid of the coolly efficient local police, who do business while soaking at the public baths, Beck must troll about in the Eastern Europe underworld for a man nobody knows - while he is at the risk of vanishing along with his quarry.The Man Who Went Up in Smoke gives us the dedicated Beck at his most engaging: indulging in the sumptuous Hungarian cuisine, longing for a decent cigarette, and evading a predatory nymphet, even as he pursues a case whose international boundaries grow with every new clue.
©1997 Random House, Inc. (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Martin Beck Stories
Summary
The Martin Beck books are widely acknowledged as some of the most influential detective novels ever written. Written by Swedish husband and wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö between 1965 and 1975, the 10-book series set a gold standard for all subsequent Scandinavian crime fiction. Long before Kurt Wallander or Harry Hole, Beck was the original flawed policeman, working with a motley collection of colleagues to uncover the cruelty and injustice lurking beneath the surface of Sweden's seemingly liberal, democratic society. This complete collection includes: Roseanna (1965) - translated by Lois Roth and dramatised by Jennifer Howarth. The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966) - translated by Joan Tate and dramatised by Katie Hims. The Man on the Balcony (1967) - translated by Alan Blair and dramatised by Katie Hims. The Laughing Policeman (1968) - translated by Alan Blair and dramatised by Jennifer Howarth. The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969) - translated by Joan Tate and dramatised by Katie Hims. Murder at the Savoy (1970) - translated by Amy and Ken Knoespel and dramatised by Jennifer Howarth. The Abominable Man (1971) - translated by Thomas Teal and dramatised by Katie Hims. The Locked Room (1972) - translated by Alan Blair and dramatised by Jennifer Howarth. Cop Killer (1974) - translated by Thomas Teal and dramatised by Jennifer Howarth. The Terrorists (1975) - translated by Joan Tate and dramatised by Katie Hims.
©2017 Maj Sjowell and Per Whaloo (P)2017 Penguin Random House
The Man on the Balcony
Summary
Someone is killing young girls in the once-peaceful parks of Stockholm - killing them after having his way. The people of Stockholm are tense and fearful. Police Superintendent Martin Beck has two witnesses: a cold-blooded mugger who won't say much and a three-year-old boy who can't say much. The dedicated work of the police force seems to be leading nowhere, and with each passing day, the likelihood of another murder grows. But then Beck remembers someone - or something - he overheard.
©1996 Random House, Inc. (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Abominable Man
Summary
The bloody murder of a police captain in his hospital room exposes the particularly unsavory history of a man who spent 40 years practicing a horrible blend of strong-arm police work and shear brutality. Nonetheless, Martin Beck and his colleagues scour Stockholm for the murderer, a demented and deadly rifleman.As the tension builds and a feeling of impending danger grips Beck, his investigation unearths evidence of police corruption. That's when an even stronger sense of responsibility and something like shame urge him into taking a series of drastic steps, which lead to a shocking disaster.
©1971 Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Translation copyright 1972 by Random House, Inc. (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Terrorists
Summary
The Terrorists is the last Martin Beck mystery, finished just a few weeks before Per Wahlöö’s death. The book is, in effect, a marvelous summing up of the series. The story centers on the visit of an American senator to Stockholm. Martin Beck tries to protect him from an international gang of terrorists, while they decide that Beck too should be removed from the scene. Interwoven with this basic story are two fascinating subplots. One, a classic mini-mystery, is the story of a millionaire pornographer bludgeoned to death in his own bathtub. The other is the story of a young girl, a Swedish hippie caught up unexpectedly in the maze of police bureaucracy. As in other Martin Beck books, the plot comes together in a totally unexpected climax.
©1976 Translation by Random House, Inc. (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Fire Engine That Disappeared
Summary
The cunning incendiary device that blew the roof off a Stockholm apartment not only interrupted the small, peaceful orgy underway inside, it nearly took the lives of the building's 11 occupants. And if one of Martin Beck's colleagues hadn't been on the scene, the explosion would have led to a major catastrophe because, for reasons nobody could satisfactorily explain, a regulation fire truck has vanished. Was it terrorism, suicide, or simply a gas leak? And what if, anything, did the explosion have to do with the peculiar death earlier that day of a forty-six-year-old bachelor whose cryptic suicide note consisted of only two words: "Martin Beck"?
©1970 Random House, Inc. (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Cop Killer
Summary
The thrilling ninth installment in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s - the novels that have inspired all crime fiction written ever since. In this penultimate installment of the series, Beck is drawn into a case that turns up mysterious echoes of his past cases.Now head of the National Murder Squad, Beck is called in to a sleepy Swedish town to investigate a woman's disappearance. When she is found already murdered, her body dredged from the bottom of a lake, suspicions swirl around arrest Folke Bengtsson, the killer Beck caught in the first novel of the series for committing a similar murder, and who has since been released. But Beck is beginning to doubt that Bengtsson is guilty of any murder at all.
©1975 Random House, Inc. (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Murder at the Savoy
Summary
When Viktor Palmgren, a powerful Swedish industrialist, is shot during his after-dinner speech in the luxurious Hotel Savoy, it sends a shiver down the spine of the international money markets and puts the tiny town of Malmö on edge. No one can identify the gunman when Martin Beck takes over the scene and finds a web so despicable that it's hard to imagine who wouldn't want Palmgren dead.
©1971 Random House, Inc. (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.