Maj Sjöwall was born in Stockholm in 1935. She is a poet, novelist and translator, and is best known for the ten Martin Beck novels she wrote with husband Per Wahlöö.
Per Wahlöö was born in Göteborg. After graduating from the University of Lund in 1946, he worked as a journalist, covering criminal and social issues for a number of newspapers and magazines. In the 1950s, Wahlöö became involved with radical political causes, activities that resulted in his deportation from Franco’s Spain in 1957. After returning to Sweden, he wrote a number of television and radio plays, and was managing editor of several magazines, before becoming a full-time writer.
He is best known for the series of ten Martin Beck novels he wrote with wife Maj Sjöwall, which they completed immediately before his death in 1975.
Perennial relaunches the first novel in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s – the novels that have inspired all crime fiction written ever since.
Widely recognised as the among the greatest crime fiction ever written, this is the first of a series of stories that pioneered the police procedural genre. The series was translated into 35 languages, sold over 10 million copies around the world, and inspired writers from Henning Mankell to Jonathan Franzen.
Written in 1965, Roseanna is the work of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö – a husband and wife team from Sweden, and this volume has a new introduction to help bring their work to a new audience. The novel follows the fortunes of the detective Martin Beck, whose enigmatic and taciturn character has inspired countless other policemen in crime fiction.
Roseanna begins on a July afternoon: the body of a young woman is dredged from a canal near 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 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.
‘The writing is elegant and surprisingly humorous – if you haven’t come across Beck before, you’re in for a treat.’
‘Their mysteries don’t just read well; they reread even better. Witness, wife, petty cop or crook – they’re all real characters even if they get just a few sentences. The plots hold, because they’re ingenious but never inhuman.’