Cop Killer (1974)

Near the end now of Maj Sjöwall's and Per Wahlöö's Story of Crime series, and main characters are making various life decisions. The police detective Martin Beck has risen high in the ranks, and even become a bit of a celebrated public figure. At first I took the title as another nod to Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series (which started with Cop Hater and had a small run with "Killer" in the title). But it's actually more of an involuted double entendre. Some cop killing does go on here—technically not really, but the details are there to be discovered—which produces a ludicrous but easily imagined overreaction on the part of the national Swedish police force. Indeed, the brooding ruminations on police power across the series reach a certain crescendo in this one. The title is also a way to describe a policeman who has killed, along the way distinguishing it as well from policemen prone to such actions, which would be more like "Killer Cop." The cop killer in this case is Beck's friend Lennart Kollberg. In spite of recent police rules mandating it, Kollberg has long refused to carry a firearm except in the most extreme circumstances. He was involved in an accidental killing early in his career which he deeply regrets. The main case at hand in Cop Killer, however, is the disappearance of a woman living next door to a known sex criminal. In fact, he's known to us too—from Roseanne, the first novel in the series. It's part of tying the whole series together, but feels a little strained as a plot element. On the other hand, the situation with the sex criminal actually has some interesting wrinkles. We see the crime in the carefully written first chapter, and see enough to know it could be but isn't necessarily him. Beck and Kollberg come to believe he is innocent and the case is interesting and fair. However, the B story, which is the confrontation that produces a dead cop, becomes the more interesting story (even though it comes in so late) because that's where police force militarism is examined most closely and lampooned without mercy. Part of the interest here, and much of my own in police procedurals, is the inherent tension of police power—its ability to routinize and stabilize daily life and its enormous potential for abuse. Those are the themes Sjöwall and Wahlöö are best on in this one.

In case it's not at the library.