Skrattande reporter

Stig Halvard Dagerman (5 October – 4 November ) was a Swedish reporter and writer. He was one of the most prominent Swedish authors writing in the aftermath of WWII, but his existential texts transcend time and place and continue to be widely published in Sweden and abroad. Stig Dagerman was born in Älvkarleby, Uppsala County. In the course of fem years, –49, he enjoyed phenomenal success with kvartet novels, a collection of short stories, a book about postwar Germany, fem plays, hundreds of poems and satirical verses, several essays of note and a large amount of journalism. Then, with apparent suddenness, he fell silent. In the fall of , Sweden was stunned to learn that Stig Dagerman, the epitome of his generation of writers, had been found dead in his car: he had closed the doors of the garage and run the an's works deal with universal problems of morality and conscience, of sexuality and social philosophy, of love, compassion and justice. He plunges into the painful realities of human existence, dissecting feelings of fear, guilt and loneliness. Despite the somber content, he also displays a wry sense of humor that occasionally turns his writing into burlesque or satire.“An

Den skrattande polisen

September 2,

Laughter is hard to find in The Laughing Policeman, a singularly grim police procedural that centers around a Swedish police team’s investigation of a mass murder that took place on board a bus in Stockholm. Such a scenario might seem counterintuitive, because we all know that Sweden is one of the safest countries on Earth. Yet Stockholm, such a beautiful and sedate city, is also a city of extremes - so sunny and warm in the summer, so dark and cold in the winter - and therefore it is an eminently suitable setting for a murder mystery.

Nowadays, the Stockholm murder mysteries that are all the rage are Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels; but forty years before Larsson, the writing team of Maj Sjövall and Per Wahlöö created their own powerful series of mystery novels, centering around the phlegmatic and taciturn Martin Beck and his fellow Stockholm homicide detectives. And it may be that the best-known of the Sjövall-Wahlöö team’s Martin Beck novels is the fourth book in the series, ’s The Laughing Policeman.

If The Laughing Policeman is one of the better-known of Sjövall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck novels, that may be in part because it

The Laughing Policeman

Writer and journalist Maj Sjöwall was born in Sweden in She was a reporter and art director at several newspapers and magazines. From to , she was an editor with the publishing house Wahlström and Widstrad. She met Per Wahlöö in and they married the following year. Together they wrote all ten novels in the Martin Beck Police Mystery series from to In , The Laughing Policeman (a translation of Den Skrattande Polisen) won an Edgar Award for Best Novel.

Writer and journalist Per Wahlöö was born in Sweden on August 5, He graduated from the University of Lund in and found work covering criminal and social issues for numerous newspapers and magazines. He also wrote a number of television and radio plays and was managing editor for several magazines. His first book, Himmelsgeten, was published in and numerous novels followed. He also wrote all ten novels in the Martin Beck Police Mystery series with his wife Maj Sjöwall. In , The Laughing Policeman (a translation of Den Skrattande Polisen) won an Edgar Award for Best Novel. He died from cancer on June 22,