The police had at last go hold of a loose end of thread, and with the aid of the well-oiled and ruthlessly efficient investigation machinery they soon unraveled the relatively simple tangle concerning Igemund Fransson's past. They had already been in touch with about a hundred persons: neighbors, shopkeepers, social workers, doctors, army officers , clergymen, temperate adminstrators and many others. The picture cleared up very quickly.
Per Wahloo and Maj Sjorwall, The Man in the Balcony (translated by Alan Blair, Random House, 1968)
This is the third of the Wahloo/Sjowall police procedurals, with Martin Beck the most important of the police. Little girls are being killed in parks in Stockholm and the police are getting nowhere until Beck remembers a call several weeks ago about a man standing on a balcony whose description sounds like the vague description they have of a possible suspect. But the only thing they know is that the caller was a woman named Andersson and there are over ten thousand Anderssons in Stockholm. So the methodical search begins for the witness and they only find her by accident, when a young police officer hears someone in a delicatessen referred to as "Mrs. Andersson."
The Man on the Balcony is a riveting story of the routine length the police have to go through to solve a crime, something still common in these days of cell phones and computers, as well as the personal toll it takes on the lives of the policemen, of whom there are never enough. The authors also continue their critique of Sweden in the sixties, including the burden of homelessness caused by "bungled community planning that has resulted in an acute housing shortage."
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