He tried to think of something soothing, but his thoughts kept coming back to Harald Hult, sitting there in his desolate impersonal apartment, alone and with nothing to do, wearing his uniform on his day off. A man whose life was filled with one thing -- being a policeman. Take that away from him and there'd be nothing left. Martin Beck wondered what would happen to Hult when he retired. Maybe he would just sit quietly by the window with his hands on the table until he withered away.
Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, The Abominable Man (translated by Thomas Teal, Random House 1972)
In this seventh Martin Beck mystery by Wahloo and Sjowall the "abominable man" is Chief Inspector Stig Oscar Nyman, killed by a bayonet while sick in the hospital. He had some subordinates who were loyal to him while most felt as Detective Kollberg did, "Nyman was one hell of a bad policeman. He was a barbaric son of a bitch of the very worst sort." Digging into Nyman's record Martin Beck finds many complaints about Nyman's behavior, one in particular from a policeman, Ake Eriksson, whose wife died while in custody due to Nyman's behavior; all of the complaints were dismissed when Nyman and his subordinates denied any misbehavior. The Swedish cops are worried about their own lives and finally track down Eriksson, who has fled to the roof of an office building and is picking off cops with a rifle. Martin Beck volunteers to go up on the roof to stop and subdue.
The Abominable Man is a detailed critique of policing in Sweden in the guise of a superb roman policier; each of the Wahloo/Sjorwall novels deals with some part of Swedish society and its problems, with Martin Beck usually at the center, problems that today continue in Sweden, the United States and elsewhere.
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