The Man Who Went Up In Smoke, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Another Swedish police mystery. Good, not great. Certainly Roseanna resonated stronger with me. Although the atmospheric and detailed Budapest sequences, of which there are many since the story takes place almost entirely in Budapest, make for great reading especially if you are interested in that part of the world and know little of the city (I am one). How’s that for a sentence that begs to be divided? I sense that Mankell co-opted the “police detective forced to find his way around a different (Eastern bloc) country while investigating a murder/disappearance” when he wrote The Dogs of Riga. I really like these books. They are about as real as it gets. Not really a spoiler - the end sums it up for me when Beck’s wife asks him, “how are you really?” and he responds, “not well.” He’s not well not because of the horror of what he’s dealt with (or maybe he is…) but I think because he’s beaten down by the nihilistic nature of the world. Like Faceless Killers (by Mankell), this book seeps with a mood existential. I’m on to number three in this series, The Man On the Balcony. I’m also muscling through the brobdingnagian, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997 by Piers Brendon and a collection of essays by Christopher Hitchens. Hence my absence. Cheers.