Roseanna, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

I said I was going to go back to one of the books I started earlier this year but have yet to finish, and I did read one more chapter of Ivo Andrić's Bosnian Chronicle (I still hope to finish it this year), but then I decided to do the other thing I said I might do, which was read one of the Sjöwall/Wahlöö Martin Beck mysteries. Maj Sjöwall died in May of this year, having outlived Per Wahlöö by 45 years, which somehow strikes me as really sad. I'm a completist by nature, which means that my impulse when approaching novel series is always to start at the beginning. With mystery novels, this usually isn't strictly necessary, but it's hard for me to do otherwise. In fact, I think this impulse sometimes keeps me from reading mystery novels because I feel I must start in the right place, and then what if I don't have book two? And perhaps I wait until I have a good chunk of the series from the beginning before I start, which means I never start because the way I acquire books is mostly happenstance.*

With Martin Beck, I broke my own rule. I don't think I ever thought I would read others in the series, or perhaps when I read The Locked Room (the eighth of ten in the series) I didn't even know it was part of a series. I can't remember. It seems to me that I had gotten it into my head that The Locked Room was an important book. At the time, I think I'd read very few mystery novels and also was not completely hooked on BBC mystery TV programs. Although I had previously read -- many years before -- Paul Auster's The Locked Room, I didn't know "the locked room" as a mystery trope. I thought it was all down to this book. But Sjöwall/Wahlöö's The Locked Room is a lot more than a locked room mystery. The detectives get it wrong -- and it's truly satisfying. (I always say I love TV murder mysteries because there's a formula and you know you will have the satisfaction of a resolution in 45-90 minutes. My appetite in books is different, and I wonder if I would enjoy The Locked Room if it were a TV program?) 

Anyway, several years ago, I read The Locked Room. I liked it. I moved on. Then, a couple months ago I found Roseanna at my local Little Free Library. A few weeks after that, I found the second of the Martin Beck novels, The Man Who Went Up In Smoke at a thrift store. So, here I am with the first two books in the series and my impulse toward completion and a couple days ago I decided to start at the beginning. I didn't think Roseanna was nearly as interesting as The Locked Room, but I enjoyed reading it and found particular satisfaction in picking out clues as it went along. I don't think I'll jump right into book two, but at least I have it for when the mood strikes.

* They're not mysteries, but for years, I've intended to read Émile Zola's complete Rougon-Macquart books. Of the 20 book cycle, I have 13, including the first but not the second. I've actually already read books 8 and 17, but this completist impulse makes me feel I need to start at the top and proceed from there. Maybe 2021 will be my Zola year? (I say this every year. If anyone wants to start a Zola book club, please ... join me.)