Sunday, June 12, 2011

The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (Vintage Books 1968)


"How I loathe that bastard," Gunvald Larsson muttered suddenly.
"What?"
"I'll tell you something I've never said to anyone else," Gunvald Larsson confided. "I feel sorry for nearly everyone we meet in this job. They're just a lot of scum who wish they'd never been born. It's not their fault that everything goes to hell and they don't understand why. It's types like this one who wreck their lives. Smug swine who think only of their money and their houses and their families and their so-called status. Who think they can order others about merely because they happen to be better off. There are thousands of such people and most of them are not so stupid that they strangle Portuguese whores. And that's why we never get at them. We only see their victims. This guy's an exception."
"Hm, maybe you're right," Rönn said.