The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

First English edition
Author	Sjöwall and Wahlöö
Original title	Mannen som gick upp i rök
Translator	Joan Tate[1]
Country	Sweden
Language	Swedish
Series	Martin Beck series
Publisher	Norstedts Förlag (Swedish) Pantheon Books (English)
Publication date	1966
Published in English	1969
Pages	189 pp
Preceded by	Roseanna
Followed by	The Man on the Balcony

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966) is a novel by Sjöwall and Wahlöö in their detective series revolving around Martin Beck and his team. (Original Swedish title: Mannen som gick upp i rök.)

Plot

Beck returns to work and travels to Hungary to search for a missing journalist called Alf Matsson. After meeting the Budapest police and the criminal underground, he begins to wonder if Matsson ever entered the country.

Synopsis

The novel, set in the 1960s, is about a Swedish journalist called Alf Matsson, who disappeared without a trace in Hungary. He was commissioned by a Swedish newspaper to fly to Budapest to conduct an interview with a boxer and report on political events. Since Matsson has not reported for a week, the hotel he is staying in reports to the case to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, the case must be handled discreetly because the Ministry fear political entanglements. The Stockholm police is tasked with finding the missing reporter, and send Martin Beck, who sacrifices his vacation to go to Budapest.

Beck finds in the Budapest Hotel that Matsson left the hotel without a passport and luggage on the day of his arrival, and since then has been unseen. The Hungarian police is not willing to do much, but Martin Beck then meets a Hungarian policeman who helps him with the case. Since there is neither evidence nor any trace of Matsson, white Beck does not know what to do. But one night he is attacked on the riverside by unknown people. He survives thanks to the Budapest Police and the perpetrators are caught.

Characters and their development

Beck and Kollberg have their first, short run-in with detective Backlund of the Malmö police force, who lacks the imagination required for his line of work, for which he thinks bureaucracy is a replacement.

It might be argued that Beck and his wife are already getting estranged. It only takes the flimsiest amounts of passive-aggressiveness from his superiors to make him give up his holiday, even though both make clear to him that he does not have to go if he does not want to. Although he reflects on his marriage several times (as does the narrator on marriage in general), he does not draw any conclusions yet.

Film adaptation

The novel was adapted to film in 1980. The film was in Hungarian and Derek Jacobi played the role of Martin Beck.^[2]

References