Inspector Martin Beck, 7

At one end of The Abominable Man sits a gruesome murder. A sick man, perhaps on his deathbed, returns to his hospital room late at night only to get savagely ripped in two by an assailant armed with a gun and bayonet. At the other end is series of police campaigns, each more desperate than the last, to capture the murderer who has holed up on the hospital roof. A specially trained commando is shot dead. Martin Beck, perhaps riven with guilt, goes to the roof himself and is gunned down. Finally, the massively incompetent police must turn to the unlikeliest set of partners imaginable, Lennart Kollberg and Gunvald Larsson, to put an end to the carnage.

What lies between these bookends is an investigation that reveals decades of sanctioned police brutality. That, and the uncomfortable feeling that justice was on the murderer’s side all along.

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