Gunvald Larsson sits carefully observing the dingy Stockholm apartment of a guy under police monitoring. He talks about his view: nine moments past eleven at night. At that same instant, the house explodes, eliminating at least three people. Chief Inspector Martin Beck and his guys don’t believe arson or murder until they locate a peculiar situation linking the explosion to a suicide dedicated that same time. The dead guy left a note consisting of just two terms: Martin Beck.

This is the excellent next installment from the genre-pioneering Martin Beck detective series in the 1960s, more popular as the best masterpieces of crime fiction ever written.