The Laughing Policeman.

MAJ AND PER WAHLOO SJOWALL

Publication: Pantheon Books, 1970, New York

First U.S. edition. Translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair. Fine, bright copy in price-clipped dust jacket. Martin Beck mystery. One blustery November evening someone guns down eight occupants on a Stockholm bus ... one of whom was a colleague of Martin Beck's. Who was the murderer and what was his motive? Why was the policeman on board? And did he know the young nurse sitting next to him? Edgar Award Winner for Best Mystery novel of 1970. This story is the basis for the gritty, realistic 1973 police procedural film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, and a young Louis Gossett, Jr.