Showing posts with label R1966. Show all posts
Showing posts with label R1966. Show all posts

Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (Vintage Crime/ Black Lizard 1966)


Martin Beck inspected his fellow passengers gloomily. His expedition had been a failure. There was nothing to indicate that Ari Boeck had not been telling the truth.
Inwardly he cursed the strange impulse that had made him take on this pointless assignment. The possibilities of his solving the case became more and more remote. He was alone and without an idea in his head. And if, on the other hand, he had had any ideas, he would have lacked resources to implement them.
The worst of it was that, deep down within himself, he knew that he had not been guided by any kind of impulse at all. It was just his policeman's soul—or whatever it might be called—that had started to function. It was the same instinct that made Kollberg sacrifice his time off—a kind of occupational disease that forced him to take on all assignments and do his best to solve them.

Monday, August 16, 2010

The Blinder by Barry Hines (Penguin Books 1966)


He stormed out and slammed the door. Lennie took a wad of notes from his pocket and broke the brown paper seal. He stuffed them into a loose heap in his pocket, then walked out of the room and up the stairs to the directors' box at the front of the centre stand. The people sitting at the back saw him first and the information spread quickly downwards to the front. Mr Leary turned and stood up. Lennie stepped down past the ends of two rows and threw a crushed handful of money at him. The ball broke and scattered like confetti. He threw a second ball, squeezed tighter so that more would carry. A roar filled the stand and everyone's head whipped round, freezing the scene like a photograph. Grey, and tweed, and fur caught sitting and standing and crouching, all with their bodies turned to Lennie, their faces to the pitch. Les Adams was stooping into the back of the net to retrieve the ball. The United team were rejoicing in a heap. Lennie turned away and walked down the steps out of the ground.