Martin Beck: The Man on the Balcony

Steven Mackintosh stars as Martin Beck, with Neil Pearson as Lennart Kollberg, in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of The Man on the Balcony. The Martin Beck books are widely acknowledged as some of the most influential detective novels ever written. Written by Swedish husband and wife team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, the series set a gold standard for all subsequent Scandanavian crime fiction. Before Kurt Wallander or Harry Hole, Beck was the original flawed policeman, working alongside his colleagues to uncover the cruelty and injustice lurking beneath the surface of Sweden's seemingly liberal, democratic society. In The Man on the Balcony, adapted from the third book, someone is killing young girls in the parks of Stockholm. Beck has two witnesses, a mugger who won't say much and a three-year-old boy who can't say much can he solve the mystery before the killer strikes again? Translated by Alan Blair and dramatised by Katie Hims.