A Necessary Action (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

From Per Wahlöö—co-author with his wife, Maj Sjöwall, of the internationally bestselling Martin Beck series of mysteries—comes a suspense novel about a former German soldier wanted for questioning about a murder in Spain.

 

Willi Mohr--former German soldier, starving artist, enigmatic drifter--is arrested by the police and subjected to a lengthy and perplexing interrogation. Unwillingly, he is drawn back to the previous year he spent in Spain, the mysterious death of a Norwegian couple he shared a house with and his tireless attempts to discover how they died. As the interrogation intensifies, Mohr realizes that his own secret activities have implicated him in a dangerous political situation. Exhausted, at the end of his money, worn down by the police, he takes decisive action that leads to a profound personal release.

 

Born in 1926, Per Wahlöö was a Swedish writer and journalist who, alongside his own novels, collaborated with his wife, Maj Sjöwall, on the bestselling Martin Beck crime series which are credited as inspiring writers as varied as Agatha Christie, Henning Mankell and Jonathan Franzen. In 1971 the fourth novel in the series, The Laughing Policeman, won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Per Wahlöö died in 1975.