final volume was being completed Per Wahloo was already ill with the cancer that was to kill him shortly after the manuscript was delivered to the publisher. The Terrorists, and indeed the entire Martin Beck series, stands as a fitting and lasting legacy to their writing partnership. It is a series that changed the nature of detective fiction and continues to exert its influence on the genre to this day.

Cop Killer is the nineth and penultimate novel in the Martin Beck series and again concentrates not on one, but on two separate cases, seemingly unconnected, but which become connected in the manner in which they are played out. The first of these cases concerns the brutal sexual murder of a young woman in a remore rural location, whereby coincidence, the man convicted of the Roseanna muder in the first Martin Beck novel, now resides, after having been released from prison. Inevitably he falls under suspicion. It draws our attention inevitably that all the novels in the series are intended to be read as ten separate episodes in one larger novel. The second case concerns an incident where a policeman is shot and killed by a pair of desparate, teenage petty thieves in Stockholm. The two crimes stand in contrast to each other, in terms of location and premeditation, as well as the social milieus (bougeois and working-class) they inhabit.

One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is the introduction of the character of Herrgott Allwright, the rural police officer in charge of the rural