His holiday has just begun: an August spent with his family on a small island off the coast of Sweden. But when a neighbor gets a phone call, Martin Beck finds himself packed off to Budapest, where a boorish journalist has vanished without a trace. Instead of passing leisurely sun-filled days with his children, Beck must troll about in the Eastern Europe underworld for a man nobody knows, with the aid of the coolly efficient local police, who do business while soaking at the public baths — while he is at the risk of vanishing along with his quarry.

MAJ SJÖWALL AND PER WAHLÖÖ, wife and husband team, wrote ten Martin Beck mysteries. Maj Sjöwall, besides being a crime novelist, is also a poet. Per Wahlöö, who died in 1975, was a reporter for several Swedish newspapers and magazines and wrote numerous radio and television plays, film scripts, short stories, and novels.