Martin Beck is a fictional Swedish police detective and the main character in a series of ten novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö,[1] collectively titled The Story of a Crime.

Between 1997 and 2018 there have also been 38 films (some released direct for video and broadcast on television) based on the characters, with Peter Haber as Martin Beck.

Apart from the core duo of Beck and his right-hand man Gunvald Larsson, the latter adaptations bear little resemblance to the plots of the original series.

Beck also gets several promotions, from Detective to Inspector, and Chief of the National Murder Squad by the end of the series.

In The Terrorists, he is, however, forced to become Chief of Operations in an important job protecting an American senator, meaning that he is for once, in theory, higher in position than his superior, Malm.

Lennart Kollberg: Beck's most trusted colleague; a sarcastic glutton with a Socialist worldview; served as a paratrooper.

Gunvald Larsson: A former member of the merchant marine and the black sheep of a rich family, he has a liking for expensive clothes and pulp fiction including the work of Sax Rohmer.

By the end of the series, Beck notes that Rönn had defied all expectations to become a valuable asset to the team, and someone whom he could trust.

A politician with little understanding of police work who is willing to do anything to get up the career ladder, for whom Beck eventually feels sorry by the end of the book.

In the later TV series films based more on the named characters than events, Martin Beck is played by Peter Haber.

The series stars Steven Mackintosh as Beck, Neil Pearson as Kollberg, Ralph Ineson as Larsson, Russell Boulter as Rönn, and Adrian Scarborough as Melander.

[5] Sjöwall and Wahlöö's technique of mixing traditional crime fiction with a focus on the social issues in the Swedish welfare state received a great deal of attention.

[6] The concept has been updated in the 1990s with Henning Mankell's detective character Kurt Wallander and in the 2000s with Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy featuring Lisbeth Salander.

The Mystery Writers of America, in 1995, rated The Laughing Policeman as the 2nd best police procedural, after Tony Hillerman's Dance Hall of the Dead.