The Martin Beck Police Mysteries - Book 2
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke
“Martin Beck is a man driven to solve puzzles, with a small tragic intuition swimming deep in his mental waters that will surface suddenly to give a muted howl and then dive down again.”
New York Times
His holiday with his family has just begun, but a phone call sends Martin Beck packing off to Budapest, where a boorish journalist has vanished without a trace. With the aid of the coolly efficient local police, who do business while soaking at the public baths, Beck must troll about in the Eastern Europe underworld for a man nobody knows-while he is at the risk of vanishing along with his quarry.
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke gives us the dedicated Beck at his most engaging: indulging in the sumptuous Hungarian cuisine, longing for a decent cigarette, and evading a predatory nymphet, even as he pursues a case whose international boundaries grow with every new clue.
Praise