Roseanna

On a July afternoon, a young woman's body is dredged from Lake Vattern in Sweden. Nothing found with her says who she is, so Martin Beck has two tasks at once: identify the victim and find whoever killed her.

Three months into the case, Beck knows only a first name, Roseanna, and that she was strangled. She had been on a cruise, which leaves eighty-five people who could have done it.

This is the first book in the Martin Beck series, a police procedural that proceeds by narrowing a list of suspects. Beck is a melancholic detective, and the pace follows the patience of the investigation rather than any rush of action.

As the list shrinks, Beck is pulled toward the dead woman herself, a free-spirited traveler who had casual sexual relationships. He is also drawn toward the mind of a killer with a strict and frightening sense of propriety. The question is whether the investigation can name that person from so little.