THE ABOMINABLE MAN

Martin Beck, Sweden's finest and dourest, presides again over the killing — in a hospital bed — of a man on the force with an extra chromosome of cruelty that leads on to a larger extermination program which Beck, fallen cold and almost dead, may not survive. "Police work is built on realism, routine, stubbornness and system" which this series epitomizes and which a quiet hero like Martin Beck enlarges in his level, dead level, fashion.