The second book in the hugely acclaimed Martin Beck series: the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime fiction and influenced writers from Stieg Larrson to Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell and Lars Kepplar. A Swedish journalist has vanished without a trace in Budapest. When Detective Inspector Martin Beck arrives in the city to investigate, he is drawn to an Eastern European underworld in search of a man nobody knows. With the aid of the coolly efficient local police, he reveals a web of crime, stretching back across Europe – a discovery that will put his own life at risk.