Alarm in Sköldgatan

The crime novel Alarm in Sköldgatan (Swedish original title: Brandbilen som försvann , literally: The missing fire engine ) by the Swedish author couple Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö is the fifth volume in the ten-volume crime series Roman om ett brott ( novel about a crime ) with Inspector Martin Beck . It was first published in Sweden in 1969, in 1972 in the Federal Republic of Germany and in 1984 in the GDR (under the title Alarm in der Sköldgatan ).

The book was made into a film in 1993 in a Swedish-German production (director Hajo Gies ).

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Just when the detective assistant Gunvald Larsson replaced his colleague Zachrisson, who was observing the apartment of a drug dealer in Stockholm's Sköldgatan, the house under observation suddenly went up in flames. Larsson tries to break into the house to save the residents, while Zachrisson calls the fire department from a phone booth . However, it arrives far too late, and some residents are killed.

As the investigation initially shows, the drug dealer under surveillance committed suicide by poisoning himself with gas and blocked all openings in his room. The criminalists nevertheless have doubts about this process: Where did the spark for the explosion come from? Why didn't the fire brigade find the scene of the fire immediately? The doubts are justified, as the findings of the crime laboratory turn out: the gas was set off by an incendiary device hidden in the dead man's mattress.

It turns out that the perpetrator who set the incendiary device was a Lebanese professional killer who came to Sweden. As a precautionary measure, he himself alerted the fire brigade because bystanders should not be harmed, but due to a lack of local knowledge he accidentally called the station in Sundbyberg , which ultimately led to him being transferred.