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7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 26 | https://heloise2nd.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/maj-sjowall-per-wahloo-the-fire-engine-that-disappeared/ | en | Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö: The Fire Engine that Disappeared | http://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/9b/a0/9ba0bd01d76fbf4597769636167444341587343.jpg | http://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/9b/a0/9ba0bd01d76fbf4597769636167444341587343.jpg | [
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] | 2014-11-13T00:00:00 | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are not only the grandparents of the Scandinavian crime novel, but there 10-volume series of novels (known in English, somewhat misleadingly as the "Martin Beck" series) pretty much (with some influence from Ed McBains 87th Precinct series) defined the shape of contemporary police procedurals. What the series basically does is to combine social… | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | Heloise Merlin's Weblog | https://heloise2nd.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/maj-sjowall-per-wahloo-the-fire-engine-that-disappeared/ | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are not only the grandparents of the Scandinavian crime novel, but there 10-volume series of novels (known in English, somewhat misleadingly as the “Martin Beck” series) pretty much (with some influence from Ed McBains 87th Precinct series) defined the shape of contemporary police procedurals.
What the series basically does is to combine social realism with the mystery novel – it takes an unflinching look at Swedish society from the early sixties to the early seventies, a look that becomes increasingly tinged with bitterness as a supposedly welfare state lets go more and more of its promise to build a better future for everyone, and instead continues to privilege the rich and powerful. Which would be very depressing stuff, if it wasn’t made readable, enjoyable even (to some degree at least) by the mystery plot that keeps readers turning the pages even as they are confronted with a sheer endless parade of human misery and mean-spiritedness. Formally considered, this is very 19th century, as Sjöwall / Wahlöö use mystery in very much the same way as Dickens or Zola used melodrama, and I would not be at all surprised if that was a tradition they intentionally decided to place themselves in.
The Fire Engine that Disappeared is the fifth volume in the series, and it continues its general trend to become increasingly focused on the character’s private lives and on giving a picture of Swedish society at the time. There is more space given to the character’s concerns outside of their police job than before, and the narrative is even more de-centralized, Martin Beck becoming almost a minor figure as the novel follows his colleagues Larsson and Kollberg as well as Mansson from Malmö and newcomer Skane. That emphasizes one of the distinguishing features of this series, the utter ordinariness of its protagonists which are not only not outstandingly good-looking or intelligent, but frequently not even particularly good policemen, but just civil servants that do their job without any particular enthusiasm and who get results not so much by brilliant deduction than by luck or sheer dogged persistence.
The latter is particularly ironic if one considers how many of the cases could just as well have occurred in a classical mystery novel. While the puzzle element is not as strong here as in the previous novel, the investigators find themselves confronted by the corpse of someone who apparently committed suicide as well as being murdered. The Fire Engine that Disappeared takes its time in solving the crime, both in that the investigations span several months and in that the novel is not what anyone would call a page-turner. It’s not slow either, however, but moves along at a steady, comfortable speed, giving readers the chance to take in the scenery along that way, as bleak as that proves to be. And it’s precisely this view of the scenery that will likely linger longest with the reader, Sjöwall/Wahlöö’s hard and uncompromising perspective on a welfare state coming apart (a perspective which I’m convinced they developed not in spite of but because of their Marxist views – something I might return to in a post on a later volume) will remain in most readers’ memory even when the details of the crime plot have faded. | ||
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] | null | [] | 2018-06-30T04:00:37-07:00 | 5 posts published by trow125 during June 2018 | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | The Saturday Reader | null | A couple of decades ago, I purchased a complete set of the Martin Beck novels by Swedish authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. The editions I owned were mass-market paperbacks, first published in the U.S. by Vintage in the 1970s. They have remained in my collection ever since, even through several moves. I had always intended to reread them someday.
With everything going on in the world right now, it seemed like a good time to revisit the Stockholm of 50 years ago, so I picked up the first book in the series, Roseanna. I turned to the first page, and was immediately struck by how tiny the font size was. Combined with the brittle yellow pages, I found it almost impossible to read. Cheap paperbacks were not made to last; however, living in the modern era has some advantages, as I was able to promptly download the Kindle edition (thanks, Libby)! The ongoing popularity of the series has ensured that it has remained available; a handsome set of trade paperbacks is now available from Penguin Random House, and each book now features an introduction by a well-known writer. Henning Mankell, Val McDermid, Michael Connelly, Colin Dexter and Jonathan Franzen are among those who contributed essays.
Roseanna introduces readers to Martin Beck, the Everyman homicide inspector who plugs away at his job (he often finds a lot to complain about, too). He seems to live on a diet of cheese sandwiches, coffee and cigarettes, and has found the silver lining in all the nights he has to work—it means he has to spend less time with his wife, Inga.
In Roseanna, Beck is dispatched to the town of Motala after the body of a young woman is dredged from a lake. At first, the focus of the investigation is determining the woman’s identity; no one seems to have reported her missing, and she was naked, so there was no ID on her. Once they finally learn who she is, the police attempt a rather risky stunt in a last-ditch effort to find out who killed her.
The emphasis in Roseanna is how plodding policework done over a lengthy period is sometimes required in order to solve a crime; Beck finds himself slightly obsessed. He encounters a very different case in book #2, The Man Who Went Up In Smoke. Beck’s family vacation in the Stockholm archipelago is interrupted when he has to return to the city and then fly to Budapest to investigate the disappearance of a Swedish journalist who traveled there on assignment.
“It seemed to [Beck] quite ridiculous that he should be gadding about Budapest trying to find a person to whom he was completely indifferent. He could not remember ever being given such a hopeless, meaningless assignment.” The contrast with Roseanna, which saw Beck completely wrapped up in his investigation, is clear.
The Hungarian job is by its nature pretty much a one-man show, since Beck is working far away from his colleagues and for various reasons is not supposed to be in contact with the local police. The third novel, The Man on the Balcony, depicts an all-out effort by the entire Stockholm police force to discover who is killing young girls in the city’s parks. (According to the introduction by Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø, it is based on a real 1963 case.) This book also introduces us to Kristiansson and Kvant, the two patrolmen who function as a bit of comic relief in several books in the series.
I wouldn’t say the books are hilarious, but there are some chuckles to be had. (In an interview, Maj Sjöwall said that she often “tried to make [her late co-writer Per Wahlöö] laugh” as they were writing the novels.) Having watched Swedish state TV myself, an anecdote in Roseanna about a documentary airing while Beck is interviewing a witness—“[he] looked with despair at the television screen which was now showing a program that must have been at least one month old about picking beets in southern Sweden”—struck me as quite funny.
The books are obviously dated; in one novel, the death of an American tourist requires Beck to get in touch with a police officer in the U.S., which he must do either by staticky long-distance call or by sending a letter. And when a suspect is being tailed, the policeman following him has to check in by making calls at public phone booths.
In the 1960s, of course, Sweden was frequently thought of as a libertine’s paradise, thanks to the export of notorious films like “I Am Curious (Yellow)” and Swedish erotica magazines. Each of the first three Beck books features at least one sexually voracious female character. (“Ari is a nymphomaniac. There’s not much you can do about it,” one man matter-of-factly explains to Beck in The Man Who Went Up In Smoke.) From my vantage point in 2018, I’m not sure if the authors were leaning into the stereotype for the titillation of their readers, or if they were influenced by femme fatale characters in detective novels and films.
However, I’m pleased to report that the series still holds up beautifully, thanks to the authors’ solid plotting and well-drawn characters. I look forward to diving into the next seven books.
Jennifer Egan’s last novel, 2010’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad, was such an unabashedly postmodern work, with its shifting narratives and unconventional storytelling (one large chunk of the book takes the form of a PowerPoint presentation), that many readers no doubt wondered whether her follow-up would be even more experimental. Instead, Egan has written a historical novel set during World War II, which is more conventional but no less ambitious.
According to a New Yorker profile, Egan had been working on Manhattan Beach for 15 years before it was finally published. The book displays a prodigious amount of research, albeit the kind that is seamlessly integrated into the plot, and into Egan’s lyrical prose. Here, for example, is a paragraph describing protagonist Anna Kerrigan’s solitary walk through midtown Manhattan:
“She decided to head back home. Walking toward the IND on Sixth Avenue, she passed a flea circus, a chow-meinery, a sign advertising lectures on what killed Rudolph Valentino. Gradually she began to notice other solitary figures lingering in doorways and under awnings: people with no obvious place they needed to be. Through the plate-glass window of Grant’s at the corner of Sixth, she saw soldiers and sailors eating alone, even a girl or two. Anna watched them through the glass while, behind her, newspaper vendors bawled out the evening headlines: ‘Tripoli falls!’ ‘Russians gaining on Rostov!’ ‘Nazis say the Reich is threatened!’ To Anna, these sounded like captions to the solitary diners. The war had shaken people loose. These isolated people in Grant’s had been shaken loose. And now she, too, had been shaken loose. She sensed how easily she might slide into a cranny of the dimmed-out city and vanish. The possibility touched her physically, like the faint coaxing suction of an undertow. It frightened her, and she hurried toward the subway entrance.”
We first meet Anna at the age of 12 when she accompanies her father Eddie on a visit to the lavish seaside home of Dexter Styles, whose own pampered daughter has more toys than Anna could ever dream of. The need to provide for his younger daughter, severely disabled Lydia, ultimately drives Eddie to work for some dangerous men. A couple years later, Eddie disappears, leaving his wife to care for Lydia on her own.
At the age of 19, Anna goes to work in the Brooklyn Naval Yard, measuring and inspecting parts. Bored with her work, Anna dreams of becoming a diver, working underwater to repair ships. But that is not a job open to women. Anna decides to fight for the position, despite the dismissive attitude of the officer in charge of hiring divers. She also has a chance encounter with Dexter Styles, whom she remembers clearly from the day she visited his home, and wonders if he might possibly know what happened to her father.
We eventually learn much more about Styles and his background, and as his story begins to intersect with Anna’s, she is finally allowed to dive. While the individual pieces seem like they may be ones we’ve encountered before—mobsters, World War II, New York in the 1940s, grief, survival in the face of great odds—Egan’s skill is that she has combined them into a tale that is unique and beautifully told.
Ruth Ware’s fourth novel, The Death of Mrs. Westaway, seems to draw a lot of its inspiration from Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca. There’s a Cornish mansion, a sinister housekeeper, secrets galore, and a young heroine who has no idea what lies ahead of her when she arrives at the stately home.
Hal (née Harriet) Westaway is dead broke—in fact, she’s in debt to a loan shark—when she receives a letter from an attorney informing her that her grandmother has died and Hal is a beneficiary of her will. This comes as something of a shock, since the parents of her late single mother, Margarida Westaway, are both dead. Hal figures it has to be a mistake, but perhaps all she needs to do is show up for the funeral and reading of the will, and if she’s lucky, she’ll inherit enough money to make her problems go away. So she takes the train down to Penzance and finds herself at Trepassen House, a crumbling, ivy-covered estate. The housekeeper, Mrs. Warren, is decidedly unfriendly, putting Hal up in a freezing attic room with a barred window and locks on the outside of the door.
Eventually, Hal meets the late Mrs. Westaway’s offspring and their respective families, who don’t exactly give her a warm welcome either. Somehow, she needs to figure out a way to trick them all into believing that she is the daughter of their long-lost sister Maud, who disappeared without a trace many years ago, without seeming like so much of a threat that somebody will be tempted to kill her in order to keep all those secrets intact.
Hal is a clever and resourceful heroine and I found the book to be great fun, if a bit portentous at times. (“There was a sudden spatter of fresh rain against the glass, and she thought she heard—though perhaps it was her fancy—the far-off sound of waves against a shore. An image came into Hal’s mind—of rising waters, closing above all of their heads, while Mrs. Westaway laughed from beyond the grave…”) But for those of us who enjoy this gloriously Gothic type of novel, The Death of Mrs. Westaway offers solid summertime entertainment.
I read a lot of books that are primarily plot-driven, but I read Meg Wolitzer’s books because they’re character-driven: she writes so brilliantly about people and what makes them tick. Her 2013 novel The Interestings followed a group of six teenagers who meet at a summer camp, taking them from youth to middle age. The main character in The Female Persuasion, Greer Kadetsky, is only in her early 30s when the book ends, but her mentor, feminist icon Faith Frank, is nearing 80, and the trajectory of Faith’s life may serve as a preview of the difficult choices, sacrifices and compromises which will eventually be faced by Greer.
Greer is a college freshman when a chance encounter with Faith changes the course of her life. After graduation, she goes to work for Faith’s new foundation, Loci, which is well-funded by a venture capitalist. Faith (and Greer) hope they can use the money to help struggling women around the world, but the people who hold the purse strings are more concerned with providing feel-good workshops to affluent Americans. (The descriptions of Loci’s leadership summits sounded like a cross between Oprah’s Super Soul Sessions and Gwyneth Paltrow’s In Goop Health festival.)
Along with Faith and Greer, Wolitzer also pays exquisite attention to the lives of Greer’s boyfriend Cody, her best friend Zee, and Emmett Shrader, the billionaire pumping money into Loci. But the heart of the book is the complicated relationship between Greer and Faith, which is inevitably somewhat one-sided given how famous and beloved Faith is. Looking at a box of gifts given to her over the years by fans, Emmett ponders: “All of these women had needed a connection with Faith. She was plasma to them. Maybe it was a mommy thing, he thought, but maybe it was also: I want to be you. There were so many of these women, just so many. But there was only one Faith.”
In the final chapter of The Female Persuasion, a character refers to “the big terribleness,” a time when “indignity after indignity had taken place, constant hammerstrikes against everything they cared about.” What a tonic it is to read a novel about two strong female characters, with all their flaws and faults, both working toward a world where women “could feel capable and safe and free.”
Making Up is the third book in Lucy Parker’s London Celebrities series, which is set in the world of West End theatre. The heroine of this novel, Trix, also appeared in book #2, Pretty Face, which starred her best friend Lily.
Trix is performing in a musical which also features quite a bit of stunt work and acrobatics (I imagined something akin to “Pippin”) when the female star of the show falls and is injured. As one of her understudies, Trix is asked to step in, at least temporarily. However, a bad relationship with a manipulative man who undermined her confidence has left Trix shaken, and she’s not sure she can adequately perform the more difficult role.
Then there’s the show’s new make-up artist, Leo—a former school classmate of Trix’s, and her one-time crush. Not only is he working with her, but he’s also moved into the house she shares with a few other theater people. Leo and Trix immediately clash, but not surprisingly, there’s some sexual tension as well. I knew that Leo was a good guy as soon as it was revealed that HE HAS A PET HEDGEHOG NAMED REGGIE. At that point I would have proposed to him on the spot.
I really appreciated the fact that the main driver of the story is not “will Leo and Trix ever stop fighting and fall in love?” but “will Trix get her self-confidence back?” I think a lot of Parker’s young female readers will learn some important lessons about not letting a romantic partner damage your self-worth and isolate you from your friends; Leo is very supportive of Trix, but it’s clear that this is her journey, and even a cute boyfriend with a pet hedgehog can’t fix all of her problems.
There’s actually more conflict in the book between Trix and Leo’s sister, Cat, who has just returned from a year in New York and is behaving like a brat. (Full disclosure: Leo was actually hedgehog-sitting Reggie for her while she was in the States, but obviously Cat can’t be reunited with her hedgie until she has worked on her own emotional issues.)
With Making Up, Parker has proven that she’s not just writing to a formula in her books, but creating fully-realized and relatable heroines. | ||||
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7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 46 | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/12/pure-evil | en | Pure Evil | [
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] | 2014-05-12T00:00:00 | Jo Nesbø and the rise of Scandinavian crime fiction. | en | https://www.newyorker.com/verso/static/the-new-yorker/assets/favicon.ico | The New Yorker | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/12/pure-evil | When the Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø was in his early teens, he had a panic attack. The sun had set in Molde, the small city on Norway’s west coast where he grew up, and the apartment in which he lived with his parents and two brothers was silent. Thoughts of death descended on him, visions of being trapped in a coffin under the earth. He ran to his father, Per, woke him from a nap, and asked him what happens when you die. “Do you really want to know?” his father asked. The boy insisted. “It all goes black,” he said.
In the crowded field of Scandinavian crime fiction, Nesbø’s books stand out for their blackness. He has written ten novels about the investigations of Inspector Harry Hole, a cynical, alcoholic detective in the Oslo police department. Hole, who is both destructive and self-destructive, always gets his man, but by the end of the story he has inadvertently caused the death of someone he loves, or become an opium addict, or been disfigured. At the conclusion of “Phantom,” the ninth novel in the series, Harry is shot at point-blank range. Not until well into the next book, “Police,” do you find out whether or not he is still alive.
Nesbø likes to rip plots up in this way, to play with the conventions of his genre. He attributes his skill to hearing his father and his relatives tell the same stories over and over. “For me, as a storyteller, that was my school,” Nesbø told me. “It wasn’t about the punch line but how they would build up the story toward the punch line.” Now, he said, “I get paid a king’s ransom for doing what comes naturally.”
Nesbø’s Harry Hole novels have sold twenty-three million copies, in forty languages. He is also the author of the popular “Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder” books for children, as well as a series of novels written under the pen name Tom Johansen. The movie version of his 2008 novel, “Headhunters,” is the highest-grossing film in Norway’s history. His literary success has made him the country’s first international pop-culture star. Aside from a few complaints about the lurid violence in his novels—in one installment, a woman’s face and throat are torn apart by an exploding metal ball that is forced into her mouth—public criticism of Nesbø is rare. Though his friend and biking companion Jens Stoltenberg, twice Prime Minister of Norway, had been appointed chief of NATO days before, he returned my call to say of Nesbø, “He’s very simpatico, a nice guy.”
The sense of Nesbø’s immunity to criticism extends even to those institutions which are not treated with much respect in his fiction. I went to see Hans Sverre Sjøvold, Oslo’s chief of police, and asked him what he thought of Nesbø’s representation of the Oslo police as being largely corrupt. The color rose in his cheeks. Behind black-framed glasses, his eyes watered, and he chuckled uneasily. “It is fiction, you know,” Sjøvold said. Then, referring to Nesbø’s portrait of the fictional chief of police in “Police,” he slipped into the first person: “Even if I have an affair with one of the local constables—”
I interrupted him and asked if this was a true story. “Not at all!” Chief Sjøvold cried. “That is fiction!” He laughed. Later, he said firmly, “I enjoy reading Jo Nesbø, because it is excitement from page 3.”
Nesbø’s novels are marked by the darker elements of parent-child relationships: doubtful paternity (“The Snowman,” in which a killer takes revenge on married women who have had a child by another man and deceived their husbands into thinking the child was theirs), or paternal sacrifice (“Phantom,” in which Harry allows himself to be nearly killed rather than arrest his beloved surrogate son for murder). In “The Leopard,” Harry’s relationship with Olav, the cancer-stricken father he loves but could never connect with, helps propel the plot. Buried in the snow as the result of a villain’s machinations, Harry hears Olav’s voice, encouraging him to give up: “You were scared of the dark, but that didn’t stop you going there.” But, Nesbø writes, “Olav Hole would have to go on ahead; he would have to be that much of a fucking father!”
This month, Nesbø will publish a novel called “The Son,” about a man whose revenge on those who led his father into corruption also serves as a redemption of his father’s sins. During the Second World War, Nesbø’s father volunteered, at nineteen, to fight alongside Norway’s German occupiers on the Eastern Front, near Leningrad. He believed that the Soviets posed a greater threat to Norway than the Nazis did. After the war, a Norwegian court sentenced Per Nesbø to three years in jail.
Per Nesbø’s voluntary participation in Nazism seems both to haunt Nesbø and to inflame his imagination. “One of the lessons I learned at a young age was that you have to see things from different sides,” he told me. Nesbø, who is fifty-four, has a long, small-boned, triangular face. When I met him, at Bolgen & Moi, a sleek Oslo restaurant that is Nesbø’s favorite, stubble crept up his cheeks from a goatee. His skin is creased and leathery. With a knit cap pulled down low, his features crowding one another, he looks like a gnome. As soon as he takes his cap off, his broad, high forehead makes him, all at once, delicately handsome. Nesbø began to speak as though he were his father: “O.K., I believe that the Jews were not popular in Germany, but when we heard about the concentration camps we didn’t believe that. People just didn’t do that to other people.” He told me that he didn’t know if his father was a member of the Norwegian fascist party that collaborated with the Nazis. After a moment, he said, “Maybe he was.”
Per Nesbø, who died, of cancer, in 1994, recounted his wartime adventures many times for his sons, without shame or embarrassment. “My father would light up whenever he was going to tell a story,” Nesbø said. The tales made their way into “The Redbreast,” a Harry Hole novel, published in 2000, that jumps back and forth between the entrenched Norwegian volunteers outside Leningrad in the early nineteen-forties and a shadowy neo-Nazi conspiracy in fin-de-millennium Norway involving politicians at a high level of government. Nesbø mostly treats the volunteers with compassion, and, by the end of the novel, Norway’s present-day fascists loom larger than their forebears. One volunteer writes in his journal, “The decisions in my life have often been between two or more evils, and I have to be judged on the basis of that. . . . I have risked taking the wrong decision rather than living like a coward as part of the silent majority.”
When Per Nesbø got out of prison, he had trouble finding work; he finally landed a job with a firm that made office equipment. He wanted to be his own man, though, Nesbø said, and so he opened his own business, selling kitchen appliances. But it didn’t go well. Drowning in debt, he refused to declare bankruptcy. He felt that his actions during the war made it necessary to satisfy his creditors. Nesbø said that he respected his father for stoically accepting his fate, though it meant abandoning the construction of a dream house, which would have allowed him and Nesbø’s mother, Kirsten, to move out of their small apartment. Kirsten, who worked as a librarian, resented Per for this. One time, when Nesbø was young, his mother took him and his brothers on a trip to Leningrad; his father thought it prudent not to return to the Soviet Union.
“He was honest,” Nesbø said. “He never made excuses for the choice he had made. He was a person who never gave himself the luxury of having a life-lie.” The life-lie is a phrase from Ibsen’s play “The Wild Duck”; it refers to the comforting illusions people cling to in order to go on living.
The modern Scandinavian crime novel was all but invented in the nineteen-sixties, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Swedish partners who borrowed realist elements of the nineteenth-century novel and made the crime genre into a form of social criticism. Though Sweden’s social democracy expanded after the war, the government allied itself with business. Sjöwall and Wahlöö were members of Sweden’s Communist Party; they considered the welfare state to be merely a cover for the plunder of the working class, and were disgusted by what they perceived as the venal, bureaucratic dead end of Sweden’s social democracy. This was fertile ground for the crime novel. In their austere perspective, capitalist crimes were everywhere, and the list of suspects was long.
One of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s motives for taking up the genre was to give their views a broader audience, a desire that has driven many of their successors, especially since the international success of the Danish writer Peter Hoeg’s “Smilla’s Sense of Snow,” published in the United States in 1994. Today, about a hundred Scandinavian crime writers have been translated into English, including Anne Holt, who is a former minister of justice in Norway. The crime tale has become to Scandinavia what the sonnet was to Elizabethan England: its trademark literary form.
The surge had other causes, too. One was the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, in 1986. Palme was shot in the back on a winter evening while walking home from a movie theatre. His murder has never been solved, but the range of suspects includes just about every threat to Swedish society, past and present, from random sociopaths to neo-Nazis, leftist terrorists, and South African pro-apartheid extremists. Nesbø’s publisher, Trygve Åslund, said that Palme’s murder also sent tremors through Norway and Denmark, with which Sweden shares tight social, political, and linguistic bonds.
The paranoia engendered by Palme’s killing endowed the Scandinavian crime novel with a horrifying vitality. Without the assassination, there might never have been a Stieg Larsson, whose leftist “millennium trilogy,” beginning with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (2005), conjures vast webs of conspiracy. The books’ female protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, has the same first name as Palme’s widow. One of the Swedish writer Henning Mankell’s novels, “The Troubled Man” (2009), takes up the Palme affair; Mankell has also written a play about the assassination. In “Another Time, Another Life” (2003), by Leif G. W. Persson, who is also Swedish, Palme’s murder is the background for the novel’s sinister atmosphere. “Nothing’s the same here since they killed Palme,” a police detective says.
Another reason the crime genre flourished, particularly in Norway, was the discovery of oil off the Norwegian coast, in 1969. By the late nineteen-seventies, the profits had begun to flow into the Norwegian economy. While the wealth has strengthened the welfare state—in Norway, health care and higher education are virtually free—it also created a new class of privilege. The crime novel was an effective vehicle for the expression of fears and resentment.
The nation’s new wealth also opened the door to voices, like Nesbø’s, that were more frankly critical of society, sometimes audaciously so. In 2011, Anders Behring Breivik killed seventy-seven people, most of them the young sons and daughters of the country’s liberal political élite, whom Breivik hunted down on an island retreat. Nesbø told Britain’s Independent that he was proud of his country’s restrained response to the massacre, but he also complained that Norwegians “fell in love with [their] reaction to the tragedy,” preening themselves on being “so calm, wise and full of love.” Nesbø’s remarks passed virtually without comment in Norway, where criticism of the country’s smug insularity can itself often be a source of pride. “We can sometimes be too self-confident, too narrow-minded,” Jens Stoltenberg said.
Breivik was a monstrous exception: in a country that had only forty-five homicides last year, all murder is local and intimate. “A murder in Oslo or in a remote, small Swedish city or village is a shocking event,” Nesbø told me. In his novels, he said, murders become “symbols of other things—chaos, the fear that what we see as safe and solid civilization really is just varnish.”
Nesbø’s crime stories have little in common with the tradition of left-wing social criticism that shaped the work of Swedish writers like Sjöwall and Wahlöö, Larsson, and Mankell. They would never have written sympathetically about the Norwegian volunteers outside Leningrad. Though Nesbø’s social insights can be mordant—in “The Bat,” Harry refers to Norway’s resource-intensive economy, saying, “We’ve just exported our nature and avoided thinking. We’re a nation with golden hair up our arses”—he tends to be less ideological. In his work, there are not the same connections between capital and corruption. Instead, Nesbø’s villains include an Aborigine boxer, a saintly assassin, and a disaffected son who wanders into the drug trade.
For all the chilling moral ambiguity of Scandinavian crime fiction, the genre’s most famous detectives have traditionally been heroes. Even Lisbeth Salander, in her furious revenge on male predators, remains within the boundaries of some kind of higher morality. But Harry Hole, to the degree that his effectiveness as a detective lies in the amorality he shares with his outlaw prey, is closer to the genre’s American antiheroes.
Nesbø’s masterpiece, “The Snowman,” exploits the unease caused in Scandinavia by the sense that its orderly civilization may be an illusion. The novel begins with a mother who has left her son in the car while she goes to a tryst with her lover. When she returns, her son whispers into her ear, “We’re going to die.” A serial killer is murdering unfaithful women, and gradually Nesbø spins the murders out of the realm of crime and into the question of paternity. Emotional betrayals and the act of killing come to seem nearly identical. The murderer’s signature is to use a body part of his victim in the construction of a snowman in the victim’s yard. As the novel progresses, the figure of the snowman becomes symbolic of a naïve belief in the sanctity of marriage. Harry’s pursuit of the killer is entangled in his tortured relationship with Rakel, his on-again, off-again lover, and with her son, Oleg, whom he treats as his own. The killer, it turns out, is a doctor—the symbol of rationality and order in a country where socialized medicine is a national emblem.
But Nesbø’s shattering of rationality and order is itself supremely rational and ordered. Don Bartlett, a British translator who has worked on several of Nesbø’s novels, said, “Nesbø sees a scene, there’s a pause, and then he flicks to the next scene. You can just see that he thinks as a cinemagoer.” Often Nesbø leaves the subject out of the sentence, quickening the pace. Bartlett said that Karl Ove Knausgaard, Norway’s other literary celebrity, whom he also translates, has coincidentally begun to do the same thing.
Nesbø sometimes achieves his effects at the expense of ordinary human feeling. The pace can flatten characters into cartoons. And the women are treated with either brutality or rank sentimentality. Even by the standards of crime fiction, Nesbø can become so absorbed in his neatly whirring spectacle of inhumanity that all the giddy slaughter bogs down the plot. Nesbø told me that he reveres the work of Frank Miller, the author of the graphic novels “Sin City” and “300,” and there are times when his affinity for the comic book overwhelms his finesse. In “The Son,” the eyelids of a bad guy are cut off by another bad guy; surgeons replace them using the foreskin of his penis. Nesbø writes, “It stank of dick curd when he rubbed his eyes in the morning.” The quality of his prose is another aspect of his writing that is sometimes sacrificed to the demands of pace and plot.
In high school, Nesbø neglected his studies to concentrate on soccer. He became a star player in Molde. “I peaked as a celebrity when I was seventeen,” he told me, when he made his début with Molde FK, a top Norwegian soccer club. When he was eighteen, he won the prize for best junior player at the prestigious Norway Cup. But torn ligaments in both knees made an athletic career impossible, and he didn’t have the grades to get into college. He signed up for the Air Force and spent a year stationed on the lonely northern tip of Norway, where he worked in an administrative position. While there, he studied to get into business school, and spent his off-hours reading, playing guitar, and listening to music.
Admitted to the Norwegian School of Economics, in Bergen, he held a variety of jobs during the summers: cabdriver, factory worker, merchant seaman. He spent the next several years after graduation working in Oslo as a financial analyst. At night, he played guitar and sang in a wildly popular band, Di Derre (Those Guys), which, in 1996, won the Gammleng Award, a major Norwegian culture prize. Nesbø’s former bandmate Espen Stenhammer told me that when Nesbø was young he sometimes was so excited by the audience’s attention that he sang and played off key. Nesbø described the crime novel to me as “the punk rock of literature,” comparing punk audiences tangling with the musicians onstage to readers immersing themselves in the crime writer’s manipulations of the genre’s conventions.
His first novel, “The Bat,” was published in 1997. He wrote it in a few weeks, during a vacation in Australia. Never an avid reader of crime novels, he chose the genre because it seemed easier to write than the memoir of his life as a rock star that a publisher friend had asked him for.
Nesbø lives alone in a duplex apartment in Oslo’s upscale Majorstuen district. He has a fourteen-year-old daughter named Selma, who lives nearby with her mother. He refuses to talk about either of them, saying that Selma’s mother, whom he never married, “doesn’t like the limelight.” On the first floor is Nesbø’s bedroom; a large photograph of a full moon hangs over his bed. When I visited him, in March, we ascended a bright-red spiral staircase to a large space divided into a kitchen, a sitting area, and his office. A computer screen sat on a blond desk facing a picture window that looked out over the neat jumble of Oslo’s rooftops to the low mountains just outside the city. A large photograph of a quarter moon, its dark side clearly silhouetted against the sky, hung nearby. The moon photographs were from the Apollo 13 mission, the “Houston, we have a problem” mission, as Nesbø put it. An electric guitar stood in a stand just behind his desk. Off to the side was a bright-red chair with voluptuous curves—the Surrealist term “biomorphic” sprang to mind—and a matching ottoman in the shape of a ball.
Dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers, Nesbø made coffee. We sat at a long wooden table, Rickie Lee Jones playing in the background. Nesbø said that Ibsen’s plays were similar to crime novels, since they don’t reveal their secrets—their crimes—until the final act. Knut Hamsun was a favorite of his when he was younger, he said, though Hamsun’s novels weren’t on the school curriculum. Nesbø said that he admired the way, in Hamsun’s fiction, “a person is lying and you know he’s lying. You just have to flip the coin and you get the truth.”
When we stood up, Nesbø stopped in front of the curvy red chair. “What do you think it is supposed to be?” he asked me. I said I didn’t know. “Guess.” I thought for a minute and said again that I didn’t know. “Try,” he said. “Come on.” I said that it looked like some kind of biomorphic chair. Nesbø smirked. “Obviously, it’s a mother giving birth to a child,” he said. “The chair is the mother, and the ball is the child. That’s the umbilical,” he said, pointing to a thick black cord attaching the ottoman to the chair.
Downstairs, Nesbø took me into his daughter’s room, which was as much a shrine to his own achievements and interests as it was a teen-age girl’s bedroom. Nesbø is an avid climber, and there was a climbing wall on one side of the room. A group of photographs stood on a shelf. One depicted him in an early incarnation of Di Derre. The four musicians, their arms around one another, mugged for the camera. Nesbø looked astonishingly young: blond and smooth-faced under a colorful knit cap, with an insolent, punkish expression. His brother Knut, who died last year, of cancer, at fifty-two, was next to him, his long blond hair cascading over his face. “He looks like Kurt Cobain!” Nesbø exclaimed, as if noticing the resemblance for the first time. He had told me earlier, “All the things I long for, those are not things in the future. Those are things in the past.”
It was dark outside, and the building was quiet. Nesbø walked me to the door and then lingered there, talking about his current projects. He was especially animated about a TV series in which the Russians conquer and occupy Norway, in order to obtain the country’s oil. No shots are fired, and the Russians do not interfere with people’s everyday lives. “The question is, if materially you have the same life, what do really big words like ‘freedom,’ ‘independence’ mean?” Nesbø said. “Are you willing to fight for big words like that? It seems like you have everything to lose and you’re not sure what you have to gain.”
At a packed event one evening at Oslo’s Litteraturhuset, where a psychiatrist interviewed Nesbø about his work, the author sat on a low stage in front of about a hundred people. Wearing a blue blazer over a white T-shirt, meticulously cuffed jeans, and black military-style boots, he explained how he develops a novel: from a short synopsis to a fuller treatment, to a longer outline, to the finished work, like a screenwriter constructing a screenplay. Nesbø is a devotee of American film noir—before he wrote “The Bat,” he was “more into crime movies” than crime novels, he said—and he likes to envisage scenes playing out on a movie screen before he writes them. Three of his novels have been optioned by movie studios, and another—“Blood on Snow,” written under his Johansen pseudonym—is in development at Warner Bros. With restrained, slightly ironic boastfulness, he told me that the night before we met at Bolgen & Moi he had had dinner with Channing Tatum, who has signed on to star in and direct “The Son.”
At Litteraturhuset, Nesbø reflected on the novelist’s responsibility to confront readers with moral dilemmas. He said that evil changes depending on who is looking at it. He referred to Michael Corleone’s metamorphosis from war hero to murderous gangster, in “The Godfather.” Readers “become morally corrupted,” he said, as they follow Harry Hole’s descents into Hell. “Many conversations on evil start with the concentration camp guards,” he said. “I’m not sure that this is where we should start looking.” He continued, “There is the other evil, when night falls, the man who . . . rapes that child. . . . That is the evil I’m after. And he isn’t the type to work at a German concentration camp.”
Nesbø later sent me an e-mail elaborating on his remarks. “I’m not sure whether brainwashed people following orders, no matter how stupid, cowardly, mindless, and evil they may be, represent the purest evil imaginable,” he wrote. “What I look for in my antagonists is the pure evil of proactive individuals . . . who will actively inflict pain on others without there being any orders, peer pressure or propaganda.” It was an interesting proposition, but I was also struck by how frequently Nesbø indulged his impulse to situate evil outside history, in aberrant individuals.
After the interview at Litteraturhuset, there was a reception in the café. Nesbø glided between groups of people sitting at long tables and high stools. Saying his goodbyes, he kissed the bare shoulder of a woman in her mid-forties, a crime writer named Sidsel Dalen, with whom he shares a publisher. He stared into her eyes with a provocative smile. She smiled back, and then he left. After he was gone, she said of Harry Hole, “He has this woman, Rakel, and she has been there throughout all the books. And he has sex with her when it suits him, and he can retreat, and that is a male perspective. Because if you turned this the other way around and you had a female hero, and she had sex with a man whenever, and she left in the meantime, everyone would ask what’s wrong with her. I think that the way he’s inspired me is that I want to make a really strong female character. I want to make Rakel alive.”
The next morning, Nesbø picked me up at my hotel in a taxi. He doesn’t own a car, because it is too much trouble to find parking in Oslo. Instead, he depends on his bicycle and on what he impishly refers to as “designated drivers.” We were headed for the airport—he was flying to Stockholm to appear on “Skavlan,” a sort of Scandinavian “Charlie Rose.” Done in a mixture of Norwegian, Swedish, and English, it is one of the most popular talk shows in Europe. Nesbø sat in the front. Though the day was cloudy, he was wearing dark glasses.
The taxi sped along the highway, past farms and car dealerships. Nesbø gazed at the road in front of him and talked about the way that his writing intersects with his work in Di Derre, which still performs occasionally. “I do take on different personas,” he said. “It’s a different character that walks onstage. Sometimes I will even fall out of character in that role and just laugh, just to make sure that you understand what is happening, that this is not for real. Your job now is to scream because I’m wiggling my ass, yeah, and you do scream. Good. Now we have an understanding.
“I am, of course, an exhibitionist. When you sit down and you write your first sentence, the idea that you start out with is, of course, not that I’m going to write five hundred pages, I’m going to send it to a publishing house. The idea is that somebody there with six years’ education will think this is great stuff. They will send it to a designer who will make a great cover for you, people will pay a lot of money, and they will read every fucking word that you have written. And afterward you expect them to come up to you in the street: ‘Can I shake your hand? Can I have your autograph?’ That is the grand idea that you see when you start writing. If not, you wouldn’t need to write it.”
At the airport, we went to a café, where Nesbø ordered a sandwich and coffee. He flirted with a young Indian woman at the cash register. I asked him what he said to her. “I asked her out,” he said. “Did you?” I asked. “No,” he said.
Almost everyone I spoke to about him remarked on his ferocious competitiveness—the sort of intensity that, among other things, drives Nesbø not to let society or history have the last word on his father. “He always likes to win,” Jens Stoltenberg said. Sitting in the waiting area at our gate, Nesbø and I started talking about Michael Corleone. Soon, Nesbø was vying with me to describe what was going through Michael’s mind, in the first “Godfather” movie, when he throws away the gun after shooting the gangster and the police captain in a Bronx restaurant. Nesbø was so intent on the game that neither he nor I heard the announcement that our gate had been changed. We hurried to the new gate. The door was closed. “Why don’t you tell someone who you are?” I asked. “Maybe they’ll open the door.” He looked annoyed. “In Norway, you don’t get results like that,” he said. We found the airline’s service desk, where Nesbø waited as a gruff, heavyset woman read his ticket. After a minute or so, she told him that because he was “such a great writer” she was going to get us on the next flight, even though it was full. He blushed.
For the past five years, Nesbø has gone climbing in the mountains outside Oslo and, when the weather is bad, in a gym. Every year, he takes a climbing trip to a national park in Thailand. “Most of the things I’ve done in life have come quite easy to me,” Nesbø told me. “Climbing has not. I have a fear of heights, and I have to face my own fears.”
Nesbø went to the gym one day with one of his climbing buddies, a bald, soft-looking man named Erik, whom Nesbø calls “the German,” even though he is Danish and admitted to me that he dislikes the nickname. As Erik held the rope, Nesbø climbed the wall; its colorful artificial rocks, or holds, looked like large clumps of Play-Doh stuck on by children. Nesbø climbed with deliberation, trying a hold, then another one, carefully gripping it and moving his feet up once he felt secure. He paused, standing on two holds, and shook his hands to get the numbness out of them. Resuming his ascent, he grabbed a hold with each hand and let his feet dangle, as if testing, or perhaps displaying, his strength. ♦ | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 11 | https://www.crimetime.co.uk/Murder-On-The-Thirty-first-Floor-And-The-Steel-Spring-Per-Wahloo-Trans-Sarah-Death/ | en | Murder On The Thirty-first Floor And The Steel Spring Per Wahlöö Trans. Sarah Death | [
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] | null | [] | null | en | https://www.crimetime.co.uk/Murder-On-The-Thirty-first-Floor-And-The-Steel-Spring-Per-Wahloo-Trans-Sarah-Death/ | Per Wahlöö wrote seven novels outside the partnership with Maj Sjöwall (these two, at least, are dedicated to Maj). Five of them appeared in the UK over the period 1966-74, all amongst the early translations of Joan Tate, that doyenne of Scandinavian translators into English. Collectively, these novels are sometimes known, I understand, as the ‘Dictatorship’ novels, with backgrounds as varied as South America, Franco’s Spain (from which Wahlöö , a committed Marxist, was deported in 1957) as well as the unnamed countries that form the background to these two novels.
Both novels feature Inspector Jensen, "a middle-aged police officer of normal build," with, at this stage, "an unlined and expressionless face". Called to the eighteenth floor of The Skyscraper, home to a huge publishing conglomerate, he is confronted with an anonymous note to the conglomerate threatening a terrible reprisal for "the murder committed by you." An explosive device will detonate shortly, threatening the lives of up to six thousand employees. Jensen first persuades a reluctant management to allow the building to be evacuated. The note, however, is a hoax. Jensen is given seven days to discover the perpetrator.
Jensen reappears just once more four years later, in The Steel Spring, published in Sweden in 1968 (the Martin Beck series with Sjowall well under way with The Laughing Policeman). Now 50 and with "short grey hair", Jensen is peremptorily summoned from a foreign country where he is recovering (significantly perhaps) from a liver operation. But all communications with his homeland have been suspended amid rumours of violent clashes during a recent election campaign – and a mysterious subsequent epidemic. Stranded at the border, he is commissioned by a government minister in a similar situation to find out the truth.
Both novels clearly use the form of the crime novel. They are economical and move with great pace, even as Jensen pursues his investigation to its logical conclusion (he’s never been known to fail) and Wahlöö drops in his clues to the nature of the society in which Jensen appears to be a willing participant. Thus Murder (published prior to Roseanna, the first Martin Beck novel) can be seen as a precursor to that series, written – Sjöwall/Wahlöö’s declared aim – to take "a scalpel" to "the belly of … a morally debatable so-called welfare state of the bourgeois type". But unlike the early apolitical Beck novels (softening up the reader for what came later?), Murder and its successor are nothing if not political.
Or rather Murder is a successful and satisfactory crime and political novel, with a brilliant and chilling twist ending, whilst the less plausible Steel Spring depends rather more on its thriller and political elements to keep you reading until the end.
Fascinating too is the discovery that stylistically Wahlöö is also his own man. Sjöwall has already exploded the widespread Ed McBain theory of influence (neither of them had read McBain until they were well into planning and writing the first books). But only more general influence can be attributed to those other writers cited by Sjöwall as their most admired writers of the time: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett (often quoted by writers of a left-leaning persuasion), Georges Simenon and Ross MacDonald. Indeed it is difficult to find a precise antecedent for Wahlöö’s plain, pared down, emotionless prose. Perhaps Julian Symons was right all those years ago when he cited (alongside Orwell) the crime novels of Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Like that author, Wahlöö clearly wanted nothing to detract from the forward movement of the story and its political/philosophical content.
Needless to say, translators of the reputation of Tate and her successor Sarah Death, appear to have no difficulty with the style. Comparing the two Murders it is evident that the new version has been subject to general updating – "juvenile delinquency" becomes "youth crime" for example; some political terminology has been changed. Whilst these changes have the effect of reducing the specific nature of Wahlöö’s bitterly satirical view of the changes in Swedish society, readers of today should have no difficulty in recognising in both books the many parallels between Wahlöö’s invented society, and the society that surrounds us in the present.
Two unique novels have been restored to the canon of European crime fiction in English. Don’t miss.
Reminded, elsewhere, of Georges Simenon’s claim that he used no more than 2000 words of his vocabulary in writing his Maigret stories, I wonder if that wasn’t, after all, a key influence on the Jensen novels?
Per Wahlöö: Murder on the Thirty-first Floor and The Steel Spring, new translations by Sarah Death (Vintage, 2012) pb each £7.99, 215pp and 200pp | |||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 44 | https://rohanmaitzen.com/category/sjowall-and-wahloo/ | en | Sjowall, Maj, and Per Wahloo – Novel Readings | [
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] | 2015-04-05T15:43:47-04:00 | Posts about Sjowall, Maj, and Per Wahloo written by Rohan Maitzen | en | Novel Readings | https://rohanmaitzen.com/category/sjowall-and-wahloo/ | There was nothing there about their exploit! Not a word. They were furious. At last Faye found a little paragraph in the Guardian that said some hooligans had blown up the corner of a street in West Rowan Road, Bilstead.
“Hooligans,” said Jocelin, cold and deadly and punishing, her eyes glinting. And she did not say — and there was no need, for it was in all their minds — We’ll show them.
Like the subtitle Hardy chose for Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the title of this book promises challenges to readers’ moral assumptions: if Tess is a “pure woman,” then female purity must not be defined by sexual innocence; if Alice is a “good terrorist,” then there must be a way to reconcile goodness with terrorism — either terrorism itself is sometimes a good thing, or being a terrorist doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person, even if you commit an evil act. Unless, of course, the title is ironic, or descriptive of competence, not virtue, as it is applied, in fact, to one of Alice’s co-conspirators, who “was studying handbooks on how to be a good terrorist.”
I spent most of my time reading The Good Terrorist trying to orient myself in these possibilities. Is the novel at any level about the necessity, the justice, the virtue of terrorism? It certainly does not paint an encouraging picture of modern England: “The relentlessness of it,” Alice thinks, “the fucking shitty awfulness of it.” But though we see plenty of ways in which the “system” is failing, it’s hard to take the “comrades” seriously, with their ideological vagaries, their bumbling incompetence, and their high-flown rhetoric, indistinguishable from parody:
All over the country were these people — networks, to use Comrade Andrew’s word. . . . Unsuspected by the petits bourgeois who were in the thrall of the mental superstructure of fascist-imperialistic Britain, the poor slaves of propaganda, were these watchers, the observers, the people who held all the strings in their hands.
It’s also impossible to take Alice as she would like to be taken: as a revolutionary. Her commitment to the cause is hard to distinguish from her feelings for Jasper, who is not exactly her boyfriend, certainly not her lover, but whom she idolizes and yearns for, whose approval she craves but who actually seems to depend almost entirely on her for money and all domestic arrangements. Her revolutionary zeal is also constantly challenged by her nostalgia for the home and family of her childhood (though one of the novel’s more interesting developments is her realization that maybe things never really were the way she remembered them). How good a terrorist can someone be who steals her mother’s brocade drapes to make her “squat” more cozy, who runs home hoping to make off with the really big soup pot, who can’t bear it when her mother comes down in the world (thanks in large part to her, Alice’s, interference) and ends up in a sad little flat with no one to talk to about books?
So is The Good Terrorist a satire about people who imagine themselves to be both good and terrorists but are really just playing at revolution, for whom épater le bourgeois is more the goal than real political transformation? Is the novel told at Alice’s expense, to expose her as what her mother calls her, a spoiled child? Alice loves to shock her parents, to steal from them and throw rocks at their middle-class suburban windows, but she also runs to them for money (and soup pots) and expects them to stand as references when she applies for permits and loans. She loves to demonstrate and run from the police, but more often she stays behind, transforming the “squat” into as close an approximation as she can of a respectable home. It’s necessary camouflage, she argues to her comrades: keeping up appearances keeps the inspectors and the cops at bay. She’s right, but it’s not easy to tell which goal is, ultimately, the pretense for her.
The house itself is tempting to read symbolically, but of what? Does it stand for England, with its solid foundation but shameful state of disrepair, its squandered capacity to welcome and shelter, its rotting beams at the top that need replacing by stalwart workers? Or is it more specific to the revolution, with its shared spaces regressing into private territories, its pretense of civility barely concealing its buried sewage, its susceptibility to external attack as well as internal rot? Or maybe it’s just the site on which the novel’s conflict between the desire to build up and the forces that tear down is rendered most literally — with a deliberate ambiguity about which side the comrades are on.
I did get mildly interested, by the end, in what kind of terrorist Alice would turn out to be. (I would say that she’s not in fact a “good” one in either sense of the word.) But I didn’t find her a very consistent or believable character: she fluctuates too wildly between cool self-control when dealing with bureaucrats and wild emotional ups and downs in other contexts. I couldn’t piece together, either, a coherent idea about how she ended up where she is when the book begins — not in terms of plot and events, but in terms of motivation. That was one of many things I ultimately found dissatisfying about The Good Terrorist. It seems like a book that could have done something much deeper and more interesting about modern values and political violence. Instead of probing, though, it skipped along the surface, describing in painstaking detail and what sometimes felt like real time what is happening, but not why, not itself entering into the problems its characters are, however superficially or solipsistically, going on (and on) about — and trying, however wrongheadedly and ineffectually, to do something about. I didn’t enjoy Lessing’s writing style, either, which is more an absence of style combined with a failure of selectivity: I really couldn’t see why the book had to include quite what, or quite as much, as it did.
The book I found myself comparing it with is Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s The Terrorists. To my mind, the advantage is all with Sjöwall and Wahlöö. They tell a much tighter story that does a much better job at making us think about what it means to be a “terrorist,” or who we label “terrorists.” Rather than being a book about (wannabe) socialists, it’s a book that is, itself, socialist in its reading of society and especially its analysis of the operations of state power, class, and gender. In Rebecka Lind Sjöwall and Wahlöö also offer us someone who really deserves the label “good terrorist,” and in doing so they draw us effectively into the moral paradoxes that label provokes. If we sympathize with her — if we concede that her act of political violence is understandable in the circumstances, though not necessarily excusable — we have come a lot closer to revolution than is entirely comfortable. Lessing clearly did not have that kind of political goal for her novel,* but what exactly The Good Terrorist offers us instead has not only eluded me but also doesn’t much interest me.
*I don’t believe authors are necessarily authoritative on what their books do or are about, but after mulling over The Good Terrorist for a while on my own I poked around online a bit and came across Lessing’s Paris Review interview, in which she says she thinks it’s “quite a funny book” and that she wanted to “write a story about a group who drifted into bombing, who were incompetent and amateur.” The humor was pretty much lost on me. Would I have read the novel differently if I’d known it was supposed to be funny? Shouldn’t I have been able to tell it was funny?
In part, I mean “getting my house in order” quite literally, in the sense that much of my time in the past week has been spent sorting out a household problem of the most unexciting kind. It sounds simple enough: some time ago our dryer began catching items in its edges and scorching them – not a good thing! So I finally set up a “service call” and, after warning me that if he even stepped across the threshold he’d have to charge me at least the minimum for the visit and it might not be worth it for a dryer that is over a decade old, the nice man from Sears diagnosed the problem, “costed” the parts and repairs, and left us convinced that we didn’t want to fix the thing because to do so would cost very nearly as much as a new dryer. And a new dryer, of course, instead of developing yet more expensive problems, would actually be under warranty. And it might (technological advances being what they are) actually dry clothes more efficiently. Thus was launched the great Washer-and-Dryer quest of 2011 — washer too, because our old set was ‘stackers,’ a decision by our home’s previous owner that had seemed odd to us until we started looking for alternatives that would actually fit inside the closet where the laundry hook-ups are. Hours of internet research followed, and then multiple phone calls and then trips to stores (tape measure in hand, eventually, because it turns out you can’t trust the information you find on the internet!). It’s such a boring thing to spend so much time on, and yet it’s just the kind of thing you don’t want to screw up because you need the darned things to work, preferably for years. It’s a boring thing to write about, too! And this is just the kind of thing that gets the snide hashtag #firstworldproblems on Twitter…so I’ll stop, except to say that our new, pretty basic but, we hope, efficient and effective (and non-scorching) set arrives on Saturday. As most of the appliances in our house are at least that old or older, I fear we are living on borrowed time, especially with our cook-top and oven (original, I believe, with the house, which was built in the late 1980s). I promise not to keep you up to date.
I’ve also been getting things in order at work. A couple of weeks ago I laid out the tasks I need to get done to be ready for the start of classes in September: Blackboard sites, course syllabi, and other assorted paperwork and preparation. At this point I am happy to say the syllabi are ready for all three of my fall courses, including details about course requirements and policies, and, most important, full schedules of readings and assignments. I’ll give these one more thorough examination before I make them official, but I don’t expect to change anything major. I’ve also prepared the Blackboard sites for all three courses. I won’t be using these sites for much besides organization and storage of course materials except for in one class, where we will use the discussion boards for questions and responses. Even so, it takes a lot of tedious work to put the various pieces in place, including setting up and testing links to a range of online resources, uploading handouts, and so forth. There are some bits and pieces I still need to draw up, including study questions for novels I haven’t taught before, and I’ll keep puttering away at those, but those can be added easily enough now that the overall system of tools and folders is in place. I do hate Blackboard: every step is so laborious. But it is helpful having course information centralized in this way as well. I know we don’t have the latest version. I can’t say I’ve found the most recent upgrades improvements, but maybe the next level will give us a more intuitive interface and even (dare I dream?) drag-and-drop capabilities. Though I’m not completely finished with class preparation, there are some things it never makes sense to do very far ahead of time (like actual lecture notes, which I find need to be pretty fresh to be useful), and the panic I was feeling at the beginning of the month has more or less abated.
As for my other work, there too I am getting things in order. I’m actually caught up right now on thesis chapters to read. That won’t last – I expect not only another Ph.D. installment this week but an entire M.A. thesis, for which I am serving as 3rd reader. I must make the most of this little lull and … work some more on my conference presentation for Birmingham! I finished a first full draft version of the Prezi I was building for it (if it even makes sense to talk of a “draft” of something as malleable as a Prezi). Looking at it this weekend I felt that I had found pretty much all the pieces I wanted to include (the accompanying commentary, of course, is what will make it all intelligible, or so I hope) but it still seemed kind of linear and unimaginative given what you can actually do with Prezi’s layout options — it looks as if I took PowerPoint slides, shuffled them up a bit, and laid them out on the table in related clusters. I’m going to spend some time working on my speaking notes separately now, and then go back to the Prezi and tighten it up. I’ve been looking at some of the samples on the Prezi site (like this astronomy one: cool!) and getting a sense of how you can use the zooming functions and the multi-directional layout options more creatively to end up with a presentation that lets you step back and display the big picture as well as come in close and explore the details. In the end, of course, what matters most is that your audience understand your points and the relationship between them. What I have been appreciating about Prezi is that it lets me think about those relationships and play with them right there on the ‘canvas,’ muttering to myself as I go. I know that in PowerPoint you can shuffle slides around, but the slides themselves are both harder to set up and fussier to change than the Prezi, where you literally just slide things around. That said, I definitely want to do a trial run in one of our classrooms that has its own ‘desktop’ computer and a data projector, to check how what I see on my own computer translates to that technology. I think I’m also going to prepare a simple PowerPoint version: the conference organizers have told us to bring PPT presentations on memory sticks to use in the conference rooms, and even though I have double-checked that the available computers will have internet access (which should be all I need to run the Prezi right from the Prezi site), I don’t want to be caught short by some factor I haven’t anticipated. The conference program is up and it looks like it will be a very full three days of sessions. With my departure now only two weeks away, I am starting to feel my usual pre-travel jitters, which I will keep in check by focusing on planning. I’ve just started looking more attentively into trains from London to Birmingham, for instance. Both prices and times for the trip seem to vary enormously. Oh dear: something else to fret about!
In other news, I don’t think I ever mentioned here specifically that the piece I wrote on Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck series ran on the Los Angeles Review of Books site on August 5th (link). I’m really impressed at what the folks there have accomplished in what seems like a very short time (though I realize a lot of work went on in preparation for the launch even of this temporary site!), and also at their larger ambitions for the review, which reflect a deep commitment to but also a welcome optimism about books and book culture. If you haven’t been paying attention to them, one piece that is well worth reading because of the way it contextualizes their efforts is editor-in-chief Tom Lutz’s “Future Tense.” Among the many interesting things he says is this, about their editors and contributors: “Many of us are also supported, as I am, by our universities (however much they, too, are shrinking and under siege), and so we can write and edit ‘for free’ as part of our commitment to the dissemination of knowledge that is integral to that job.” As I noted briefly on Twitter, the kind of writing the LA Review of Books represents is not the kind that is usually required or rewarded by universities (I bet most if not all of the academics who are heavily involved in this experiment in knowledge dissemination are tenured), so if they are indeed being encouraged by their institutions to proceed, that’s a promising sign that at least some administrators understand that there are more ways to use academics’ time and expertise than specialized, peer-reviewed publication.
I’ve been taking kind of a mini-sabbatical from Open Letters Monthly, partly to make sure I concentrated on my ‘must-do’ tasks, partly just to regroup and think about my priorities over there, including how best to balance them against the upcoming term, which promises to be one of my busiest in a while. I haven’t forgotten the essay on Richard III, gender, and genre, but my motivation for it rather sagged, especially given how esoteric it is, really — except for my own quirky interest in it, I couldn’t see the point of it, and it’s certainly not time-sensitive, unlike other work I’ve been doing. I’ll take a fresh look at it when my informal leave of absence is over and see if I feel excited about finishing it, and also if, on sober second thought, it seems like something anyone else would want to read! I also need to be ready to steer a couple of incoming pieces from other contributors through for the September issue, so I hope to be re-energized and back in the editing business soon. Watching the LARB take off has prompted some reflections on how we fit into the broader context Lutz describes: as Ed Champion remarks in his response to Lutz’s essay, there is a pretty extensive array of online review publications already, including OLM. (As a side note, following on the issue of how academics might fit into the ‘new’ order, one of the comments at EdRants says “Perhaps the kind of long-form book reviewing that was the rule in the old print world should be gathered into the fold of academia, and it seems like the LA Review of Books model might be the thin end of the wedge here.” The more I think about these issues, the more they seem to deserve a separate post, as they open up all kinds of questions, including about the role of academics in the wider world of books and reviewing – which were, of course, some of the questions that were most on my mind when I first began blogging.)
And now, I must go put some laundry in, as our old set leaves tomorrow and though the four-day interval before the new ones arrive may not seem like much, it’s not negligible with a teenaged boy in the house! Then I’ll settle in to address the next things on my to-do list.
I’ve just finished reading three more of the Martin Beck books by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö: The Abominable Man, Cop Killer, and The Terrorists, which are, respectively, numbers 7, 9, and 10 in the series. There are now only two I haven’t read (The Man on the Balcony and The Locked Room)–not by design but because they haven’t turned up in the library or at any of the used bookstores I haunt. I think that the eight I’ve read have given me a very good idea of the series as a whole, and my interest in and respect for what Sjöwall and Wahlöö do in it has only increased as I’ve read along. By the end of the final book the scope and intensity of their critique of contemporary Swedish society has finally become explicit. It is even, finally, articulated at length, rather than gestured at through repeated jabs by the characters and in the narration or through the accumulating examples of incompetence, hypocrisy, and stupidity we got in book after book. It’s interesting that it’s a relatively peripheral character who finally voices the most sustained piece of social criticism in the series. It is carefully prepared for, in The Terrorists, by the juxtaposition of an “actual” terrorist cell that engineers two political assassinations (one of which is ultimately unsuccessful) with a very different kind of attack by someone who, as her lawyer argues, may have committed murder but is best understood as a victim. The terrorists’ attacks are not glorified: in fact, we get a rare close-up of brutality from one of the main characters when two of them are finally cornered (I’m trying to avoid really explicit spoilers, as it is quite a suspenseful story!):
He felt the hatred welling up inside him, a wild, uncontrollable hatred against these people who killed for money without caring who they killed and why. . . . [he] proceeded to smash his opponent’s face and chest repeatedly against the wall. On the last two occasions, [the man] was already unconscious, his clothes soaked with blood, but [he] kept his grip and raised the large limp body, ready to strike again.
“That’s enough now,” says Martin Beck, but there’s no sign that anyone, including Beck, is surprised or moved in any way by the violence shown. In contrast, the alt-assassin is treated sympathetically–during her initial interrogation (which even seems the wrong term to use) Beck offers her food, proposes that they resume after she’s had a rest, and generally gives her every consideration. There’s no question that her action is political, in the broadest sense of the word. She aims (pun intended!) at the head of a state that has shown her only indifference or hostility through its pervasive but ineffective bureaucracies. Nobody in particular has done her any harm: the problems and injustices she faces are systemic. What recourse does one individual have, in such a situation? “She realized,” her lawyer explains, “that someone must bear the responsibility”–and so she has acted, with a slightly pathetic naïveté. ‘It does seem a bit pointless,” one policeman remarks; “They’ll find another one just like him inside half an hour.” But her lawyer suggests, that “she is wiser and more right-thinking than most of us.” It’s almost a call to revolution, except that it’s so carefully embedded within the particularities of the case and of the wind-bag lawyer that its risk is contained. Still, it’s out there, as an idea, and the direction of our sympathies towards someone who has basically turned political terrorist because of the repeated small ways she has, in her own private life, been terrorized, is consistent with the overall message of the series that violence generates violence, and that we should not be too quick to equate legality with justice.
There is quite a lot of violence in The Terrorists, some of it quite gruesome. The tone is never sensational, though, only dispiritedly matter-of-fact, even when a head decapitated by an explosion strikes an officer in the chest. The grim potential of these moments is also leavened by Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s characteristic dry humor, which perfectly conveys the attitude of rueful stoicism shown by most of the police officers. The one who is struck in the chest, for instance, is immediately upset about his nice suit. Later the head of a decapitated dog is displayed as evidence and the annoyingly smarmy and incompetent Superintendent, Stig Malm, “at once threw up on the floor,” a moment which gave me more gratification than it probably should have because his bad police work has cost a lot of lives across the series. The cynicism that drives the series is also on full display, as when the proceedings against the apprehended terrorists are described as “among the most farcical that had even been enacted in any Stockholm courtroom.” If we had any lingering idealism about the system that has failed the first accused assassin, it’s dispelled here. After the case and the evidence against the men has been presented, we get this:
“I oppose the arraignment,” said the defense counsel.
“Why?” asked the judge, a flash of genuine surprise in his voice.
The defense counsel sat in silence for a moment, then said, “I don’t really know.”
With this brilliant remark, the proceedings collapsed…
We end the book, and the series, on an ambivalent note. On the one hand, we settle down for a pleasant evening with four of our main characters,
just the kind of evening everyone hopes for more of. When everyone is relaxed and in tune with themselves and the world around them. When everyone has eaten and drunk well and knows they are free the next day, as long as nothing too special or horrible or unexpected happens.
If by “everyone” we mean a very small group of humankind.
Four people, to be exact.
The restoration of order and domestic harmony promised by the form of the detective novel is offered but promptly rejected or subverted. Even if that harmony is achieved, it is only for the fortunate few, and even they enjoy it only precariously, only until it is broken once again. In the Martin Beck books, such happy moments actually happen often, but it seems to be a law that the more comfortable you are with your aquavit and your book, or your lover, the more likely it is that the phone will ring and pull you back into the corrupt world. What hope does one individual have against all the wrongs, all the injustices, all the stupidity? The one person who has taken a stand in this book has been labelled insane and locked away, destroyed, not helped. Martin Beck’s long-time partner, Lennart Kollberg, offers his friend some consoling perspective: “Violence has rushed like an avalanche throughout the whole of the Western world over the last ten years. You can’t stop or steer that avalanche on your own. It just increases. That’s not your fault.” “Isn’t it?” asks Beck. “Kollberg … looked at Martin Beck and said, “The trouble with you, Martin, is just that you’ve got the wrong job. At the wrong time. In the wrong part of the world. In the wrong system.” “Is that all?” Becky drily responds.
The final word of the series goes to Kollberg, and, as has been widely noted, is “Marx.” Certainly there’s plenty of disgust expressed for capitalism, by characters but also through theplots of the novels and their typical allocation of guilt and innocence. The Terrorists even has a long screed against Christmas, which “had changed from a fine traditional family festival into something that might be called economic cheapjackery or commercial insanity.” The defense lawyer’s statement explicitly condemns the way “large and powerful nations within the capitalist bloc have been ruled by people … who from a lust for power and financial gain have led their peoples into an abyss of egoism, self-indulgence and a view of life based entirely on materialism and ruthlessness toward their fellow human beings.”
Clearly these are books with a political agenda, and moments like these are didactic, riskily so. I think they are dramatically effective, however, because they are rare, and because the series shows no crusading or utopian zeal. In its world, systems are necessary. Bureaucracies are imperfect but essential. Some good police work is better than none; trying to find a just outcome is better than not trying. Change is slow. Work is hard. Patience is a virtue. Life is bleak, but there are small pleasures, like dinner with friends. Martin Beck has no illusions, but he still shows up every day and does his job. It’s an unimpressive but ultimately quite moving form of moral heroism.
I think I may choose The Terrorists for my class in the fall. Usually when approaching a series I assign the first one, as it often makes most obvious what is going to be different, how this author will bend and reshape the conventions of the genre. That also gets me out of the awkward backstory problem (teaching Gaudy Night, I’m always tempted to [and often do] interject with context from the previous books). But here, though I think all the ones I’ve read are outstanding, and Roseanna would be a really interesting book to read right after studying hard-boiled detective fiction and then Ed McBain, I think this one makes the political work Sjöwall and Wahlöö are doing most evident, and that is something that really does make their series distinct. It shows a conviction (one often echoed by today’s practitioners of the genre, such as Ian Rankin) that the detective novel really be both artistically effective and ideologically significant, and not just as a means for celebrating and protecting the status quo. That doesn’t mean Sjöwall and Wahlöö are necessarily successful or persuasive in every aspect of their project, but I think it will give us a lot to talk about.
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Henning Mankell’s most recent (and, as I understand, also his final) Wallander novel, The Troubled Man, is being released in its English translation this week. I’m still enjoying a break from my immersion in Scandinavian crime fiction, though I picked up another of the Martin Beck mysteries during my most recent excursion to Doull’s (The Abominable Man)–now that I’ve decided to assign one for my fall mystery course, I have to figure out which one, so I’ll be back reading them again in a bit. I won’t be rushing out to buy The Troubled Man right away, as I still need to catch up on the rest of the series (I’ve read only Faceless Killers and The Fifth Woman so far). Now that I’ve been thinking more about the characteristics of these books myself, though, the coverage of Mankell’s latest is interesting in itself. I must say that I particularly enjoyed the parodic opening of the review in the Guardian:
The flat, affectless sentences went on. Like rape out of season they stretched to the horizon in grey fields. Wallander found he was in another book. There was no reason for this. There could be no reason except money, but it would take 300 pages for him to work this out. It always did. Later, he would think about this often, but he could not reach any conclusions. Perhaps it was drink. Perhaps it was senility. Perhaps it was just the conventions of a Swedish crime novel. He wondered if any of this mattered.
Another page turned. His daughter rang. She disturbed him. This might be because she was the only human character in the entire book. She tells him he is a self-pitying bore but she loves him anyway. After she has gone he will spend some time looking out of the window and feeling regret while he remembers incidents from other books. Later, she has a baby, but to show she belongs in the book she will refuse to name it for three months. This is a joke that worked better in Doonesbury where the author was aware that people might find it funny.
An old girlfriend turns up. She is dying of cancer. Soon, she will kill herself, although it may have been an accident. Wallander is unhappy for some weeks, and then he decides he will always be unhappy. Life continues.
Spot on! And yet as you know, I have been brought round somewhat by the thoughtful arguments some of you made in response to my criticisms of Faceless Killers, to accept that the surface tedium of this style has its own literary antecedents and justification. (Thanks very much to @Liz_Mc2 for sending me this link via Twitter!)
There’s a longer piece in the Financial Times that is prompted by a recent BBC production, a “Danish-made Copenhagen set” drama called The Killers. The article opens with The Troubled Man (“the first page of the first chapter of Henning Mankell’s … The Troubled Man is sheer misery”) and then moves into a more general inquiry into the current popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction:
Crime fiction has long depended on a sense of dark forces lurking below calm surfaces and it is not unusual for it to have a reformist, critical edge. Critics have pointed to US noir novels and films as an allegory for fears of subversion and communism in the 1940s and 50s. English country-house crime of the Mousetrap genre depended on an assumption that, behind the tennis and the gin, bestial passions waited their time.
But in Scandinavian noir this is frequently married to a revolutionary intent. Most of these writers are militantly left-wing. It is a tradition started by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, a couple of Swedish journalists who, between 1965 and 1975 (when Wahlöö died in his late 40s) wrote the 10-novel Martin Beck series. Beck, a Stockholm police inspector who resembles the later Wallander, stoically solves crimes that are often rooted in upper-class chicanery or lower-class desperation.
It’s not obvious why fiction of this kind (novels “from Marxists who write of people beset with misery who either commit or must deal with acts of extreme sadistic violence”) would have any market appeal today. Sex and violence always sell, as some of the interviewees note, and many of the most successful novels (the Stieg Larsson ones especially) are hyper-modern: “the trappings of contemporary technology are much in evidence.” But there’s also the variation these works provide on the consistent preoccupation of crime fiction: the ongoing contest between order and disorder. The Scandinavian countries have long exemplified a certain kind of contemporary social order: “their “model” – one of high taxation funding comprehensive welfare and education, coupled with world-beating corporations – has roused envy and emulation, as have the orderliness of their civic life and the fluency of much of their population in foreign languages.” Such control inevitably (or so the novels persistently suggest) comes at a cost, and has its own dark side:
Rigidity in maintaining surface order, the mark of the Scandinavian social democracies, needs to be breached violently by those who are, ultimately, on the side of order – otherwise it will be breached by the violence of those who would destroy it.
The piece ends with some comments from mystery novelist Joan Smith; I was interested that she describes the Wallander novels as “very old-fashioned,” and points to “Larsson, Arnaldur Indridason in Iceland, Jo Nesbø in Norway” as doing something much more interesting.”
My education in Scandinavian crime fiction continues! After I expressed my doubts about Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers, I received some very helpful advice in the comments thread. In particular, Litlove suggested the Wallander books participate in a peculiarly European mood of melancholia (about which, she rightly inferred, I am largely ignorant) and a literary tradition of what she, um, invitingly described as “ugly, grinding prose, empty, bleak, futile.” And Dorian, who added the nice term “effaced personality” to our conversation about how Wallander is characterized, noted that Mankell’s series has an important antecedent in the Martin Beck mysteries by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. If I had been reading Mankell solely for pleasure, I might not have felt obligated to do the extra work of adjusting my reading framework to take these contexts into account, even though in principle I agree that good reading requires situating the book appropriately. I was reading Mankell in part as a professional, though, so I felt I did need to try a little harder to understand what he was up to–and boy, am I glad I did, not just as a teacher/scholar but as a reader. Three books into the Martin Beck series, I am thoroughly enjoying them, and I’m already feeling as if I will read Mankell much better (more aptly, more appreciatively) when I turn to The Fifth Woman, which is waiting here on my desk.
Why am I liking the Sjöwall and Wahlöö books so much better than Faceless Killers? One likely answer is that I’ve already fine-tuned my expectations, so that the features they share with Mankell’s first Wallander novel are more familiar and comfortable. Among these I would include the bleak (grinding, empty, futile) atmosphere–including both the literal atmosphere of cold, wet, miserable winter (as Jonathan Franzen says in his introduction to The Laughing Policeman, the “weather inevitably sucks”) but also the moral and emotional atmosphere, which is grim in a resigned, routine way. There’s also the one-damn-thing-after-another plotting characteristic of a police procedural, where every lead has to be laboriously pursued, every interview methodically conducted. No snazzy locked-room mysteries, these, no death-by-icicle or orangutang, no brilliant ratiocination leading up to a triumphant revelation scene. In these books, crime is a sordid business, no matter which side of the law you are on. No wonder everyone drinks so much–or tries to (in the Beck books at least, the more you are looking forward to your aquavit, the more likely it is the phone will ring and tear you away from it).
To some extent, I would say too that the prose in the Sjöwall and Wahlöö books has the same somewhat clunky quality I objected to Faceless Killers. Those of us who know no Swedish (I’m guessing that covers all readers of this blog!) can’t know how far this is an effect of translation, of trying to capture the cadence of another language in English. There are some tics in the Beck books that do suggest that there’s something deliberate about it, something purposefully exotic, if you like. One small detail that stands out for me is the recurrent reference to ‘Martin Beck’ where I would expect the surname alone, e.g. “Martin Beck looked disbelievingly at Kollberg,” 200 pages in. That’s just the tiniest little bit jarring, as you read along; it lets you know you aren’t quite on your home turf. But more generally, I found Faceless Killers flat, whereas I am finding the Beck books dry–in a good way. They are almost as tersely declarative, but there’s a momentum to the language that I enjoy, and also there’s a wonderful streak of humor, sometimes sardonic, other times more flat-out comical (as with the two beat cops Kvant and Kristiansson–“Ask a policeman,” they helpfully tell a confused woman who asks them for directions).
I haven’t yet seen quite the scope of social criticism attributed to Sjöwall and Wahlöö in the prefaces provided to my editions–one by Mankell himself, another by Val McDermid, another, as I mentioned, by Franzen. Franzen calls the series “a ten-volume portrait of a corrupt modern society; Mankell says “the authors had a radical purpose in mind … to use crime and criminal investigations as a mirror of Swedish society.” I have seen enough, though, to believe that the critique already apparent accumulates over the remaining seven books–and especially in The Laughing Policeman (with its anti-Vietnam rallies and its complacently self-interested corporate villain) I can anticipate how it might proceed. Mankell writes that the authors never intended “to write crime stories as entertainment” and he points to Ed McBain as an inspiration for them, someone who showed how to use “crime novels to form the framework for stories containing social criticism.” McDermid highlights the difference between the Beck books and the “golden age” procedurals of the 1930s, set in a world in which “a bent cop is almost unthinkable; an incompetent one only a little less so.” I was actually surprised that none of these discussions mentioned the possible influence of hard-boiled detective novels: to be sure, one point of these is that their protagonist is not part of the official law enforcement system, but someone like Sam Spade moves precisely in a world of near-universal corruption (or, sometimes worse, incompetence) which very much includes the police. I mentioned the noir atmosphere of McBain’s Cop Hater, and I think there’s something of the same perspective–though illuminated by the flickering flourescent lights of bureaucracy, rather than the foggy fitfulness of street lights–in these bleak cop novels.
As for the cases, well, I didn’t like the graphic violence and sensational bursts of action in Faceless Killers. Two of the Beck novels I’ve read so far also turn on quite violent crimes, and particularly in Roseanna, the details are unrelentingly specific. Having read McBain’s comments about facing up to violence while still trying not to be “salacious” about it, I can see a similar principle at work in the Beck books, though I think the authors flirt with danger in the way they linger over the details of the sexual crimes and, especially, seem preoccupied with women’s sexual histories, or with women who are “too” sexually assertive or demanding. There are only rare cases of women who are something other than nagging/disappointed wives at home, or ‘whores’ shading into victims: here too, perhaps, some fruitful consideration might be given to the influence of hard-boiled novels, or perhaps this is just another reflection of the hyper-masculine world of the police. The standout exception is the woman police officer who helps entrap Roseanna’s murderer…but she too ultimately must play the vamp and then becomes a victim, only to be rescued. That the belatedness of the rescuers’ arrival is caused by the same kind of stupid screw-ups that typify the world of the novels more generally adds only a little painful irony to an exploitive situation.
These remain first impressions, but I feel like I’m making progress. I’ve talked fairly often about blogging as a way of thinking in public; it’s also, wonderfully, a way of learning in public. Thanks for your help so far–feel free to keep correcting and supplementing my attempts to come to terms with this material! | |||||
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] | null | [] | 2021-12-02T21:31:09+01:00 | Posts about Per Wahlöö written by S | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/82209b3042b68b8e8a20a3b70e143e7c8b6a8e6d7e1a6e2bd81b5d245727512f?s=32 | Smithereens | https://smithereens.wordpress.com/tag/per-wahloo/ | Although this one is #7 in the series (of 10), this is my penultimate book (as I didn’t read it in order, but in function of what was at the library). Strangely enough, the library doesn’t have the whole series, and they might have been scared by such an abominable title. (or by the book cover). Another version would be that it was so good that a reader stole the library copy. Whatever the version I choose, I’m glad I have bought this copy, because it’s quite memorable.
The Abominable Man (in Swedish version The repulsive man from Saffle) is not the killer. It’s actually the victim. A man is killed with a bayonet as he lies defenseless in a hospital bed. He was a high-ranking policeman and a former soldier. But don’t cry for him just yet. As Martin Beck and his team investigate, they discover that this man was the epitome of police brutality. By his negligence, prejudices, direct or indirect actions, he’s responsible for the death of several innocent people and the harassment and unfair indictment of countless others. In short, he won’t be missed much and it’s rather difficult to narrow down a list of suspects. To make it even more relevant to some recent cases in the media, a lot of people among the police force were aware of his cruelty and abuses, and they all kept silent.
Contrary to several books of the series, where the crime is rather banal and the investigation is long and tedious, this book is flashy and cinematic. The killer with the bayonet will not stop just with one victim, his despair and hatred have turned against the whole police force and he’s not afraid to die. It’s a tragedy of epic dimensions, and the humor of the previous volumes is scarce. The denunciation of the systemic corruption of capitalist (patriarchy, conservative, insert any of the more current vocabulary) Swedish society gets more obvious, but never at the cost of forgetting the human dimension. That’s why Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s books are still so relevant today.
The book is so full of tension, it’s hard to stop reading, especially the last quarter of the book. There’s a rampage of violence, with a single man on one hand, and the entire Swedish armed forces on the other hand. The cliff-hanger is absolutely nail-biting, but I spoiled it a bit for myself by having read book #8 before. Don’t make the same mistake!
In a twisted way, it reminded me of a classic 1975 French movie with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Peur sur la ville (The Night Caller in UK/US), where the whole of the police force is hunting a cunning killer throughout a dehumanized landscape of modern towers, but in many important ways the movie and this book are polar opposites. In the movie, no soul-searching about the systemic violence of the police, no social criticism, but instead a not-so-subtle manly man demonstration of force to protect weak single women from evil killers who certainly aren’t worth a fair trial, and barely the bullet of the good detective’s gun. Unless you’re interested in cultural movie history, don’t bother watching this dud, but I guess the relentless movie music by Enio Morricone would be the perfect soundtrack for the Sjöwall & Wahlöö book.
We’re now in December, and only one last book left in the series to complete! I can’t wait!
And so, to make things a bit more interesting, I decided to complete the Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö novels by the end of 2021. Because it feels great to check some goals off and, quite frankly, this one seems a lot more reachable than others I had in my 2021 list (hello, mastering basic Korean verbs! Realistically, you will probably remain as mysterious as you were on Jan. 1)
This book is in the middle of the series (#6 out of 10), and the themes and characters are by now well established. The random violence, the strong of location (here in Malmö), the social injustice, the fastidious and methodical investigation, the mistakes and length of the search for clues. There are as in some other books an element of comic, slapsticks even, as stupid policemen get bogged down by procedure. The original title of the book refers, if I understand well, to a common insult against Swedish policemen who are compared with potatoes. This comes up a few times in the novel and contrast with the upper class delicacies that hotel guests eat at the Savoy, including Martin Beck himself.
American readers may be surprised how Swedes seem to take a relaxed approach to sex. The victim’s young and beautiful widow enjoys summer sun in the nude (with her lover), and finds nothing embarrassing when the inspector arrives to ask questions, and Beck has sex with a young colleague, but no strings attached. I can’t say if it’s Sweden, 1969, or if Sjöwall and Wahlöö meant something political by it.
Just as in Roseanna, luck and unluck play a part in the investigation, but in the end, Beck is more depressed than satisfied by having brought a criminal to justice. Compared with my last read of them, The man on the balcony, this one is a lot less tense, one might even say hysterical, as the crime itself is less showy, and we feel that nobody really feels sorry for the victim. But the book is still a solid mystery, and I can’t wait for the next one, which I already downloaded on my Kindle.
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, The Man on the Balcony (1967)
It was only one month ago that I finished reading #8 in the series and that I resolved to be more intentional if I wanted to complete the whole series. And I do want it very much! (all the more as the last series I’d completed was not a huge success, in a whole other genre). But within a few weeks, what a change of tone! The book I read in March was a lot of fun with literally LOL moments, this one is chilling and rather stark.
The book starts with a daily, ordinary scene in Stockholm. While people go about their daily business and kids go out to school or to the park, a man just looks down at the street from his balcony. Nothing more. But as we know we’re reading a police investigation, we just wonder where the blow will come from and expect the worse from any ordinary character.
And so we should. In this rather short book, Beck and his colleagues are confronted with a senseless murder and no clues whatsoever. Someone has attacked, raped and murdered a little girl in a park, and nothing can point to the murderer. The police are clueless and can only resort to the feeblest attempts by rounding up the usual suspects, by making more rounds in the various parks of the city, but they’re really looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. The worst is that police can only secretly hope that there will be another murder to find more clues. Martin Beck’s colleagues, who seemed so stupid and grotesque in the book I read before (and which is a later installment of the series), are now tragic figures who are all too aware of their powerlessness. They sift through telephone calls in search for the tiniest clue, and we witness how ungrateful this effort is and how little it yields. Just like Roseanna which I read many years ago, the resolution will come by a combination of sheer luck and good memory. Which is not very comforting.
This book, which is rather early in the series, is less politically-heavy handed than the later ones and it was nice. The authors clearly want to denounce the Swedish society from the 1960s where people live in anonymous large buildings without knowing, or caring for their neighbors, and where petty crime is growing. But to me people in this book, besides the tension created by the plot itself, seemed rather carefree and reasonably content. Is it the Swedish character? I’m not sure, but I look forward to reading the rest of the remaining books.
Major Sjöwall and Per Wahloo, The Locked Room (Swedish, 1972)
The last time I read one of these Swedish mysteries was in 2019. In fact, it seems that I need to wait 2 years or more before getting to another one in this series, which is probably not the most efficient way to do it. But who says reading has to be efficient? This leisurely pace really suits me, as my memory gets a bit blurry, but I still feel as if I am meeting old friends again. And as always, I don’t read it in order, as I depend on which volume is available at my local library. This time, I was in the mood for a locked room mystery (having recently watched with the kids The Mystery of the Yellow Room, inspired by the Gaston Leroux novel) and the book was perfect.
If I try to be a bit more systematic with the poor detective inspector Beck who is nothing if not methodical, persistent and logical, I have to conclude that I have read more than half of the books in the series, beginning by Roseanna (1965) and The Man who went up in smoke (1966) read in 2010 (back when I still read books in order, or maybe it was sheer luck), then in 2013 I moved to #4: The Laughing Policeman (1968). Then 4 more years passed before I started again, this time with Cop Killer (1974), which is the penultimate one. Then in 2019 I moved back to the #5 The Fire Engine that Disappeared (1969). And now The Locked room (1972) which is #8.
Have I ruined any pretense of being orderly? Is it enough to make your head spin? I’m only missing #3 (because there’s a child killer), #6 and #7 and #10. Mmmh… Which means that I probably shouldn’t count on luck only to help me find the ones I haven’t read yet.
The best thing about this book is that it made me laugh out loud. Yes! (even in Covid year!) I had called these detective stories gloomy, terse, depressing and painstaking. I remembered I loved them, but I didn’t remember how much fun they really were. In this book, the Swedish police force is mobilized against a series of bank robberies. As always with Sjöwall and Wahlöö, there is always a strong social(ist) commentary that condemns the anti-democratic tendencies of the police and how desperate the social and political situation is. But at the same time, those policemen are real clowns! They are both full of themselves and stupid, a combination that ensures that they are always too slow to catch the robbers. There’s a scene of pure slapsticks where a whole policemen squad ends up injured and almost dead in an empty flat, by a combination of ineptitude and bad luck.
On the other hand, Martin Beck is patient and perceptive. He has survived an almost fatal injury (which I don’t know much about as I haven’t read the previous book), and as he’s returning to his job, he’s given an obscure case to get back on his feet. An old man found dead, shot by a gun, in a locked flat, with doors and windows all closed. No gun on the premises, but by the fault of policemen’s ineptitude, it was first ruled as a suicide. Beck is the opposite of all his colleagues. He doesn’t jump on conclusions, he doesn’t hurry to arrest anyone, he’s polite and patient. The ending of the book really questions what is real justice.
Also, as I had remembered how Beck was stuck in an unhappy marriage, it made me really happy that he seemed to find a nice girlfriend. Don’t you see how I feel Beck was an old friend I was seeing from time to time? I really wish his new relationship will work out. Well, we’ll see, probably in a year or two…
The Fire Engine That Disappeared by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (Swedish, 1969)
After reading some Maigret in December, I decided that classic noirs and old police procedurals are totally worth returning to at regular intervals. And It was waaay too long since I’d read a Martin Beck police mystery. Fall of 2017, to be exact (thank you, blog archives!).
So as soon as 2019 rolled in, I reconnected with the Swedish police force, and it was as if not a day had passed since I’d left them. Beck is still at odds with his wife (and brother-in-law). Kollberg is still his grumpy old self. Melander is brilliant but boring. Gunvald Larsson is an unlikely hero. And there’s a newbie, a rookie policeman who is hilariously ambitious and clumsy (a dangerous combination).
I had forgotten how funny these books are. I mean, seriously laugh out loud funny, with just a few words for a full effect. People are so real, in their petty concerns, wishing for the weekend, hating the cold weather, bad-mouthing the colleagues… By any standards people are not very expansive and prone to emotional outpours but it delivers a punch. They do have a life beside the office, and in part because of that, and also because life is complicated, investigations often progress at snail pace, which is way more realistic than the 50 minutes open-and-shut cases of SVU and CSI. These books are not for hurried readers who want cheap thrill and twists in each page, but if you’re good with that, it is a real treat.
The fire engine that disappeared is a tongue-in-cheek title, because the story starts with an explosion, that could be arson, or murder, or suicide, or plain accident, and it takes a long time to settle between these possibilities. The fire engine that would have extinguished the fire took a very long time coming (yes, things don’t run as smoothly in Stockholm as the ideal country of hygge would have us think). There actually is a toy fire engine that gets lost in the story too, and this mystery too gets resolved in the end.
Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, Cop Killer (Swedish 1974)
Part of the fun to decide to read another Martin Beck police investigation is to search through the library shelves and try to remember how exactly both names of the writers are spelled. In my head, they are Maj and Per, which doesn’t exactly help. And you can’t really get help from the librarian if you don’t know how to pronounce them, right?
This one is Martin Beck’s ninth book, and they can be read out of order, but it’s probably best not to start with this one, because one can witness the trajectory of Martin Beck’s mood and beliefs from the beginning in the sixties to this one in the mid-seventies. In short, it’s not a spoiler to say that it doesn’t get better. Also, it’s better to have read Roseanna before, because one of the suspects of this investigation is a character from the first novel in the series.
If I was dealing with real people and if being gloomy was not part of the gumshoe’s and detective’s cliché image, I would be tempted to suggest a strong dose of Prozac to Beck and his close colleagues. Sjöwall & Wahlöö are part of the tradition that uses the conventions of the police procedural to denounce everything that goes wrong in society: miscarriages of justice, hasty judgments, unregulated use of violence by the police force, but also a country where young people struggle to find a right place, where they don’t find jobs and don’t find meaning in the jobs they may find. A country where press and politicians manipulate the news (has anything changed since?). 1974 is a time when young Swedish people are disenchanted, and except for smoking dope and having long hair, Swedish policemen such as Beck and Kollberg are just as disenchanted as they are. 1974 is the year heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped, the year Abba released Waterloo and when lots of bombings by extremists and the economic crisis worried people all over the world. The 1970s were dark and bleak and the book does reflect this mood.
Reading a Maj & Per book is not about big twists and big shockers, it’s about the work and the time policemen put in to find a killer, often without much recognition. Only dogged determination, and a part of chance too. The pace is slow and it takes more than half the book to understand why the book is titled Cop Killer, but I promise, this is all worth it.
Now I know where to turn when I want perfectly depressing cold-weather murders: 1960s Sweden of the Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s fame. Don’t we love them all? (uh, just kidding)
But I know my limits. After Roseanna and The Man who went up in smoke, I decided to skip the next mystery in the Beck series because it involved a child murder, and Beck’s Sweden being depressing enough, I didn’t want to add insult to injury.
The Laughing Policeman is no laughing matter (except when you take a second look and start to look for dark humor, which you’ll find aplenty). It starts with a random mass killing in a public bus in Stockholm. Among the ten victims, a young colleague of Beck is found, carrying his service weapon despite not being on duty. When his girlfriend tells the police that he was working days and nights on a case, Beck and his colleagues have no idea which one. And they aren’t even sure that the murder has anything to do with their colleague’s presence on the bus rather than with any of the other victims’ dark secret.
I don’t think the whole plot goes by with any sunny day. It’s always raining and policemen are miserable with colds and sore throats, not to mention damp feet whenever they visit witnesses and suspects. You sure can’t accuse Sjöwall and Wahlöö to glorify the police, nor to work for the Tourist bureau. Detectives’ work is painstaking and ends up in many dead-ends.
Make no mistake: it may sound suspiciously boring, but it isn’t. There’s a lot of humor and warmth in the detectives team’s description of quirks and twists. Sjöwall and Wahlöö also have a terrific eye for painting society as a whole, with just as many words as necessary. Vietnam demonstrations open the book and there’s no doubt that the writers aren’t quite happy with the conservative government of the time.
I knew my love affair with Swedish detective inspector Martin Beck was no fling. I fell hard for him with Roseanna, and it was not too long before I contacted him again for another steamy affair.
Well, steamy, it depends what you look at. This mystery is the second in the series (a sure sign of my devotion is when I respect the order of publication for a series – pretty rare indeed if you know my reading habits). Beck is like his usual self: very very serious, dedicated to the point of being nearly obsessed by his cases, but not emotional at all. And here, he keeps his cool under very steamy, not to mention shady, circumstances.
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke is basically a locked room mystery, but the room is a whole country within the Iron Curtain. It’s set in 1966 Budapest, the then-communist capital city where you (both as a foreigner or a Hungarian) can’t just move around and come and go as you please. Well, the book is never about repression, but it surely shows that police is everywhere in the country and that they have a lot of information about everyone.
Or almost so.
A Swedish journalist visits Hungary to interview a swimming champion. He shows up at his hotel, drops his luggage, goes out again. And whoops, he’s nowhere to be found anymore. Just gone. Pretty embarrassing for a dictatorship, don’t you think? Beck is sent there on the day of his own annual leave, to find the missing guy without too much embarrassment. And it’s not going to be easy.
Like in Roseanna, the mystery unfolds very slowly, in quiet routine details. But to me, there was the added pleasure of seeing a place I like a lot through his 1966 eyes. Budapest in summer has a seductive torpor, even under Communist rules. Policemen visit thermal spas for a relaxing bath, that is so effective that they drop their guard and exchange information about the case. Beck takes a steamer and stays in a hotel with faded grandeur, whose old bed creaks. It rings quite true.
I can’t wait for my next meeting with Inspector Beck. In Sweden this time? Actually, anywhere he wishes.
Mr. Smithereens was right.
The owners of that little bookshop in Brittany were right.
Kate was right too!
I should have given my attention to this book a lot earlier, what a great mystery!
Perhaps even my favourite mystery of the year up till now (and there were solid contenders like Josephine Tey and Frank Tallis in line). Roseanna is impressive for realism, for suspense and for sheer writing skills. The language is terse, there are a lot of conversations. Not one word is in excess, but emotions (indignation, anger, determination, pity) don’t need flowery descriptions to show on the surface.
But perhaps my exaltation doesn’t really suit “Roseanna”. It’s a police procedural that sticks to the facts. Nothing much happens for a long, long time, but believe me, it’s riveting. How so? Because in real life it takes a lot of dedication and energy not to abandon a cold case, and you can’t help but admire Martin Beck and his team from the Swedish police.
The naked body of a young woman is discovered in a canal. No identification is made. She’s not from the area. There’s absolutely no clue for whole months, until it can be ascertained that the body has been thrown from a boat and a passenger’s name can be traced. She’s Roseanna McGraw, an American tourist travelling on a boat. How a young woman from halfway across the globe can end her life in a Swedish canal? Funnily enough, Martin Beck’s world is as global as ours. Despite bad telephone lines, no internet and no Fedex to communicate physical clues and information, Martin Beck’s team painstakingly contact tourists from all over the world who have all travelled on that boat, as well as staff members who have moved on to other jobs.
That book should probably come with a warning: “Slow Book”. But surprisingly, faster books (and entertainment) come out at a disadvantage. I’ve started watching The Mentalist series on TV (with Simon Baker as Patrick Jane) right after I’d started Roseanna, and I couldn’t be bothered with the tricks and “jumping on conclusions” of the program. It seemed faked and superficial compared to the Swedish police. | ||
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] | null | [] | 2011-08-14T00:00:00 | Having recently covered crime fiction from Norway, including books by authors not so well-known to English-language readers, I thought I would do the same for Sweden but from a slightly different perspective. Over the past year there have been repeated, often identikit, articles in newspapers and magazines as well as on blogs and internet sites… | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/43d56737ccbfddb5c7c8d3e2b2b3ef60da3541373c85cf07237805cff8eada86?s=32 | Petrona | https://petronatwo.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/crime-fiction-from-sweden/ | Having recently covered crime fiction from Norway, including books by authors not so well-known to English-language readers, I thought I would do the same for Sweden but from a slightly different perspective. Over the past year there have been repeated, often identikit, articles in newspapers and magazines as well as on blogs and internet sites that don’t usually cover crime fiction, about Nordic – largely Swedish – crime fiction. I write “identikit” because almost all these articles take as a starting point the exciting Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson – and more recently, the similar-ish exciting Three Seconds by Roslund-Hellstrom (winner of the 2011 CWA International Dagger).
I do not intend to write here about these novels (you will probably be relieved to know), as Stieg Larsson in particular has been covered from every possible angle, with every last drop drained out of his novels and life-story by a range of opportunists, to screaming point. What I do intend to write about is the more typical Swedish crime fiction (in my experience), which is not usually a genre of breathlessly exciting, casually expressed thrillers, but is a more suspenseful, psychological and, yes, often gloomy world. Don’t think that Stieg Larsson or Roslund-Hellstrom’s Three Seconds is typical of Swedish crime fiction, because neither is (Three Seconds isn’t even typical of Roslund-Hellstrom’s earlier translated novels!).
PART ONE
I’ll soon begin highlighting Swedish authors who I think more “typical” than S Larsson, but first I should as usual mention Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, the originators of the modern crime-fiction genre (whether in Sweden or anywhere else). These authors wrote a series of ten books with the umbrella title The Story of a Crime, which followed the life of Martin Beck and colleagues as they investigate various cases (each one a take on a different crime subgenre) against a background of the crumbling of the 1970s Swedish welfare state much admired outside the country but less so by these Marxist authors. I mention these books for two reasons: one because they are not thrillers, even those that deal with bombs and other acts of group terrorism; and another because they influenced so many other Swedish crime writers to write their own novels in a similar style. First of these (to my knowledge) was Henning Mankell; subsequently authors such as Ake Edwardson and Kjell Eriksson started on their own 10-book series, well before Stieg Larsson decided to do the same (but only got as far as book 3).
I’ll go on to discuss these and some other authors whom I consider to be more typical of the output of the region – with the usual corollary that these are, of necessity, books translated into English.
Henning Mankell. First and until Stieg Larsson the most well-known of Swedish crime writers post Sjowall and Wahloo, his ten-book series about Inspector Kurt Wallander of the Ystaad police focuses on issues facing Swedish society as well as the character of the lugubrious Wallander and some of his colleagues and family (particularly his daughter Linda). My own take as a reader is that Mankell is more interested in these issues than his rather silly crime plots: the first novel in the series, Faceless Killers (first published in 1991), was inspired by issues of immigration and racial prejudice that had not figured in Martin Beck’s era of the 1970s. Subsequent novels addressed many of modern society’s problems, but with a veneer of sadness and depression, such as Kurt’s relationship with his father and broken marriage. Linda, Kurt’s daughter, is initially a rebellious and troubled teenager, but gradually becomes the life-force of the books, most clearly articulated in the final novel of the series, The Troubled Man, in juxtaposition with the ageing Kurt’s memories and decline. [Mankell’s Wallander series was written over many years with long gaps in between; the author has also written books that are not part of this series and which feature his take on the global sociopolitical agenda far more stridently, as well as children’s books, plays and polemics. Of course there have been popular Swedish (2) and English TV series based on the Wallander books.]
Hakan Nesser is another author of a ten-book series whose first title, The Mind’s Eye, was published in 1993 (first English translation 2009); the first six have been translated and a seventh is coming up soon. Inspector van Veeteren and team are in an indeterminate country (I see it as the Netherlands but others disagree) and, like Sjowall/Wahloo, each book (and case) is about a different crime subgenre (legal thriller, “locked room”, secretive religious community, etc). Unlike Edwardson and Eriksson (see below), Nesser shares with Sjowall and Wahloo a bleak but very funny sense of humour; and a strong disillusionment by the main character in police work and the crimes he has to investigate. After book 6, Van Veeteren is poised to quit the police force and buy a bookshop, an interesting departure from the police-procedural norm. Hakan Nesser also writes another, more recent series about Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti, a Swedish police inspector of Italian descent. This series has not (yet?) been translated into English but the first book is called Human without Dog.
Ake Edwardson was an academic at the University of Gothenburg, where he sets his Inspector Erik Winter novels, of which I think five have so far been translated – starting in 1997 – with at least two to follow. Like Sjowall and Wahloo, these novels focus on a group of police detectives and their professional and personal interactions as they accrue evidence and talk through the progress (or lack of progress) of their cases. Winter is the youngest Inspector in the Swedish police force, and during the series becomes the father of a baby, with associated domestic challenges. Again like those of Sjowall and Wahloo, the books are about the problems of modern society – disaffected youths, unemployment, foreign “guest” workers, racial harassment, teenage prostitution and child abuse. The author also writes non-fiction and children’s novels, so depicts his younger characters vividly.
Kjell Eriksson, the same age as Edwardson, writes a police-procedural series set in Uppsala. Three of these novels (from mid-series) have been translated into US editions, with a fourth one to follow later this year. Billed as “Ann Lindell” mysteries, these books really lost out from being translated out of order, not least because of the domestic situation of Ann, which is confusing for English readers who have not read the early books (the first one was published in 1999). Erkisson has written 10 crime novels, but I don’t know if they are all part of this series. Of the three I’ve read, these books tend more to the pyschological and bleak than focusing on social comment, with quite detailed investigations of the foibles and worse of various characters, though of course unemployment, immigration and so on are in the background of the cases the police investigate.
Helene Tursten is the last author of the overt Sjowall/Wahloo successors I’ll discuss in this post. She writes about Inspector Irene Huss of the Gothenberg police, with the first book, Detective Inspector Huss, first published in 1998. Unfortunately only the first three titles have been translated into English – in US editions. A fourth is apparently due out in English next year. Irene is a very attractive character – independent, happily married mother to two teenage girls, clever and intuitive. The other two translated books, The Torso and The Glass Devil, are increasingly bleak, and possibly a trademark is that Irene visits Denmark and England, respectively, in them- making me wonder if she goes to a different country in each book. Inspector Huss is also a very popular TV series in Sweden. I am very fond of these books and recommend them highly as excellent examples of classic crime fiction with a modern take – as well as a great female role model in the main character.
The authors above wrote their series starting in 1991 (Mankell), 1993 (Nesser), 1997 (Edwardson), 1998 (Tursten) and 1999 (Eriksson). Stieg Larsson’s first Millennium Trilogy novel, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, was first published in Sweden in 2005, and in the UK January 2008.
PART TWO.
I’ll move on now to Swedish crime fiction authors who don’t follow the police-procedural route originated by Sjowall and Wahloo. Just as Mankell is the first “icon” of these, Kerstin Ekman is perhaps the best equivalent for the rest. Ekman is more of a literary than a crime novelist, writing about a particular region in the north of the country, but her 1993 novel Blackwater (containing some characters from other novels) was the first of this set to be translated into English. I have read it but found it very dense and quite hard-going, perhaps because I had no earlier context for the large cast of characters. At its heart, it is a book about a woman who goes missing while camping, her past, and the effects of this situation on the small community of Blackwater. Its plot is very, very sad in one particular. I don’t know if this book has been influential to subsequent Swedish crime novelists, but it seems to me to be the origin of many common elements – isolation, a hard climate, a struggling small community, characters suffering inner despair or hiding deep secrets, and so on – while being on no level sensationalistic. To learn more about this fascinating author and her fictional world, please read the 2010:1 issue of the Swedish Book Review, featuring articles about her and some new translations of her work.
Asa Larsson is writing six (I think) novels about Rebecka Martinsson, a financial lawyer initially based in Uppsala who comes from Kiruna, in the far north of the country. Sun Storm (2003, aka The Savage Altar) follows Rebecka’s attempts to help an old childhood friend who is accused of murder, in the process having to confront the horrors of her own childhood. One of the many strengths of this haunting novel is the depiction of the old people in the northern village, and their way of life, in particular an old neighbour Sivving. The next two books (The Blood Spilt and The Black Path) follow these themes of small communities, religious or spiritual beliefs, and the struggle of a young woman to overcome her internal demons and some real threats to her life. The detective elements are satisfying too, with Anna-Maria Mella (mother of several children and heavily pregnant in book 1) and her increasingly complicated deputy, Sven-Erik. After a gap of 3 years, I am delighted that MacLehose Press has taken over the UK publication of this series and that the next book, Until Thy Wrath Be Past, is out in the UK this month. [Rebecka Martinsson’s name is said to be a tribute to Sjowall and Wahloo’s Martin Beck.]
Karin Alvtegen, another favourite author of mine, has written five non-series novels of psychological suspense, of which I most highly recommend Missing (2000, foreshadowing The Girl Who Played With Fire), Betrayal (2003) and Shadow (2007), all very different – Missing is very exciting, but the novels are bleak, grim, and not always leaving the reader with any hope. At a recent literary event, the author spoke about her increasing abhorrence with violence and the way it is so casually depicted on TV and other media, so has challenged herself to write a suspenseful book with no violence. I am sure she can do it, and the result will probably be my perfect crime novel!
Liza Marklund is another firm favourite of mine, in her superb depiction of a journalist, Annika Bengtzon, from her sad childhood and days as in intern with a ghastly boyfriend, desperately trying to keep her place as a subeditor in a newspaper office, to her role as a well-known journalist struggling to produce “real” stories with integrity while the media industry plunges downmarket, and equally struggling to be a good parent to two young children. Her friend Anne works in TV so we also see the crushing effects of that industry on the moral values and lives of those working in it. Annika’s job brings her into contact with dramatic stories of course, and her senior “deep throat”-like contact in the police force does her investigations no harm. She stays one step ahead of the game in the world of newspaper politics but it isn’t so clear that she’ll manage the same in her personal life. The first four books in the series were published a while ago; after a gap they are now being republished and the new novels (there are 9 so far) being translated for the first time, beginning with last year’s Red Wolf. The author is interested in journalistic values, political/historical issues (for example, sex-trafficking is the theme of the strongest (in my view) novel in the series, Paradise, and Red Wolf examines whether modern terrorism could have originated in the anti-war protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s); less so in providing “solutions” to the crimes, which are usually tossed over to the police to sort out. Hence, Liza Marklund is the perfect “anti-overblown ending” crime author – and for all these reasons is one of my very favourites.
Inger Frimansson writes very good psychological novels: so far translated are a pair and a standalone (I’ve reviewed them at Euro Crime). Disturbed protagonists, inadequate police investigations, small and superstitious communities – it is all here.
Johan Theorin is writing a marvellous quartet set on the small island of Oland, the first one published in 2007. In common with other novels in this second “tranche”, he writes so well about the old communities and residents (especially the 80-something fisherman Gerlof), embedding his novels with the superstitions and legends of the island. I can’t recommend the first three novels highly enough (the fourth one is not yet written); these novels are crime fiction at its very best. (See my Euro Crime reviews of them.)
Camilla Ceder is a new (to English speakers) novelist who on the basis of her first novel, Frozen Moment, fits into the Kersten Ekman mould. The novel is a vivid yet freezing portrait of small communities in the countryside round Gothenberg, a mystery that has its roots in the past, as many good mysteries tend to do. Both the police characters and the various witnesses and residents are portrayed with subtlety and individuality, so I am looking forward to seeing how this series develops.
AND THE REST
Two favourite Swedish authors who don’t seem to fit neatly in either of these categories are Camilla Lackberg and Mari Jungstedt. The former writes a series set around Fjallbacka, so far there are nine titles (five translated) beginning with The Ice Princess (2008). The protagonist is Erika Falk, a journalist and true crime author, who gets involved in various local cases, not least because of her relationship with Patrik Hedstrom, the sharpest of the local police force (though he isn’t as sharp as most readers!). Part crime novels and part domestic romances, these books are very popular. Mari Jungstedt sets her novels on the island of Gotland. Like Lackberg, they have police-procedural elements in the team led by Inspector Anders Knutas, and a strong romance theme involving Stockholm-based TV reporter Johan Berg and Emma, a woman who lives on the island. There are nine books in the series so far, of which the first five have been translated. Both these series contain dark themes and other typical elements of crime fiction, but they are both more preoccupied with the romantic lives of their characters than is common in a crime novel. Both series are very readable and involving, addressing many of the same contemporary themes of social and personal ills that figure in most crime novels; I very much enjoy them both.
Are these the only Swedish crime novels I’ve read? No. But they all started before Stieg Larsson began publishing his novels, or in a couple of cases began to publish at the same time. None can therefore be said to have been influenced by the Stieg Larsson phenomenon, and all can be read and enjoyed in their own right. A few details:
Mons Kallentoft’s first novel Midwinter Sacrifice will be out soon: I have read it and think he is an author worth looking out for – he writes about small-town life and has a female police detective as a main protagonist. There is also a slight supernatural element.
Lars Kepler’s The Hypnotist received a lot of publicity when first published (the authors are a husband and wife team) but my view is that although it has some good elements, it degenerates into a horror-thriller that I found too commercially driven for my taste, more hype than substance.
Lief G W Persson’s books are being translated now. The one I read, From Summer’s Longing to Winter’s End, was far too long and tedious for its content. It was as if someone had taken the “establishment conspiracy” elements common to the LeCarre end of the genre (as used by Stieg Larsson in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest), created a few onion skins out of them, and added a bit of brutality to a slowly moving whole. It is the first of a trilogy but I don’t think I have the will to find out more about which spook turns out to be not as we thought, etc.
Roslund-Hellstrom’s Box 21 (aka The Vault) is perhaps the bleakest and most anger-making novel I’ve read in a long time, focusing on sex-trafficking and police corruption. Very good indeed.
Arne Dahl’s well-regarded novels will soon be available to English readers in US editions – I for one am looking forward to those.
The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist is not really a crime novel in the sense of having a perpetrator or much suspense – it has elements of science fiction – but I do highly recommend it as a haunting, thought-provoking study of both character and society.
More Swedish crime fiction authors (and reviews of some of their books) are at Euro Crime’s regional listing. If any readers of this post can recommend other Swedish authors who have been translated into English not mentioned here, I’d be very grateful and happy to read their books. [I should also note that there are writers from other countries who set novels in Sweden, of course. One I would recommend as being in the Eckman tradition is Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida, though for me it does not quite have the same resonance as the books discussed here written by Swedish authors. There is also a recent novel called Meet me in Malmo by Torquil MacLeod which is worth checking out.]
Thanks are due to the many translators who have bought these books to English-language readers: Laurie Thompson, Steven T Murray/Reg Keeland/McKinley Burnett, Joan Tate, Anna Patterson, Tiina Nunnally, Ebba Segerberg, Neil Smith, Marlaine Delargy and many others. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 25 | https://simonpetrie.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/book-review-the-laughing-policeman-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | en | Book review: The Laughing Policeman, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö | [
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] | null | [] | 2018-09-02T00:00:00 | Swedish authors (and de facto couple) Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are pivotal figures in the development of Scandinavian crime fiction as a distinct subgenre, with their critically-acclaimed ten-volume series of 'Martin Beck' police procedurals mapping out a then-contemporary panorama of Swedish society from the mid sixties to the mid seventies. The Laughing Policeman (Den… | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | Simon Petrie | https://simonpetrie.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/book-review-the-laughing-policeman-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | Swedish authors (and de facto couple) Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are pivotal figures in the development of Scandinavian crime fiction as a distinct subgenre, with their critically-acclaimed ten-volume series of ‘Martin Beck’ police procedurals mapping out a then-contemporary panorama of Swedish society from the mid sixties to the mid seventies.
The Laughing Policeman (Den skrattande polisen, 1968, translated by Alan Blair), the fourth in the ‘Martin Beck’ sequence, won the Edgar Allan Poe award for Best Novel in 1971. Set in Stockholm’s miserable winter slush at the end of 1967, it concerns the mass murder of a busload of passengers, late at night, by an unknown assailant armed with a submachine gun. The police investigation has its hands full merely determining the identities of the driver and eight passengers slain in the attack; the crime scene was left badly messed up by the well-meaning first responders to the incident, so the hopes of Beck and his team for clues to the killer’s identity rest with the critically-wounded sole survivor, and with the discovery that one of the bodies on the bus is that of Åke Stenström, a young policeman known to Beck and his associates. But, since it seems that Stenström was off duty at the time of the attack, it’s not clear whether his presence at the scene was intended or merely due to random chance…
As with all of the books in the sequence, this is presented as a ‘Martin Beck’ novel, though it could more justifiably be described as a novel of Lennart Kollberg, Beck’s closest associate and a distinctly more sympathetic character. Unlike Beck, Kollberg does not merely run the gamut of emotions from ‘gruff’ to ‘taciturn’: his personality displays genuine growth within the book’s pages and his interactions with others, particularly Stenström’s bereaved partner Åsa Torell, are moving and memorable.
The writing is detached, distant, consistently downplaying, the setting a half-century past (with its student unrest and massed Vietnam War demonstrations), yet the scenes described are vivid and the sense of involvement immediate. There are aspects to the text which now appear somewhat dated (its examination of sexuality, for example); it’s also interesting to contrast the police response to the atrocity with what the present-day response would most likely entail. In these respects, it’s unavoidable that the book is seen as a document of its times. (I was intrigued to note that the book contains what might be the earliest pop-culture reference to Ronald Reagan, politician—as opposed to Ronald Reagan, actor—beating out Creedence Clearawater Revival’s ‘It Came Out Of The Sky’ by a year or more.) Also as with all of the Beck books, it’s highly class-conscious and—more through Kollberg’s perspective than that of the consistently sour Beck—does not hide its authors’ openly-declared socialist sympathies, with commentary on wealth inequality, police brutality, corruption, journalistic sensationalism, and the prevalence of gun crime in the USA. (Perhaps this contributes to the books’ air of continuing relevance?) At its heart, however, it remains an expertly-told police procedural, with a well-constructed crime and a realistically-frustrated investigation progressing not-quite-blindly towards the revelation of a concealed truth. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 86 | http://wwwshotsmagcouk.blogspot.com/2015/05/maj-sjowall-in-conversation-with-lee.html | en | SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL: Maj Sjöwall in conversation with Lee Child at Crimefest 2015 | [
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7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 69 | https://killerthrillers.net/nordic-noir/ | en | Nordic Noir: Definition, Characteristics, and Examples | http://killerthrillers.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Nordic-Books.jpg | http://killerthrillers.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Nordic-Books.jpg | [
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] | 2021-10-29T08:00:00+00:00 | Discover what Nordic Noir is, learn what separates it from other crime fiction, and check out a few of its most well-known examples. | en | killerthrillers.net | http://killerthrillers.net/nordic-noir/ | Nordic Noir is a subgenre of crime fiction that has been steadily gaining attention over the years. In its broadest sense, it’s a type of noir (characterized by cynicism and moral ambiguity), written from a police perspective and set in a Nordic country.
But within its narrative is a juxtaposition of the still and bland societies in Nordic countries, and the societal issues hidden beneath them.
Until recently, this particular blend of crime fiction had no name. It is simply noir to Nordic countries and was relatively unknown to English-speaking countries. That all changed sometime in the 2010s thanks to the success of English-language adaptations such as The Millenium Trilogy, which drew many into this world of dark and bleak stories.
Characteristics of Nordic Noir
Also known as Scandinavian Noir or Nordic crime fiction, this genre is characterized by some or all of the following:
Plain Language
Nordic Noir is almost always written without any embellishments. The writing is economic and realistic, with writers preferring to let the brutality and realism speak for themselves, rather than dress them up with figures of speech. It’s a relentlessly matter-of-fact presentation, warts and all.
It makes for an extremely chilling read when a crime is described in as plain a language as possible. You aren’t shielded from the worst aspects of a violent event, whether it’s a murder, a racial attack, or the simple violence of a bar fight.
Injuries and deaths are written as is, no matter how gruesome they are. With a story stripped of unnecessary words, the impact of a crime is better felt and understood.
It’s not just the cases that are written in such an unwavering realism, but the people too. There’s no romanticizing the methods or motivations of a character. If a character is a bastard, then they’re written as a bastard, no matter if it makes readers hate them more. In fact, that’s the point of it all—Nordic crime fiction is composed of stories that don’t shy away from reality, because they want to be portrayed as realistic as possible.
Bleak Settings
While Nordic Noir is typically set in Nordic countries, it’s not just their geographical location that identifies their setting, but also their society.
Society is initially presented as peaceful and picturesque, but this slowly crumbles as the story reveals itself. A crime disrupts the peace and serves as the prelude to the many flaws lurking beneath society’s placid surface. Misogyny, misandry, racism, isolationism, and rape are the frequently touched upon.
Perhaps one of the best examples is Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers. An old man is tortured to death, his wife beaten and left with a noose around her neck. She later dies in the hospital, uttering her last word: “foreign.” This sparks multiple racially motivated attacks across the community.
It also helps that the landscape of these Nordic countries is expansive and solitary. Winter skies, isolating snowstorms, and stretches of unpopulated land serve to enhance the dark and brooding atmosphere of the genre.
Characters
Nordic Noir is largely about its characters. Their struggles and regrets, private thoughts, and character development are as important as the mystery of the crime itself.
Forget about the refined characters that populate classic whodunnits and whydunnits. Characters in this genre are written to be realistic, especially the detectives who must deal with all the horror that their job requires them to face. They’re all fighting against their inner demons, whether it’s a vice they’re trying to quit, a family they want to mend, or a failure they’re seeking to correct.
The protagonists of these stories are typically ill-tempered individuals worn down by responsibilities and other concerns. They’re antiheroes who simply get the job done, in contrast to a typical hero who does it for some altruistic reason. And sometimes, getting the job done means using questionable methods.
Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole is an excellent model for this kind of character. He’s an obsessively driven detective who is a chain smoker, recovering alcoholic, and depressed introvert—things that the books often focus on. These characteristics result in an unsociable behavior that sees him frequently clashing with the people around him. Then there’s his frequent use of unorthodox methods that tend to lean towards the illegal, all for the sake of solving the crime.
All of these lead to a gripping narrative where you follow a semi-broken man trying to keep sane while doing the only thing he knows he’s good at: solving the gruesome crimes plaguing his community. He’s no crusader, just a man trying to do his best.
Slow Burn
Nordic noir is mostly a slow-burn experience. While you’re introduced to an exciting, albeit morbid crime, the narrative soon takes on a slow and melancholic pace.
That’s far from a disadvantage, though. While other thrillers may rely on fast-paced action, Nordic noir slowly builds up an atmosphere of fear and impending doom. These novels are often in a police procedural format, contrasting the abrupt chaos of violence with the monotonous day-to-day operations of law enforcement.
The payoff becomes increasingly valuable as you get more intimate with the characters and learn more about the societal undercurrents happening in the book.
Writers of this genre use it as a platform for social critique. As such, the themes in these stories are often complex, touching upon real-life issues in their society that an author wants to comment on. So it’s necessary for the narrative to unfold in its own time and let the reader truly understand what it is about.
Mankell’s Faceless Killers is a comment on Sweden’s inability to properly assimilate immigrants into its population. Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy deals with rape and misogyny. The Bridge, a Nordic television crime series, frequently touches upon immigration, homelessness, and child labor issues.
Examples of Nordic Noir
There is currently a lot of interest in Nordic crime fiction. Apart from its popularity in books, it’s also seeing much attention on the big screen. Here are some of the best examples you can currently read and watch.
Insomnia
Insomnia follows an investigation gone horribly wrong when a detective accidentally shoots his partner while they’re investigating a murder. As he deals with the guilt of killing his colleague, he must also survive a cat-and-mouse game against the murderer they’ve failed to apprehend.
The Killing
The Killing is a Danish police procedural drama considered by some to be the perfect entry point to Nordic noir. It concerns the day-to-day duties of a detective as she is confronted with the murders happening in her city.
Dark
Dark is a science-fiction take on the genre and can be considered as the Nordic noir equivalent of Stranger Things. The disappearance of a child sets four estranged families into pursuing the truth. But what they find is a time travel conspiracy involving their town that spans generations.
The Story of a Crime by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
The Story of a Crime is a series of ten police procedural novels written by the parents of Nordic Noir: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. This is the series that basically spawned the genre. It follows Detective Martin Beck and his team as they uncover the mysteries behind the murder cases assigned to them.
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow is a literary example containing many of the elements that characterize the genre. The novel follows a woman whose fascination for ice and snow leads her to doubt and investigate the supposed accidental death of a child.
Why Is Nordic Noir So Popular?
Nordic Noir is admired because of its wide social view. It blends social critique with atmospheric storytelling, giving readers the dual satisfaction of a good story and social justice.
It’s this very nature of social commentary that makes the genre exciting. Writers of the genre move with the relevant issues they see in their society, incorporating them into their highly entertaining stories.
Not only does this result in consistently fresh stories that don’t rely too much on established tropes, but they also stay close to the interests and desires of the public consciousness. | |||
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] | 2021-10-14T14:20:54-04:00 | In 1965 writing partners (and partners in real life) Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö embarked on a quest - to write and publish ten novels in ten years featuring Stockholm's Martin Beck. The novels, police procedurals, were structured as not only mysteries, but reflections and commentary on modern Swedis | en | /wp-content/uploads/fbrfg/apple-touch-icon.png?v=LbGql0amRN | Cannonball Read 16 | https://cannonballread.com/2021/10/martin-beck-book-series-xoxoxoe/ | In 1965 writing partners (and partners in real life) Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö embarked on a quest – to write and publish ten novels in ten years featuring Stockholm’s Martin Beck. The novels, police procedurals, were structured as not only mysteries, but reflections and commentary on modern Swedish society. The duo wore alternating chapters – but since I haven’t read any of their individual works I couldn’t;t guess who wrote which chapter in any given novel. The books are cohesive and follow policeman Martin Beck as he progresses through the ranks of the Swedish national police.
Although these books were written decades ago many of the issues and crimes depicted by Sjöwall and Wahlöö sound eerily familiar – violence against women and children, serial killers, terrorism. Their top detective Beck is an interesting character. We follow him through the ten years as his marriage implodes and he becomes more and more disillusioned with the growing militarism of the police and his superiors’ endless bureaucracy (and incompetence). But Beck doesn’t work alone. Equally interesting are his colleagues Lennart Kollberg and Gunvald Larsson and female detective Åsa Torell and Rhea Nielsen. I listened to these books on Audible and was grateful for the reader to pronounce all of the Swedish place names, but also surprised at the pronunciation of some of the characters names. If I had been reading it in paperback or Kindle I never would have guessed that Kollberg is pronounced Kahl-bree-yah in Sweden.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö are considered the origin and of modern Scandi-noir. They have influenced a great many writers, such as Henning Mankell (Wallander), Stieg Larsson (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) and Jo Nesbø (The Snowman). I enjoyed all of the books and came to care about Beck and his compatriots. Not only was reading the series doable, it satisfied my completist mentality. I really enjoyed a glimpse into the swinging ’60s and ’70s Sweden. Maybe not so free-thinking as I might have thought. My favorites were probably The Man on the Balcony, The Laughing Policeman, The Abominable Man and The Locked Room, although I recommend checking out the entire series. Although I appreciate the authors’ discipline, I wish there were more Beck novels. Apparently there are a ton of movie and television adaptations of the books and the characters, although so far I haven’t found any on any of my streaming services.
The books, in the order they were published (and how I read them) are as follows:
Roseanna (1965) – In this first novel of the series Martin Beck must determine the identity of the corpse of a young woman found in a canal. The solving of the case requires long-term and meticulous research and sometimes a little luck.
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966) – Beck is sent to Budapest to find a missing journalist. Sixties Eastern Europe is an interesting backdrop and the reader gets to know more an=bout Beck’s home life and his quirks and attitudes.
The Man on the Balcony (1967) – The series takes a dark turn as Beck & Co. try to track down a serial pedophile/murder. Two bumbling cops, Kristiansson and Kvant, are introduced, as well as detective Gunvald Larsson to provide some subtle and wry comic relief.
The Laughing Policeman (1968) Maybe the most well-known of the series, this was adapted into a Hollywood movie starring Walter Matthau (which I haven’t been able to find streaming anywhere) and also won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1971. The opening, and the main crime to be investigated is stunning – on a snowy night a gunman, wielding a sub-machine gun, boards a commuter bus and systematically kills everyone aboard and then disappears. One of the passengers happens to be Beck’s young colleague detective Åke Stenström.
The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969) – Gunvald Larsson is about to replace a fellow cop on a routine surveillance assignment when the building they are observing goes up in flames. He singlehandedly rescues many of the residents, but Beck must determine the cause and more importantly, the why of the conflagration.
Murder at the Savoy (1970) – During a fancy banquet at Stockholm’s Savoy Hotel a gunman walks in, shoots a man in the head and walks out. No one in the crowded room can offer much information on his identity. How will Beck track him down?
The Abominable Man (1971) – A former policeman is killed while in the hospital. Beck must not only track down the culprit but the motive. One of the most exciting books of the series, this involves a city-wide manhunt and a crazed sniper holding the city hostage.
The Locked Room (1972) – This book involves two separate crime investigations – a series of bank robberies (which was apparently a big problem in Sweden in the ’70s) and Beck trying to solve a classic locked room mystery.
Cop Killer (1974) – This book has a callback to first novel Roseanna as Beck investigates the disappearance of a young woman in southern Sweden.
The Terrorists (1975) – Beck and his team are tasked to protect a very unpopular U.S. senator on his visit to Sweden. The novel follows Beck and his team as well as the terrorist cell that is planning to disrupt the visit. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 90 | https://murder-mayhem.com/best-mystery-books-all-time | en | The Best Mystery Books of All Time | [
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] | 2021-07-30T00:00:00+00:00 | Choosing the best of any genre—especially a gargantuan one like mystery—is an imposing task. We took it on anyway. | en | https://orion-uploads.openroadmedia.com/7-favicon.ico | murder-mayhem.com | https://murder-mayhem.com/best-mystery-books-all-time | “Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a monstrous hound”. Sherlock Holmes had been missing, presumed dead, for eight years, when Sir Arthur brought him back for what would turn out to be his greatest adventure.
The Hound of the Baskervilles includes all of our favorite Sherlockian treats: an opening scene at Baker Street in which a personal item is used to draw dozens of conclusions about the owner’s life and personality; Holmes adopting a disguise and the courageous Watson creeping around in the dark with a revolver.
Add to this an escaped convict, lethal quicksand, foggy moors and a touch of the supernatural and you have a tale that’s as comforting as it is thrilling. The Hound of the Baskervilles is undoubtedly the best children’s story ever written for adults. And that’s a fine thing.
As much an exploration of the nature of historical truth as it is a gripping whodunit, Tey’s brilliantly light and witty 1951 novel is rightly held up as one of the best detective novels ever written. Confined to a hospital bed with a broken leg, Scotland Yard Inspector, Alan Grant passes the time by investigating one of England’s most notorious historic crimes – the 1480s murder of two young princes in the Tower of London.
Related: Daughter of Time: A Mystery Lover's Guide to Josephine Tey
William Shakespeare and hundreds of historians insist the killing was carried out by the evil, hunchbacked King Richard III, but Grant is unconvinced. With the help of a glamorous stage actress and an American researcher at the British Museum, he reaches back in time and unearth the facts that lie buried beneath five centuries of propaganda.
A novel from the British Golden Age of detective fiction that steps out of the cozy drawing room world and onto the fog wreathed streets of London, The Tiger in the Smoke features Allingham’s enigmatic detective Albert Campion—a mysterious upper-crust gentleman with a shady past and an unlikely sidekick in the shape of reformed burglar Magersfontein Lugg.
Related: Queen of Crime: Margery Allingham's Mystery Novels Still Hook Us Today
Written in 1952, this was Campion’s 14th outing and sees him pursuing a kidnap gang lead by a psychotic albino all the while keeping a lookout for an escaped fugitive and a missing war hero who appears to have come back from the dead. Sharply observed and knottily plotted, The Tiger in the Smoke is a favorite among other mystery writers. It’s easy to see why.
Canadian-American king of hard-boiled detective writing, Macdonald started out copying Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett but in terms of quality ended up outstripping both those justly celebrated giants. In all, Macdonald penned 18 novels and 3 volumes of short stories featuring world-weary Southern Californian private eye Lew Archer.
Written in a laconic yet graceful style that has rarely been bettered in detective fiction, the Archer novels are vivid chronicles of post-war U.S. life, filled with tough, poetic imagery, sour wisecracks and the central character’s sardonic philosophy (“I have a secret passion for mercy. But justice is what keeps happening to people”).
In 1964’s The Chill, Archer is hired to track down a runaway bride only to find himself caught up in a tangled pair of murders and a maelstrom of deceit, passion and morbid family secrets. The final scene has percussive kick that will stay with you for weeks afterwards.
Before there was Jo Nesbø, Henning Mankell or Stieg Larsson, the rulers of Scandinavian crime writing were two romantically entwined left-wing journalists from Sweden—Maj Sjowal and Per Wahloo.
Inspired by Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels, the couple embarked on a series of police procedurals featuring lugubrious Stockholm detective Martin Beck, who investigates everything from political terrorism to car crime via a locked room mystery, while all the time fending off a cold and dealing with the collapse of his marriage.
Related: 13 Thrilling Nordic Noir Novels
The series of 10 novels, tightly plotted, filled with believable characters and underpinned with deadpan humor, ran from 1965 to 1975, when Wahloo died of cancer. It’s tough to select just one from this consistently excellent series, but put on the spot I’d go for this one—Beck’s investigation of a mass shooting on a Stockholm bus, which was made into a Hollywood movie starring Walter Matthau.
Tony Hillerman was quite happy writing crime fiction, but his knowledge of Native American lifeways, elegant style and deep empathy with his characters and the harsh desert landscape they inhabit have garnered him a considerable reputation amongst higher minded literary critics.
Related: Mysteries in Indian Country: 12 Authors for Tony Hillerman Fans
A Thief of Time is the eighth of the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police detective series and the finest. Hillermen effortlessly weaves together Anasazi ruins, a missing anthropologist, a stolen backhoe and a double homicide to create a gripping mystery novel. The action is movingly underscored by Leaphorn’s heart-rending struggle to come to terms with the death of his beloved wife, Emma.
These days you can barely move around crimeland without encountering a mob of brilliant, sophisticated and wealthy serial killers. The man who started the craze was arguably Thomas Harris who introduced Hannibal Lecter, the forensic psychiatrist with the taste for human flesh, in his 1981 novel Red Dragon.
That book’s sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, in which an imprisoned Lecter helps the FBI hunt down a gruesome villain known as Buffalo Bill, came out seven years later. It’s a gripping thriller with a touch of Southern Gothic and a grisly strain of humor worthy of Charles Addams or Edward Gorey.
But what really marks it out from the mass of serial killer crime fiction is the psychologically complex and utterly believable relationship between Lecter and rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling. The scene in which Lecter exposes Starling’s untruths about her law officer father is superbly well done.
Scott Turow had worked as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago before he turned to writing thrillers. His in-depth knowledge of the law and courtroom procedure give a solid factual basis to what is the best and most gripping of all legal mystery books. (Whether the Chicago DA’s HQ was quite such a murky world of political in-fighting and steamy sex, is another matter.)
Turow’s thriller tells the story of Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor who is set the task of investigating the rape and murder of a colleague, Carolyn Polhemus only to find himself standing trial for the crime. A convincing backstory of Rusty’s problematic relationship with his angry unengaged father and his unfulfilling marriage to a woman he has disappointed, add depth to a narrative that rips along like a runaway freight train. The final twist still packs a punch, even when you know it’s coming. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 66 | https://dokumen.pub/scandinavian-crime-fiction.html | en | Scandinavian Crime Fiction | [
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] | null | [] | null | ... | en | dokumen.pub | https://dokumen.pub/scandinavian-crime-fiction.html | Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Stockholm syndrome
Crime fiction for comfort junkies
A socio-.critical genre
A nostalgic genre
A global genre
1 Scandinavian crime fiction and the welfare state
Make good times better
Welfare urbanism
Noir consumers
‘The harried welfare-man’: Anders Bodelsen’s Think of a Number
2 Welfare crime: Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Novel of a Crime
3 The hardboiled social worker: Gunnar Staalesen’s Varg Veum
The Nordic social worker detective
Hardboiled sentimentalism
Urban crimes
Consumer crisis in paradise
4 Crime fiction in an age of crisis: Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Foreigners in the welfare state: Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers
Financial crisis and trust capital in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Compromised detectives
5 Landscape and memory in the criminal periphery
Welfare nostalgia
The erased countryside: Henning Mankell’s Wallander
Voices from the peasant society: Arne Dahl’s The Blinded Man
The ghosts of history: John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In
Detecting uncomfortable pasts: Mankell and Nesbø
6 Criminal peripheries: Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow and Kerstin Ekman’s Blackwater
Whiteness
Global risks
Guilty landscapes
Crime tourism
A degenerate society
7 Investigating the family in the welfare state
The millennial feminist crime novel
The family detective: Marklund, Läckberg, Gazan
Pippi and other Scandinavian ‘statist individualists’
Family viewing: The Killing and The Bridge
Serial killers and family envy in Those who Kill
The violent family in post-Utøya Norway: Anne Holt’s What Dark Clouds Hide
A Norwegian paradise lost
The policeman in the ill-fitting uniform
The death of the detective
Conclusion
Index
Citation preview | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 89 | https://dokumen.pub/scandinavian-crime-fiction-9780708323304-9780708323311.html | en | Scandinavian Crime Fiction 9780708323304, 9780708323311 | [
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] | null | [] | null | ... | en | dokumen.pub | https://dokumen.pub/scandinavian-crime-fiction-9780708323304-9780708323311.html | Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Contemporary Scandinavian Crime Fiction
Dirty Harry in the Swedish Welfare State
The Well-Adjusted Cops of the New Millennium: Neo-RomanticTendencies in the Swedish Police Procedural
Meaningless Icelanders: Icelandic Crime Fiction and Nationality
Digging into the Secrets of the Past: Rewriting History in the ModernScandinavian Police Procedural
The Place of Pessimism in Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander Series
Gender and Geography in Contemporary Scandinavian TelevisionCrime Fiction
Straight Queers: Anne Holt’s Transnational Lesbian Detective Fiction
Next to the Final Frontier: Russians in Contemporary Finnish andScandinavian Crime Fiction
Swedish Queens of Crime: the Art of Self-Promotion and the Notionof Feminine Agency – Liza Marklund and Camilla Läckberg
High Crime in Contemporary Scandinavian Literature – the Caseof Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow
Håkan Nesser and the Third Way: of Loneliness, Alibis andCollateral Guilt
Unnecessary Officers: Realism, Melodrama and ScandinavianCrime Fiction in Transition
Index
Citation preview | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 1 | https://crimereads.com/maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-a-crime-readers-guide-to-the-classics/ | en | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics | [
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"Neil Nyren"
] | 2021-01-22T09:10:46+00:00 | “One of the most authentic, gripping, and profound collection of police procedurals ever accomplished.” – Michael Connelly Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were pioneers. First of all, they virtually cre… | en | CrimeReads | https://crimereads.com/maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-a-crime-readers-guide-to-the-classics/ | “One of the most authentic, gripping, and profound collection of police procedurals ever accomplished.” – Michael Connelly
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Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were pioneers. First of all, they virtually created Scandinavian noir, and all the giants who followed them happily admit it. Second, with Ed McBain, they revolutionized the police procedural, emphasizing the squad as a whole, people who sometimes argued and fought and failed again and again, but who ultimately complemented one another as a team: “normal people with normal lots, normal thoughts, problems, and pleasures, people who are not larger than life, though not any smaller either,” in the words of Jo Nesbø
Third, and just as important, they took those normal people and used their cases as a way to shine a light on the world as it really is. Any reader of crime fiction today knows that the genre not only entertains, but often acts as a mirror to society; crime does not exist in a vacuum, the books say, it grows out of our systemic flaws. Sjöwall and Wahlöö blazed that trail.
All of that was accomplished with a minimum of preaching (well…usually); a remarkable gift for plotting; lean, propulsive prose that could hit like a gut punch; and bursts of humor that erupted when you least expected it, from sly, dark wit to outright slapstick.
They wrote ten books in all, one a year from 1965 to 1975, but they envisioned them not as individual volumes, but as one long story, thirty chapters each, a three-hundred-chapter saga called “The Story of a Crime.” In it, they tackled pedophilia, serial killers, suicide, drug-smuggling, pornography, arms-dealing, and madness; their characters aged, married, divorced, retired; died; and the country of Sweden itself, as they saw it, veered more and more to the right, the cracks in its “social utopia” growing ever wider, its institutions more geared to the well-off.
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At the books’ heart are the men (only men at that time, though a key woman officer is introduced later) of the National Homicide Squad. The central figure is Martin Beck, whom we see progress from first deputy inspector to detective superintendent to chief. He is dyspeptic and dogged; his stomach is bad; and his marriage disintegrating—it is moribund even in the first book, Roseanna (1965), and during the series we see him move from his bedroom to the living room couch to an apartment of his own. He is intelligent, but no super-detective; systematic, but open to sudden inspiration; solitary, but able to talk easily to people; quiet, but with an excellent sense of humor, which he often uses to mock himself:
“Martin Beck, the born detective and famous observer, constantly occupied making useless observations and storing them away for future use. Doesn’t even have bats in his belfry—they wouldn’t get in for all the crap in the way” (The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, 1966).
Also among Martin Beck’s qualities (and the narrator always refers to him as “Martin Beck,” never “Martin,” never “Beck,” unless it’s in dialogue): his good memory; his obstinacy, which is occasionally mule-like; and his capacity for logical thought. Another is that he usually finds the time for everything that has anything to do with a case, even if this means following up on small details that later turn out to be of no significance—because sometimes they are significant. In one case, a two-week-old overheard phone call proves key; in another, the mention of a lost toy; in a third, a sheet of paper overlooked on a desk; in a fourth, a shared name in separate cases which suddenly tie the two together.
Beck also sometimes gets, well, “feelings”—a sense of danger, that something is about to happen. His colleagues call it his intuition, but he hates that word. “Police work is built on realism, routine, stubbornness and system,” he says in The Abominable Man (1971). “Intuition has no place in practical police work. Intuition is not even a quality, any more than astrology or phrenology are sciences. And still it was there, however reluctant he was to admit it.”
Beck is a policeman’s policeman, through and through. That doesn’t mean that he’s happy with the way the police force has been going lately. In 1965, the old local police system in Sweden was utterly changed—nationalized into “a centrally directed, paramilitary force with frightening technical resources” (The Terrorists, 1975). It also significantly coarsened the kind of man recruited into the ranks. As his colleague Lennart Kollberg tells him, “There are lots of good cops around. Dumb guys who are good cops. Inflexible, limited, tough, self-satisfied types who are all good cops. It would be better if there were a few more good guys who were cops” (The Fire Engine That Disappeared, 1969).
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Kollberg is not only his colleague, but his best friend, a former paratrooper with a sarcastic manner who refuses to carry a gun after, as a young cop, he accidentally shot and killed a fellow policeman. “Imaginative, systematic, and implacably logical” (Murder at the Savoy, 1970), Kollberg has worked with Beck so long that they know each other’s thoughts without talking. There is no one Beck trusts more, and it is reciprocated: “If you weren’t there, God only knows whether I’d stay on the force,” he tells Beck in The Laughing Policeman (1968). Ultimately, even that is not enough. In the second to last novel, Cop Killer (1974), citing the way the police force has changed, he writes a letter of resignation, and in the last book, The Terrorists, the final words are his: “The trouble with you, Martin, is just that you’ve got the wrong job. At the wrong time. In the wrong part of the world. In the wrong system.”
Kollberg’s antagonist on the force is Gunvald Larsson, a bull of a man, lacking in social niceties, impatient with human weakness, and capable of striking terror in criminals and subordinates alike. He is not popular among his colleagues, but when a house explodes in the early pages of The Fire Engine That Disappeared, it is Larsson who singlehandedly saves the lives of eight people: “Blood-stained, soot-streaked, drenched with sweat and his clothes torn, he stood among the hysterical, shocked, screaming, unconscious, weeping and dying people. As if on a battlefield.”
The only colleague that Larsson actually gets along with, even vacations with, though no one knows why, is Einar Rönn, “a mediocre policeman with mediocre imagination and a mediocre sense of humor” (The Man on the Balcony, 1967). He is a very calm person, however, and hard-working, with a simple, straightforward attitude and “no talent for creating problems and difficulties which did not exist” (The Laughing Policeman), which makes him a valuable member of the team.
Another calming detective with his own unique abilities is Fredrik Melander. The veteran of hundreds of difficult cases, he is a very modest man, even dull, who never gets a brilliant idea but does have a remarkable capacity for always being in the toilet when anyone wants to get hold of him. What makes him singularly valuable, though, is his legendary memory: “In the course of a few minutes, Melander could sort out everything of importance he’d ever heard, seen or read about some particular person or some particular subject and then present it clearly and lucidly in narrative form. There wasn’t a computer in the world that could do the same” (The Abominable Man).
Other colleagues come and go, grow, mature, transfer, retire. They even die: Åke Stenström, the youngest on the squad, is murdered in The Laughing Policeman, causing his widow, Åsa Torell, to pick up the torch and become a police officer herself, to notable effect in the later books (and a one-night stand with Beck himself). So does Kurt Kvant. Kvant and Karl Kristiansson are two spectacularly, often hilariously, inept patrolmen—“Kvant almost always reported whatever he happened to see and hear, but he managed to see and hear exceedingly little, Kristiansson was more an out-and-out slacker who simply ignored everything that might cause complications or unnecessary trouble” (The Abominable Man)—who, despite mucking up any crime scene they’re at, manage to be on the spot for some of the most dramatic events and set pieces in the series. Kvant dies in one of them, only to be replaced by Kenneth Kvastmo, just as inept, though a bit more gung-ho.
And then there are the squad’s superiors, always to be viewed with exasperation or dismay: Chief Superintendent Evald Hammar, an inveterate slinger of cliches and truisms, is counting the days until his retirement “and regarded every serious crime of violence as persecution of himself personally” (The Fire Engine That Disappeared); the man who replaces him, Stig Malm, is even worse—rigid, officious, ignorant of practical police work, his rise due solely to political powers-that-be, to whom he is invariably obsequious, even when they kick him in the teeth; and worst of all, the unnamed National Commissioner of Police, a preening speechifyer whose bright ideas, especially those involving excessive force, inevitably end in disaster and fatalities.
The crimes that face all these policemen, both good and bad, range from the smallest—drunks, break-ins, petty larceny—to monumental—mass murder, serial murder, and political assassination. It is here that Sjöwall and Wahlöö demonstrate their plotting prowess in several different ways:
A book begins with a small, eccentric moment that leaps into something much bigger, as when a comedy of bureaucratic buck-passing over the dredging of a canal in Roseanna turns into a worldwide hunt for a sadistic killer;
A storyline that is clearly going in one direction suddenly veers off into something else entirely, catching the reader on the back foot—in The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, Beck is sent to Hungary to search for a missing journalist, but that becomes a plot about international drug-smuggling, and that becomes…well, I won’t tell you.
A book begins slowly, agonizingly, adding small detail upon small detail, building tension as the notes become more and more discordant, and you know that something dreadful is in store and that it is only a matter of time before things explode. The Man on the Balcony is a masterful example of this. For several pages in the very first scene, we’re with a man on his balcony looking out over the city in the early morning: “The man was nondescript and he was dressed in a white shirt with no tie, unpressed brown gabardine trousers, gray socks and black shoes. His hair was thin and brushed straight back, he had a big nose and gray-blue eyes.” The man is smoking—ten butts are already in a saucer—we see street sweepers, pedestrians, a police car glide silently past, there’s the tinkle of a shop window breaking, then running footsteps. A lone figure walks in the distance, perhaps a policeman. An ambulance goes by. Then the door of an apartment building opens, and a little girl comes out. The man on the balcony stands quite still and watches her until she turns the corner, then he drinks a glass of water, sits down, and lights another cigarette.Oh, you know this is going to be bad, don’t you? And it is.
The book opens with exactly the opposite, a shocking set piece and tour de force of mayhem, which then leads into many complicated directions. In The Fire Engine That Disappeared, that would be the exploding house and Larsson’s extraordinary heroism. In The Laughing Policeman, it is the discovery of a busful of machine-gunned passengers.
Two entirely different cases intertwine, seeming to have nothing to do with one another—until they do. In The Locked Room (1972), a task force is trying, not always competently, to solve a rash of bank robberies, while Beck, recovering from a near-fatal wound, is given an abandoned case to keep him occupied, that of a badly decomposed corpse found in a room locked and bolted from the inside. The man died of a gunshot wound, but there is no gun. Watching Beck slowly work out such a classic puzzle during the course of the book is a pure delight. Finding out how it intersects with the other plotline will make you break out into a grin—Sjöwall and Wahlöö have gotten you again.
All of this Sjöwall and Wahlöö limn with impeccable prose—direct, evocative, and effective:
Beck contemplating the details of a case:
“Unpleasant. Very unpleasant. Singularly unpleasant. Damned unpleasant. Blasted unpleasant. Almost painfully so” (The Man Who Went Up in Smoke).
Beck encountering an unlikely counterpart:
“He was a rather young, corpulent man, dressed in a houndstooth-checked suit of modern, youthful cut, a striped shirt, yellow shoes and socks of the same fierce color. His hair was wavy and shiny; he also had an upturned mustache, no doubt waxed and prepared with a mustache form. The man was leaning nonchalantly on the reception desk. He had a flower in his buttonhole and was carrying a copy of Esquire magazine rolled up under his arm.
“He looked like a model out of a discotheque advertisement…
“The secret police were on the scene.” (Murder at the Savoy)
Gunvald Larsson observing anti-assassination security techniques in an unnamed Latin American country:
“The motorcade was moving very quickly. The first of the Security Service cars was already below the balcony. The security expert smiled at Gunvald Larsson, nodded assuring and began to fold up his papers.
“At that moment, the ground opened, almost directly beneath the bulletproof Cadillac.
“The pressure waves flung both men backward, but if Gunvald Larsson was nothing else, he was strong. He grabbed the balustrade with both hands and looked upward.
“The roadway had opened like a volcano from which smoking pillars of fire were rising to a height of a hundred and fifty feet. Atop the flaming pillars were diverse objects. The most prominent were the rear section of the bulletproof Cadillac, an overturned black cab with a blue line along its side, half a horse with black and yellow plumes in the band round its forehead, a leg in a black boot and green uniform material, and an arm with a long cigar between the fingers” (The Terrorists).
And throughout, Sjöwall and Wahlöö keep an unwavering eye on why they created “The Story of a Crime” in the first place—to hold up the crime novel as a mirror to society. Here are only two examples, and they are scorching:
“Stockholm has one of the highest suicide rates in the world—something everyone carefully avoids talking about or which, when put on the spot, they attempt to conceal by means of variously manipulated and untruthful statistics. For some years now, however, not even members of the government had dared to say this aloud or in public, perhaps from the feeling that, in spite of everything, people tend to rely more on the evidence of their own eyes than on political explanations. And if, after all, this should turn out not to be so, it only made the matter still more embarrassing. For the fact of the matter is that the so-called Welfare State abounds with sick, poor, and lonely people, living at best on dog food, who are left uncared for until they waste away and die in their rat-hole apartments. No, this was nothing for the public” (The Locked Room).
From a young woman lost in the cracks, who has committed one last desperate act. “It’s terrible to live in a world where people just tell lies to each other. How can someone who’s a scoundrel and traitor be allowed to make decisions for a whole country? Because that’s what he was. A rotten traitor. Not that I think that whoever takes his place will be any better—I’m not that stupid. But I’d like to show them, all of them who sit there governing and deciding, that they can’t go on cheating people forever. I think lots of people know perfectly well they’re being cheated and betrayed, but most people are too scared or too comfortable to say anything. It doesn’t help to protest or complain, either, because the people in power don’t pay any attention….That’s why I shot him” (The Terrorists).
Phew. So who were Sjöwall and Wahlöö and how did this all come about?
***
Maj Sjöwall was born in Stockholm in 1935. Her father was the manager of a Swedish hotel chain, and she grew up in a top-floor hotel room with round-the-clock room service, a life that she early on came to see as unnaturally privileged. “When I was eleven, I realized that I did not have to live the life my mother had,” she later recalled. The marriage was chilly, and her children unhappy—“I was rather tough. You get tough when you grow up unloved. I had an attitude. I was rather wild.”
At the age of 21, she discovered she was pregnant by a man who had already left her. Refusing the abortion her father insisted on, she accepted the proposal of a family friend twenty years older: “He was nice. I wasn’t very much in love with him, but I admired him.” That did not last. She married again, to another older man—“I think I had a father complex”—who wanted to move her to the suburbs and have more children and—that didn’t work out, either.
Meanwhile, she was making a name for herself as a journalist, art director, and translator for several publications when, a single mother with a six-year-old daughter, she met Per Wahlöö.
Wahlöö, nine years older, was well-known as a journalist covering criminal and social issues, and a committed Marxist, deeply involved in radical political causes, activities that resulted in his being deported from Franco’s Spain (which he no doubt regarded as a badge of honor). He’d also written television and radio plays, as well as several novels dealing with abuses of power and the dark side of society when, working at a magazine in 1962, he met a woman working at another magazine by the same publisher.
The attraction was immediate. “There was a place in town where all the journalists used to go,” she said. “We all went to the same pubs. Then Per and I started to like each other very much, so we started going to other pubs to avoid our friends and be on our own.” He was married, and neither liked the idea of cheating on his wife, but within a year, Per had left her and moved in with Maj and her daughter. Their first son was born nine months later.
It was at one of those pubs that they came up with the idea for the books. They both liked Simenon and Hammett, and realized they could use crime novels to illuminate society from their own point of view. Ten novels, they agreed, thirty chapters each. The first plot came to them on a canal trip from Stockholm to Gothenburg. “There was an American woman on the boat, beautiful, with dark hair, always standing alone,” Sjöwall said. “I caught Per looking at her. ‘Why don’t we start the book by killing this woman?’ I said.”
Seven months of research followed, mapping out the geography, the streets, the distances; taking hundreds of pictures—an accumulation of authentic detail that would characterize every one of their books. “If you read of Martin Beck taking off on a certain flight,” Sjöwall said, “there was that flight, at that time, with those same weather conditions.”
They worked at night, after the children were in bed, at opposite ends of a table in their study, writing in longhand from ten or eleven pm until the children woke up. They had a detailed synopsis in front of them—“If Per started with chapter one, I would write chapter two at the same time”—and the next night they edited and typed the other’s work. “We never talked about the story when we were writing it,” said Sjöwall. “The only things we said were, ‘Pass me the cigarettes’ and ‘It’s your turn to make some tea.’” (“I don’t see how you do it,” an American mystery writer told Wahlöö. “My wife and I can’t even collaborate on boiling an egg.”).
They were very conscious of the style. They didn’t want anything that sounded too much like him or like her—just something that would fit the books and their characters and that would appeal to a large audience.
When the first book, Roseanna, was done, Wahlöö took it to his publisher, telling him, “This is by a friend of mine and I just want to hear what you think.” The publisher wasn’t fooled, liked the book, and struck a deal for all ten of the projected series.
The reviews were mixed for Roseanna. It was considered a bit dark and brutal—“Little old ladies took the books back to the shop,” said Sjöwall, “complaining that they were too awful, too realistic”—and the sales were modest, mainly to young left-wing students. It wasn’t really until the fourth book, The Laughing Policeman, won the Edgar Award for best novel, that the market started to wake up. It was about that time, too, that a review compared them to Ed McBain. In fact, they had never heard of McBain before, but they read some of his books, loved them, and urged their publisher to buy the Swedish rights. He did—and asked if they’d like to do the translations. They ended up translating a dozen of the 87th Precinct novels.
They never got rich from their books. “Back then, no one had an agent,” said Sjöwall, and the royalties were small. “We always had money problems. Sometimes I would lie awake at night wondering how to pay the rent.” Eventually, subsidiary rights—foreign and movie/TV deals—would come in, but most of it was too late for Per Wahlöö.
In 1971, he complained of a swelling, then his doctors said his lungs were filled with water, and eventually they realized his pancreas had burst. He was in and out of hospitals all the time, gradually getting thinner and thinner. In 1975, they rented a bungalow in Malaga, and Wahlöö wrote feverishly on what would become the last book, The Terrorists, doing most of the writing while Sjöwall acted as editor. “Sometimes he would just fall off the chair because he couldn’t write any more. In the morning, the words would be illegible.”
They came home from Spain in March, the book was sent to the printer, and Wahlöö died in June, from a morphine overdose: “Either on purpose or because, you know if it didn’t work he took one more, if that didn’t work he’d take another one. He fell into a coma and never came round.”
He was 48, they had been together 13 years, and never married—“We said, well, obviously marriage is not the thing for us,” she said. “We just knew we really loved each other and loved not having the papers to prove it”—although, apparently, their early publishers billed them as a husband-and-wife team on the book jackets of their English-language editions, to avoid upsetting the sensibilities of those perhaps less liberated than the Swedes.
After Wahlöö’s death, Sjöwall admitted she got “kind of wild for a while. With guys, with pubs,” and then settled down with the kids for a “more bohemian” life. She didn’t mind not having money: “Better free than rich.”
Despite offers to continue the Martin Beck books, she never did, though she did try a couple of other collaborative ventures and happily continued her translations, this time of Robert B Parker’s Spenser series.
She died at the age of 84, on April 29, 2020, in her home on Ven, a small island off the southwestern coast of Sweden. She had no regrets. “This is a part of my life that I didn’t expect,” she said. “I never thought the books would last all my life, or that I’d still be thinking about them after all this time. I think Per would be amazed. I always think of him when we get a prize, or when I have to talk in public. I always think, Per would have loved this.”
At Crimefest 2015 in England, she was the guest of honor, interviewed by Lee Child. When she entered the room, she received a standing ovation.
___________________________________
The Essential Sjöwall and Wahlöö
___________________________________
With any prolific author, readers are likely to have their own particular favorites, which may not be the same as anyone else’s. Your list is likely to be just as good as mine—but here are the ones I recommend.
Roseanna (1965)
“They found the corpse on the eighth of July just after three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Most crimes are a mystery in the beginning,” says the Public Prosecutor at a press conference three days later, but this crime will remain a mystery for far longer than that. The woman’s body lying in the dredger’s bucket is naked, with no jewelry, no identifying characteristics.
“We brought her up eight days ago,” says the local policeman to First Detective Inspector Martin Beck. “We haven’t learned a thing since then. We don’t know who she is, we don’t know the scene of the crime, and we have no suspects. We haven’t found a single thing that could have any real connection with her.”
As the months pass, that’s exactly where things remain, until a chance observation by Beck leads to the first real clue, and then another, and then—to the real enormity of the task in front of them. She was tossed off a tourist boat: “Eighty-five people, one of whom was presumably guilty, and the rest of whom were possible witnesses, each had their small pieces that might fit into the great jigsaw puzzle. Eighty-five people, spread over four different continents. Just to locate them was a Herculean task. He didn’t dare think about the process of getting testimony from all of them and collecting the reports and going through them.”
Yet that is what Beck and his colleagues do, the trail stretching from Ankara to Durban to Copenhagen to Lincoln, Nebraska, the agonizingly slow pace finally quickening, then racing frantically, as it becomes clear who the murderer is—and the drastic measures that will have to be taken to stop him.
The climax to the book is breathtaking, and it shakes Beck to the core. Years later, it will still haunt him. It’ll shake you, too.
The Laughing Policeman (1968)
Stockholm, curtains of rain coming down, and 400 policemen occupied in keeping Vietnam protestors from the American embassy: “The police were equipped with tear gas bombs, pistols, whips, batons, cars, motorcycles, shortwave radios, battery megaphones, riot dogs, and hysterical horses. The demonstrators were armed with a letter and cardboard signs.”
And in another part of the city, somebody boards a red double-decker bus and machine-guns all the passengers.
There is no discernible motive. There is no connection between any of the people on the bus. For weeks, the squad tracks down each victim’s family, friends, and associates, looking for any clues, but always circling back to one victim in particular: a young, ambitious, up-and-coming detective in their own squad named Åke Stenström. Why was he on that bus so late at night? Why was he carrying his service weapon? Why did his fiancé insist that he had been working very long hours, when in fact crime had been slow? Why did Stenström have photos of nude women in his office desk?
And what did all this have to do with a sixteen-year-old cold case, one of the most notorious unsolved murders in Stockholm’s history?
The answers, when they come, will only cause more death. It is a superb police procedural, full of atmosphere, brilliant plotting, and memorable characters, down to the smallest bit players.
The Terrorists (1975)
“Gunvald Larsson ducked as a mass of flammable objects began to rain down on him. He was just thinking about his new suit when something struck him in the chest with great force and hurled him backward onto the marble tiles of the balcony….
“[He] got to his feet, found himself not seriously hurt and looked about to see what it was that had knocked him down. The object lay at his feet. It had a bull neck and a puffy face, and strangely enough, the black enamel steel-framed glasses were still on….
“[He] looked down at his suit. It was ruined. ‘Goddammit,’ he said.
“Then he looked down at the head lying at his feet. ‘Maybe I ought to take it home,’ he said to himself. ‘As a souvenir.’”
International terrorists are at the core of the series’ final volume, and a bad bunch they are, a professional group who work for hire all over the world, the politics irrelevant, their methods carefully planned and varied. It is to guard against their targeting an important U.S. Senator’s visit to Stockholm that Larsson has been sent to Latin America and had his suit ruined, and things will continue to go against plan all the way through the book, not least of all when the self-regarding Eric Möller, head of the Security Police, takes a list prepared by Larsson headed CS, for “Clod Squad,” consisting of those officers who should be allowed nowhere near the assassination detail, and, mistaking it to mean “Commando Section,” places exactly those officers in the most sensitive positions possible.
This is, however, not the only case of importance facing the Homicide Squad. Another concerns the murder of a prominent pornographic film maker, whose favorite m.o. is to get girls hooked on drugs before press-ganging them into his movies. A third case concerns a naïve young woman who thought she could get money from a bank just by going into any one of them and asking for it, which sets off a chain reaction of event that ends up with her on trial for armed robbery. Thanks to a capable court-appointed lawyer and the help of Martin Beck, she is set free, only to tumble quickly down the rabbit hole of the social welfare system, to cataclysmic and tragic effect.
Who are the terrorists in the book? They are everywhere, destroying the innocent and the guilty alike.
A towering achievement, and a fitting end to an extraordinary series.
___________________________________
Movie and Television Bonus
___________________________________
All of the Martin Beck books have been made into movies, some more than once, mostly in Swedish, but also Danish and Hungarian (starring Derek Jacobi!). They also served as a basis for a Swedish television series that ran for a remarkable 18 years, some of which ran on the BBC in 2015, with subtitles. All ten books also received radio dramatizations on BBC Radio 4 in 2012-2013.
The only English language film ever made was The Laughing Policeman in 1973. It was set in San Francisco and starred Walter Matthau as “Jake Martin” and Bruce Dern as “Leo Larson.” It’s a gritty movie, appropriately gloomy, and is, one might say, “loosely adapted” from the book, though some of the bones remain: the bus massacre, the dead detective, the cold case.
Whenever one of my authors got a movie deal, I always told them just to cash the check, but that if, against all the odds, it actually got made, they should just go to the theater, buy some popcorn, and pretend it was made from someone else’s book entirely. If Sjöwall and Wahlöö ever saw this one, I hope they followed that advice.
___________________________________
Book Bonus
___________________________________
As noted before, after Wahlöö’s death, Sjöwall twice collaborated with other writers on books: in 1989, with Bjarne Nielsen, on Dansk Intermezzo, and in 1990, with Dutch writer Tomas Ross, on The Woman Who Resembled Greta Garbo. The latter was about a visiting governmental minister who turns on a porn movie in his Stockholm hotel, and sees his own daughter. To my knowledge, neither book made much of a splash.
Per Wahlöö wrote eight other, most of them novels before he started with Sjöwall: The Chief (1959), The Wind and Rain (1961), A Necessary Action (1962), The Assignment (1963), Murder on the Thirty-First Floor (1963), No Roses Grow on Odenplan (1964), The Generals (1965), and The Steel Spring (1968). These were mainly suspense novels, sometimes set in the near future, about coups, assassinations, social malaise, and politics, and some of them are still available today in English translations.
___________________________________
American Crime Bonus
___________________________________
Fredrik Melander perusing the report on the bus massacre:
“’We have no Swedish precedents….Unlike us, the American psychologists have no lack of material to write on. The compendium here mentions the Boston strangler; Speck, who murdered eight nurses in Chicago; Whitman, who killed sixteen persons from a tower and wounded many more; Unruh, who rushed out onto a street in New Jersey and shot thirteen people dead in twelve minutes; and one or two more whom you’ve probably read about before.’
“’Mass murder seems to be an American specialty,’ Gunvald Larsson said….
“’I read somewhere that out of every thousand Americans, one or two are potential murderers,’ Kollberg said. ‘Though don’t ask me how they arrived at that conclusion.’
“’Market research,’ Gunvald Larsson said. ‘It’s another American specialty. They go around from house to house asking people if they could imagine themselves committing a mass murder. Two in a thousand say, ‘Oh yes, that would be nice.’”
The Laughing Policeman
Three policemen puzzle over the small caliber of the bullet used to kill industrialist Viktor Palmgren:
“’A .22,’ Melander said thoughtfully. ‘That seems strange….Who the hell tries to kill somebody with a .22?’
“Martin Beck cleared his throat….’In America it’s almost considered proof that the gunman is a real craftsman,’ he said. ‘A kind of snobbishness. It shows the murderer is a real pro and doesn’t bother to use more than what’s absolutely necessary.’
“’Malmö isn’t Chicago,’ Mansson said laconically.
“’Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy with an Iver Johnson .22,’ said Skacke, who was hanging around in the background.
“’That’s right,’ Martin Beck said, ‘but he was desperate and emptied the whole magazine. Fired like crazy all over the place.’
“’He was an amateur, anyway,’ Skacke said.”
___________________________________
Title Bonus
___________________________________
In Murder at the Savoy, the above Viktor Palmgren is shot in the back of the head while speaking to some dinner companions, and falls face first into his dinner, comprised of “crenelated mashed potatoes around an exquisite fish casserole a la Frans Suell.”
Happening to look at the copyright page, I noticed that the Swedish title of the book was Polis, Polis, Potatismos! Surely, that couldn’t be…I thought, and put it into Google Translate.
Sure enough, the original title of Book Six of “The Story of a Crime” was: Police, Police, Mashed Potatoes!
___________________________________
A Policeman’s Lot Bonus
___________________________________
“Being a policeman is not a profession. And it’s not a vocation, either. It’s a curse.”
Sjöwall and Wahlöö, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke
“Why the hell would anyone ever choose police work as his profession, he wondered.”
Ed McBain, ‘Til Death
“When constabulary duty’s to be done, to be done,
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.” | |||||
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] | null | [] | 2015-03-17T00:00:00 | According to the cover of my paperback (on the left) this was the second case for Martin Beck, the Stockholm police detective created by husband and wife authors Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was the third, but no matter, it is a highly exciting novel that conflates two manhunts and… | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/f20e9173533d7fd42d79fe356c685b61f0840cc945ca207c3ea6100811abcdc0?s=32 | Tipping My Fedora | https://bloodymurder.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/the-man-on-the-balcony-1967-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | According to the cover of my paperback (on the left) this was the second case for Martin Beck, the Stockholm police detective created by husband and wife authors Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was the third, but no matter, it is a highly exciting novel that conflates two manhunts and takes the Ed McBain procedural style into ever darker and muddier waters. Indeed, for 1967 this is a book that spares nobody’s blushes in its penetrating depiction of the changes taking place in Swedish society.
I submit this book & film review for Bev’s 2015 Silver Age Vintage Mystery Challenge bingo; and Rich Westwood’s celebration of all things 1967 over at Past Offences.
“The mugger had nothing against the weather”
This novel features two plots that eventually overlap and converge. In the first, the oafish Gunvald Larsson investigates a series of violent muggings undertaken by a man who, unfortunately for the police and the population at large, takes his job very seriously. Larsson is sarcastic, a boor and very heavy-handed but as the muggings pile up and get nastier, the outcry from the public starts to grow. This all changes when a shocking murder takes place …
“The time was half past six on the morning of June 2, 1967. The city was Stockholm”
Martin Beck is the senior detective in the story, and undoubtedly the protagonist of the series, but the portrait we are offered is not heroic but that of a civil servant approaching middle age, an experienced professional who is respected at work but whose marriage is falling apart. Much of the story is not driven by him – indeed, most of the important events take place without him. But the reason he is the protagonist is that he is able to synthesise the various disparate elements to ultimately find the solution, though when he goes to make the arrest he actually nabs the wrong person. Initially, when the story begins he is away to escape the pressures at home and at work, but it is his overhearing of one of Larsson’s comments that triggers a solution. The second case begins on 2 June, while Beck is out of town, when a young girl is found strangled in a public park, her panties removed as a trophy. When a second body is found in the same park where a mugging also took place, it becomes clear that the meticulous robber must have seen the killer. Will he be the key to finding the strangler?
“He thought too of the swift gansterisation of this society, which in the last resort must be a product of himself and of the other people who lived in it and had a share of its creation.”
The style and structure are highly reminiscent Ed McBain’s 87th precinct series (he had published 20 of them by the time the Swedish series began), though Sjöwall claims that they had not heard of him until later (at which point they even started translating the series for publication in Sweden). This is a bit hard to believe, especially because the use of reported dialogue and the ‘corporate hero’ approach is so similar – and certainly the alliterative duo of Kurt Kvant and Karl Kristiansson will make most 87th Precinct fans think of McBain’s none-too-bright homicide dicks, Monoghan & Monroe. None the less, the two series are different in many other respects, most importantly for the way that a Marxist perspective is brought to bear. It is never so heavy-handed as to get in the way of the narrative, but provides us with a fascinating view of Swedish society, under-funded and stuck in its ways, that is none the less on the cusp of change. It is this part of the series that probably makes it stand out and which had such a big influence on the Scandinavian authors that followed in their path – but Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were superb storytellers too. If you haven’t sampled their joint efforts, you really should.
The Martin Beck series – aka ‘The Story of a Crime’
Roseanna (Roseanna, 1965)
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (Mannen som gick upp i rök, 1966)
The Man on the Balcony (Mannen på balkongen, 1967)
The Laughing Policeman (Den skrattande polisen, 1968)
The Fire Engine That Disappeared (Brandbilen som försvann, 1969)
Murder at the Savoy (Polis, polis, potatismos!, 1970)
The Abominable Man (Den vedervärdige mannen från Säffle, 1971)
The Locked Room (Det slutna rummet, 1972)
Cop Killer (Polismördaren, 1974)
The Terrorists (Terroristerna, 1975)
In Sweden the Martin Beck books have been adapted several times for cinema and TV. The only English-language adaptation of The Man on the Balcony that I have though is the BBC version from 2012 made as part of The Martin Beck Killings, a series of one-hour versions of all ten novels in the cycle.
The adaptation is derived from the same translation by Alan Blair as the print editions and is remarkably faithful considering it has to boil down the story to a one-hour slot. This means that the number of stranglings is reduced from 3 to 2, which I wasn’t too sorry about, but it also drained off most of the social commentary, which I think was a great shame. It did however also do something rather clever, retaining the joint authorial presence by having not one but two narrators, one female (Lesley Sharp) and one male (Nicholas Gleaves), taking alternate sentences in some cases. Steven Mackintosh is perhaps a bit too youthful-sounding as Beck but none the less make the sensitivity of the man very apparent while Neal Pearson as Kollberg is, as ever, first-rate, as is Adrian Scarborough as Melander. The entire series is available to buy as a CD or download from the likes of Amazon, Audible.co.uk, BBC Shop, etc.
The Man on the Balcony / The Martin Beck Killings (BBC, 10 November 2012)
Director: Mary Peate
Scriptwriter: Katie Hims
Music: Elizabeth Purnell
Cast: Steven Mackintosh (Beck), Neal Pearson (Kollberg), Adrian Scarborough (Melander), Ralph Ineson (Larsson), Sam Alexander (Kvant), Harry Livingstone (Kvist), Lesley Sharp and Nicholas Gleaves (narrators)
I submit this review for Bev’s 2015 Silver Age Vintage Mystery Challenge in the ‘outside UK and US’ category: | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 53 | https://www.orderofbooks.com/author/admin222/page/403/ | en | Brando, Author at OrderOfBooks.com | [
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"Brando"
] | null | en | /apple-touch-icon-57x57.png | https://www.orderofbooks.com/author/admin222/page/403/ | Patrick Rothfuss is an American author of fantasy novels. He is the author of the Kingkiller Chronicle. Patrick earned his B.S. in English from University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point in 1999. During his time, he wrote for the campus newspaper The Pointer. He then got his M.A. from Washington State University. He then went back to […]
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7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 51 | https://www.kennys.ie/fiction/the-martin-beck-series-the-man-who-went-up-in-smoke-1 | en | The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (A Martin Beck Novel, Book 2) | [
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] | null | Books by Maj Sjöwall The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (A Martin Beck Novel, Book 2) 9780007439126 HarperCollins Publishers New York V9780007439126 | en | /templates/transform/favicon.ico | https://www.kennys.ie/fiction/the-martin-beck-series-the-man-who-went-up-in-smoke-1 | The second book in the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s – the novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime writing.
Hugely acclaimed, the Martin Beck series were the original Scandinavian crime novels and have inspired the writings of Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbo.
Written in the 1960s, 10 books completed in 10 years, they are the work of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö – a husband and wife team from Sweden. They follow the ... Read morefortunes of the detective Martin Beck, whose enigmatic, taciturn character has inspired countless other policemen in crime fiction; without his creation Ian Rankin’s John Rebus or Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander may never have been conceived. The novels can be read separately, but are best read in chronological order, so the reader can follow the characters’ development and get drawn into the series as a whole.
‘The Man Who Went Up in Smoke’ starts as Martin Beck has just begun his holiday: an August spent with his family on a small island off the coast of Sweden. But when a neighbour gets a phone call, Beck finds himself packed off to Budapest, where a boorish journalist has vanished without a trace. Instead of passing leisurely sun-filled days with his children, Beck must troll about in the Eastern Europe underworld for a man nobody knows, with the aid of the coolly efficient local police, who do business while soaking at the public baths – and at the risk of vanishing along with his quarry.
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] | null | [] | 2016-06-09T20:15:32-05:00 | Posts about per wahloo written by mysterypeopleblog and read603 | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | https://mysterypeople.wordpress.com/tag/per-wahloo/ | Come by BookPeople this Sunday, June 12th, from 2 PM to 4 PM for a panel discussion on international crime fiction, featuring authors, booksellers, and critics. There will be lots of giveaways (and possibly cookies, but you’ll have to come to the event to find out!). All of the books listed below are in print and available either on our shelves or via bookpeople.com.
Leading up to our panel discussion on international crime fiction coming up this Sunday, we’ll be running top lists of world crime writers all week long. Below, you’ll find a list from bookseller and international crime fiction enthusiast Molly.
Post by Molly Odintz
I’ve always been intrigued by fiction in translation, and especially crime fiction from around the world, yet after a few years of concentrated reading in these areas, I still feel as I’ve barely scraped the surface of what world crime fiction has to offer. Every nation has its great crime writers, and only some have been translated and are still in print, yet just in our mystery section alone, one can find countless stories from all over the world.
Rather than choose my favorite international books, an overwhelming task, I have decided to list my preferred international authors. To narrow the scope, I picked only authors in translation. I have read and enjoyed multiple books by each of the authors mentioned below, and each one combines brilliant writing, a dark vision, and deep knowledge of their genre.
Paco Ignacio Taibo II
As a student at UT Austin, I spent a great deal of time up on the Perry Castaneda Library’s 6th floor, where the crime fiction and foreign language texts were located. Browsing the stacks, I discovered the works of Paco Ignacio Taibo II, activist, historian, and prolific author of the Hector Belascoaran Shayne series as well as many stand-alone. Taibo fled Franco’s Spain for Mexico City, which I guess makes him the literary equivalent of Manu Chao in his turn towards political action in Latin America (except even cooler!!).
Read More »
-Post by Molly
Scandinavian crime fiction, with its roots in the 1960s socially conscious police procedurals written by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, has impressed international audiences for some time. With the exploding popularity of writers like Henning Mankell in the 1990s and Steig Larson in the early aughts, this region of few actual murders and sizable numbers of fictional killings has continued its run as a hotspot of international crime.
However, these powerhouse names are just (pardon the pun) the tip of the iceberg when it comes to crime writers of the region. This week in International Crime Fiction Friday, we bring you excerpts from two works by Scandinavian authors – Åsne Seierstad of Norway and Arnaldur Indriðason of Iceland.
Åsne Seierstad is a Norwegian journalist and renowned war correspondent who has written several accounts of life during conflicts. Her works include The Bookseller of Kabul and One Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal, among others. The following excerpt, courtesy of criminal elements.com, is from One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway, a narrative journalistic account of the massacre. Although this is technically Crime Fiction Friday (emphasis on the fiction), I think you’ll be able to see why I threw a true crime story into the mix. You can find works by Seierstad on our shelves and via bookpeople.com.
Excerpt: One of Us
“Prologue
She ran.
Up the hill, through the moss. Her wellingtons sank into the wet earth. The forest floor squelched beneath her feet.
She had seen it.
She had seen him fire and a boy fall.
‘We won’t die today, girls,’ she had said to her companions. ‘We won’t die today.’
More shots rang out. Rapid reports, a pause. Then another series.
She had reached Lovers’ Path. All around her there were people running, trying to find places to hide.
Behind her, a rusty wire fence ran alongside the path. On the other side of the netting, steep cliffs dropped down into the Tyrifjord. The roots of a few lilies of the valley clung to the mountainside, looking as though they had grown out of solid rock. They had finished flowering, and the bases of their leaves were filled with rainwater that had trickled over the rocky edge.
From the air, the island was green. The tops of the tall pines spread into each other. The slender branches of thin, broadleaved trees stretched into the sky.
Down here, seen from the ground, the forest was sparse.
But in a few places, the grass was tall enough to cover you. Flat rocks hung over one part of the sloping path, like shields you could creep under.
There were more shots, louder.
Who was shooting?
She crept along Lovers’ Path. Back and forth. Lots of kids were there.
‘Let’s lie down and pretend we’re dead,’ one boy said. ‘Lie down in strange positions, so they think we’re dead!’”
Read more of this excerpt.
Arnaldur Indriðason burst onto the international scene with his multi-generational genetic thriller, Jar City, the first featuring Detective Erlender to be translated into English. His series numbers 14 in Icelandic and is up to ten Erlender novels available in English today. Also courtesy of criminalelements.com, I present to you an excerpt from Reykjavik Nights. You can find copies of the Erlender Series on our shelves and via bookpeople.com.
Excerpt: Reykjavik Nights
“…‘What is it?’ asked one, poking cautiously with his pole.
‘Is it a bag?’ asked his friend.
‘No, it’s an anorak,’ said the third.
The first boy prodded harder, jabbing the object until finally it moved. It sank from view and they fished around until it floated up again. Then, by slow degrees it turned over, and from under the anorak a man’s head appeared, white and bloodless, with colourless strands of hair. It was the most gruesome sight they had ever seen. One of the boys let out a yell and tumbled backwards into the water. At that, the precarious equilibrium was lost and before they knew it all three had fallen overboard, and they waded shrieking to the shore.
They stood there for a moment, wet and shivering, gaping at the green anorak and the side of the face that was exposed above the water, then turned and fled as fast as their legs would carry them…”
Read more of this excerpt.
~post by Molly
As Scandinavian detective fiction has exploded onto the international scene over the last twenty years, it is sometimes easy to forget that the genre has been experiencing international renown since the late 1960s. With so much attention paid to contemporary authors, it is time to contextualize the recent history of Scandinavian detective fiction in terms of the region’s most classic crime writers, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.
These two authors, over the course of ten years and ten novels, single handedly created the modern police procedural. Their oeuvre has been the model for Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, and pretty much every detective show on television. Their cast of detectives, cantankerous, flawed, and with all the personality clashes of long-time coworkers, have become the template for cop dramas at home and abroad. Their detective, Martin Beck, has been played by Walter Mathau, which by itself indicates their commitment to portraying the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Their story, too, has been the model for many an author’s journey. The two began in investigative journalism and from there decided to put political opinions to paper in a popular and accessible format. Inspired by the social criticism in such authors as Dashiell Hammett and George Simenon, they chose detective fiction as their medium.
Unusually, however, they wrote as a team – Sjöwall and Wahlöö lived together as a common law couple and each night, after putting their children to bed, each wrote an alternating chapter. The next day, they would switch chapters and edit each other’s work. In this way, they wrote one novel a year, for ten years. In the tenth year of their collaboration, Per Wahlöö died, and Maj Sjöwall never wrote again.
As a collaborative team, they found common ground not only in their mutual affection, but in their shared left-wing politics. They established a model for social criticism in Scandinavia still used today, in which they focused on examining the shadowy nature of capitalism embedded within the post-war welfare state. They wrote in a time of social and political upheaval, especially in terms of gender roles, and the crimes investigated are carefully chosen to match the spirit of the times. Many of the Scandinavian crime writers we most associate with the genre draw heavily from the allegorical nature of Sjöwall and Wahlöö ‘s crimes, and in such pointed pieces as Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo we find increasingly refined and yet somehow less immediate variations on a theme.
Despite their politically motivated message, the two never wrote in a heavy-handed manner, choosing to embrace the simplest prose and the most compelling discourse as a way of creating Marxist critiques accessible to all. Their police procedurals are humanistic and humorous, with plots carefully crafted to entertain and flawed detectives with whom any reader can empathize. Their detectives hem and haw at the demands of the state, try to get out of riot cop duty, and try to solve as many real crimes as possible. When it is winter, and a character smokes too many cigarettes, he gets a cold.
Their vision has endured; forty years after their original publication, their work is still in print. Their message is as immediate and urgent as ever, and their combination of humor and humanism is still unmatched by their peers. Read them in order for the best experience, but to get hooked, start with The Laughing Policeman.
For fans of:
Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, Craig Johnson, Carl Hiasson, and or any TV show about cops. Seriously, any. They all draw from this series. | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 12 | http://authorscalendar.info/wahloo.htm | en | Per Wahlöö | [
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] | null | [] | null | null | Swedish writer and journalist, who published with his wife Maj Sjöwall the widely translated books of Martin Beck and his colleagues at the Central Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm. The series was an attempt to take a critical, Marxian look at the Swedish society within the framework of a detective novel. The critic and awarded mystery writer H.R.F. Keating selected the first volume, Roseanna (1965), in 1987 for his list of the one hundred best crime and mystery novels. All of the Martin Beck books have been filmed. In addtion, a number TV films have been based on the characters the couple created.
"Elofsson was following the normal procedure. He had grabbed the boy's jacket with both hands. The next step was to pull the victim closer and drive his right knee into the man's groin. And that would take care of that. The same way he had done it so many times before. Without firearms." (from Cop Killer, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal, 1975)
Per Wahlöö was born in Göteborg, the son of Waldemar and Karin (Svensson) Wahlöö. After graduating from the University of Lund in 1946, he worked as a journalist, covering criminal and social issues for a number of newspapers and magazines. In the 1950s Wahlöö was engaged in radical political causes, activities that resulted in his deportation from Franco's Spain in 1957. Before becoming a full-time writer, he wrote a number of television and radio plays, and was managing editor of several magazines.
As a novelist Wahlöö made his debut with Himmelsgeten (1959), which was followed by others dealing with abuses of power and the dark side of the society.
Wahlöö's science fiction thrillers include Mord på 31 (1965, The Thirty-first Floor), which was filmed as Kamikaze 1989, starring the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder in his final screen role. The story was set in a futuristic Germany. Stälspranget (1968, Steep Spring) depicted a deadly plague in an unnamed European country. The protagonist in these both novels was Chief Inspector Jensen. Generalerna (1965), a trial novel set in a military state, reflected Wahlöö's views on dictatorship. Lastbilen (1962) was published in the United States as A Necessary Action and in Britain as The Lorry. Uppdraget (1963), set in a Latin American country, gained an international success. It was translated into English under the title The Assignment.
Wahlöö's first work as a scriptwriter was Flygplan saknas (1965, Aircraft Missing), co-written with Arvid Rundberg, directed by Per Gunvall, and starring Olle Johansson, Birgit Nordin and Runar Martholm. With the veteran film director Arne Mattsson he made three films between 1965 and 1967, beginning from an adaptation of Jan Ekström's crime novel Morianerna. British censors cut two minutes from the original release, which contains nudity, voyerism, a psychopath, and a rape of maid.
In 1961 Wahlöö met Maj Sjöwall when they were working for magazines published by the same company. At that time Wahlöö was married, Sjöwall was a single parent of a daughter and already twice divorced. Both were members of the Communist Party. Although Wahlöö didn't want to cheat his wife, they began to meet after work, and eventually became lovers, but never officially married. Until 1969, the couple lived in Stockholm, but they kept contact with the KRW (Kronkvist-Rooke-Wahlöö) group from Malmö, where they lived and worked from 1969.
Their carefully planned crime novel series, with the undertitle "roman om ett brott" (the story of a crime), was created in the evenings, after the children had been put to bed. Starting from Roseanna (1965), the project ended ten years and ten books later with Terroristerna (1975). According to Wahlöö, their intention was to "use the crime novel as a scalpel cutting open the belly of the ideological pauperized and morally debatable so-called welfare state of the bourgeois type." ('Wahlöö, Per (1926-75 and Maj Sjövall (1935-)' by Bo Lundin, in Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers, second edition, edited by John M. Reilly, 1985, p. 947) The narrative focused on realistic police routine and teamwork.
The first three novels, Roseanna, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966), and The Man on the Balcony (1967), were straightforward police procedural novels, written in reportal, spare style, similar to that of Georges Simenon. They introduced the central characters – the solid, methodical detective Martin Beck with failing marriage, ex-paratrooper Lennart Kollberg, who hates violence and refuses to carry a gun, Gunvald Larsson, a Mike Hammer-type in police forces and a drop-out from high society – Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: "Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat"– Einar Rönn from the rural north of Sweden, and patrolmen Kristiansson and Kvant, the necessary comic pair.
Beck considers himself "stubborn and logical, and completely calm". He lives in a small apartment in Stockholm with his wife, Inga, and two children. In the following books Beck's relationship with his wife deteriorates, and he begins an affair with the liberal Rhea Nilsen. Larsson's character, played by Mikael Persbrandt in TV films, made a gradual change from a misogynist into a sensitive man with a heart of gold deep down.
Roseanna, a story of rape-murder of an American girl, Roseanna Mc Graw, whose body in found in a Swedish canal, was not an immediate success. Some reviewers felt that the novel was too dark and brutal, but its publication in English translation in 1967 sparked the interest of a worldwide audience. "A fine example of the police procedural," said H.R.F. Keating. "So, as one puts the book down, one is apt to think a good story, and interesting, but also, in the words of the newspaper advertisement, 'all human life is there'." ('Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö: Roseanna,' in Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating, 1987, p. 138)
Until The Story of a Crimeseries Swedish detective novels had been apolitical, conservative or occasionally liberal, but Sjöwall and Wahlöö managed to revive interest in a genre generally overlooked by leftist intellectuals. Readers were ready to accept their new approach, the introduction of political ideas as part of crime fiction. The theme of class conflict was not defined right from the beginning, but its weight grew step-by-step, in the context of social problems the novel exposed.In the final volume the foundations of the welfare state start to shake. The murder of the prime minister signals the end of the Social-Democratic project of Folkhemmet (the people's home).
The Laughing Policeman (1968), about the investigation of the murder of eight occupants of a Stockholm bus, was adapted to screen in 1973, directed by Stuart Rosenberg, starring Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, and Lou Gossett. "Police movies so often depend on sheer escapist action that it's fun to find a good one," said Roger Ebert in his review. ('The Laughing Policeman' by Roger Ebert, December 24, 1973, RogerEbert.com) Swedish critics were unanimous in that the film had very little to do with the novel, and there was little left of Sjöwall and Wahlöö's original point of view. The story, set in San Francisco, shared its Bay area locale with Dirty Harry (1971), but was otherwise more downbeat.
By coincidence, Bo Widerberg, who made a film adaptation of the novel The Abominable Man, entitled Mannen på taket (1976), had lived in Malmö in the same building than Wahlöö's first wife Inger Wahlöö. The large-scale action scenes were shot in everyday settings, to illuminate what it means when violence takes place in the midst of a supposedly safe community "A little boy riding a creaking bicycle approaches two gunned-down police officers and asks why they are lying in the steet. A girl screams in terror when she catches sight of a couple of wounded policemen. Were it not for one of their blood-soaked hands gleaming scarlet red in the sunshine, one could think they were resting." ('The Criminal and Society in Mannen på taket' by Daniel Brodén, in Swedish Film: An Introduction and a Reader, edited by Mariah Larsson & Anders Marklund, 2005, p. 203) The killer is a former police officer, himself a victim of the conditions of the society. Politically, Widerberg was a social democrat, and his view of the society was not as acid as it was in the book.
At the end of The Locked Room (1972), Sjöwall and Wahlöö show their sympathy towards a bank robber; however, they abhor sexual violence. The novel nods to the puzzles of John Dickson Carr. In Cop Killer (1974) Lennart Kollberg writes his resignation: a socialist, he don't want to work for the system anymore. The suspected cop killer of the title, a teenager in a stolen car, is chased across Sweden.
Especially in the last novel, The Terrorists, police officers, and criminals doing their own thing, at the mercy of forces they cannot control. – Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: "Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. . . . All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."– The authors openly side with Rebecka Lind, "the novel's holy fool and sacrifical lamb, cast adrift by a society that proclaims to care for her then preys upon her as soon as her isolation leads to financial need." ('Introduction' by Denis Lehane, The Terrorists, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate, 2010, p. vii) Rebecka kills the book's Swedish prime minister – this is passed shortly, perhaps a statement in itself. "No one in the novel is greatly affected by the death of the prime minister. There is no suggestion of the convulsion of grief and self-reproach that affected the country when Palme was assassinated." (Fishing In Utopia: Sweden And The Future That Disappeared by Andrew Brown, 2009, p. 128)
Beck feels alienated from his work and doubts about staying in the police force. His unhappy marriage is over. On the other hand, Beck don't have any more stomach aches. – Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: "Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?"– A telling sign of times: Chairman Mao poster get mentioned in the text. The novel ends with the lines:
"The trouble with you, Martin, is just that you've got the wrong job, At the wrong time. In the wrong part of the world. In the wrong system."
"Is that all?"
"Roghly," said Kollberg. "My turn to start? The I say X—X as in Marx."
(The Terrorists, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate, 2010, p. 280)
The novel was published after Wahlöö's death in Stockholm on June 23, 1975. Though a joint venture, this volume was mostly written by Wahlöö, who was already very ill and knew he was going to die. Doctors had said that his lungs were full of water, before realizing that his pancreas had burst. After returning from Màlaga, Wahlöö took very strong morphin tablets, fell into coma, and never woke up again.
Wahlöö's other works include translations into Swedish of some Ed McBain's 87th Precinct procedural novels and Noel Behn's political thriller The Kremlin Letter, filmed by John Huston in 1970. With Sjöwall he also edited the literature magazine Peripeo, and wrote a comparative study of police methods in Sweden, the United States, Russia, and England.
The English mystery writer Julian Symons recalled Wahlöö as an extrme Left-winger whose interest in British foorball was passionate. "He wrote two novels which combine the moral symbolism of Dürrenmatt with a flavour of Orwellian fantasy. Murder on the Thirty-first Floor (1966) and The Steel Spring (1970) make their points about dictatorship and paternalism through the medium of crime. . . . The books that Wahlöö, as Per and not Peter, wrote in collabaration with Maj Sjöwall (1935-) were less ambitious and more successful." (Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History by Julian Symons, 1985, p. 182)
For further reading: 'Roman om en forbrydelse' - Sjöwall/Wahlöö's verk og virkelighed by Ejgil Søholm (1976); Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, edited by Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler (1976); 'The Police in Society: The Novels of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö' by Frank Occhiogrosso, in The Armchair Detective, no. 2 (1979); The Police Procedural by George Dove (1982); Lystmord, edited by Jørgen Holmgaard and Bo Tao Michaëlis (1984); Polemical Pulps by J. Kenneth Van Dover (1993); 'Wahlöö, Per (1926-75 and Maj Sjövall (1935-)' by Bo Lundin, in Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers, second edition, edited by John M. Reilly (1985); 'Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö: Roseanna,' in Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating (1987); 'Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö' by Nancy C. Mellerski and Robert P. Winston, in Mystery and Suspense Writers, edited by Robin W. Winks (1998); 'Sjöwall, Maj (b. 1935) and Per Wahlöö (1926-1975' by J.K. Van Dover, in Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing, edited by Rosemary Herbert (2003); 'Introduction' by Liza Marklund, in Cop Killer: A Martin Beck Mystery by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (2010); 'Introduction' by Dennis Lehane, The Terrorists: A Martin Beck Novel by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (2010); 'From National Authority to Urban Underbelly: Negotiations of Power in Stockholm Crime Fiction' by Kerstin Bergman, in Crime Fiction in the City: Capital Crimes, edited by Lucy Andrew and Catherine Phelps (2013); Swedish Cops: From Sjöwall & Wahlöö to Stieg Larsson by Michael Tapper (2014); Swedish Marxist Noir: The Dark Wave of Crime Writers and the Influence of Raymond Chandler by Per Hellgren (2019); Boken om Beck: och Sjöwall Wahlöö och tiden som for by Johan Erlandsson (2020); Dictionnaire Sjöwall et Wahlöö: les pionniers du polar nordique by Yann Liotard (2020); Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery by Wendy Lesser (2020) - Note: The Laughing Policeman won the best novel Edgar Award in 1971 from the Mystery Writers of America. - See also: Lawrence Treat, the creator of modern police procedural novels.
Selected works:
Himmelsgeten, 1959 (reprinted as Hövdingen in 1967)
- TV mini-series 1986, prod. Sveriges Television (SVT), dir. Lars-Göran Pettersson, starring Sten Ljunggren, Göran Engman, Gösta Engström, Lisa Hugoson, Bo Lindström, Tomas Nordström, Bert-Åke Varg
Vinden och regnet, 1961
Lastbilen, 1962
- The Lorry (UK title; translated by Joan Tate, 1968) / A Necessary Action (US title; translated by Joan Tate, 1969)
- film: Mannen i skuggan, 1978, prod. Jadran Film, Stockholm Film, dir. Arne Mattson, starring Helmut Griem, Slobodan Dimitrijevic and Gunnel Fred
Uppdraget, 1963
- The Assignment (translated by Joan Tate, 1966)
- film 1977, prod. by Nordisk Tonefilm, Svensk Filmindustri (SF), Svenska Filminstitutet (SFI), dir. by Mats Arehn, starring Christopher Plummer, Thomas Hellberg, Fernando Rey, Carolyn Seymour
Mord på 31:a våningen, 1964
- The Thirty-first Floor (US title; translated by Joan Tate, 1967) / Murder on the Thirty-First Floor (Pantheon Books; translated by Joan Tate, 1982; translated by Sarah Death, 2013)
- films: 31. osakonna hukk, 1980, prod. Gosteleradio, Tallinnfilm, dir. Peeter Urbla, starring Lembit Ulfsak (as Jensen), Ivan Krasko and Enn Klooren; Kamikaze 1989, 1982, prod. Oase Filmproduktion, Regina Ziegler Filmproduktion, Trio Film, dir. by Wolf Gremm, starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder (as Polizeileutnant Jansen), Günther Kaufmann, Boy Gobert, Arnold Marquis
Det växer inga rosor på Odenplan, 1964
Idole, 1965 (TV play, with Arvid Rundberg)
- dir. by Håkan Ersgård, starring Erik Hell, Lars Passgård, Inga Gill, Elsa Textorius, Fritz Svanberg
Generalerna, 1965
- The Generals (translated by Joan Tate, 1974)
Flygplan saknas, 1965 (screenplay (with Arvid Rundberg)
- film prod. by Nordik Tonefilm, dir. by Per Gunvall, starring Olle Johansson, Birgit Nordin and Runar Martholm
Morianerna, 1965 (screenplay with Jan Ekström, Arne Mattsson)
- film prod. Bison Film, dir. by Arne Mattsson, starring Anders Henrikson, Eva Dahlbeck, Heinz Hopf, Elsa Prawitz
Nattmara, 1965 (screenplay with Arne Mattson)
- film prod. Svensk Filmindustri (SF), dir. by Arne Mattson, starring Ulla Jacobsson, Gunnar Hellström, Sven Lindberg, Mimi Pollak
Mördaren - en helt vanlig person, 1967 (screenplay with Arne Mattson, Maj Sjöwall)
- film prod. by A-Produktion, dir. by Arne Mattson, starring Allan Edwall, Lars Ekborg, Britta Pettersson, Karl-Arne Holmsten, Erik Hell, Heinz Hopf
Stålsprånget, 1968
- The Steel Spring (translated by Joan Tate, 1970)
With Maj Sjöwall:
Roseanna, 1965
- Roseanna (translated by Lois Roth, 1967)
- Roseanna: romaani rikoksesta (suom. Kari Jalonen, 1969)
- film adaptations: 1967, prod. Independent film, dir. Hans Abramson, starring Keve Hjelm (as Martin Beck), Hans Ernback, Tor Isedal, Gio Petré, Hans Bendrik; 1993, prod. Nordisk Film- & TV-Fond, Rialto Film, Svensk Filmindustri (SF), dir. Daniel Alfredson, starring Gösta Ekman (as Beck), Kjell Bergqvist, Rolf Lassgård, Anna Helena Bergendal
Mannen som gick upp i rök, 1966
- The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (translated by Joan Tate, 1969)
- Mies joka hävisi savuna ilmaan (suom. Kari Jalonen, 1967)
- film adaptation:Mann, der sich in Luft auflöste, 1980, prod. Andre Libik, Europa Film, Mafilm 'Dialog' Studio, dir. Péter Bacsó, starring Derek Jacobi (as Martin Beck), Judy Winter, Tomas Bolme, Lasse Strömstedt, Sándor Szabó
Mannen på balkongen, 1967
- The Man on the Balcony (translated by Alan Blair, 1968)
- Mies parvekkeella (suom. Margit Salmenoja, 1980)
- film adaptation: Mannen på balkongen, 1993, prod. Nordisk Film- & TV-Fond, Rialto Film, Svensk Filmindustri (SF), dir. by Daniel Alfredson, starring Gösta Ekman (as Martin Beck), Kjell Bergqvist, Rolf Lassgård, Niklas Hjulström, Bernt Ström
Den skrattande polisen, 1968
- The Laughing Policeman (translated by Alan Blair, 1970)
- Bussimurha (suom. Kari Jalonen, 1972)
- film adaptation in 1973, prod. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, dir. by Stuart Rosenberg, starring Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, Louis Gossett Jr., Albert Paulsen. Note: the locale was shifted from Sweden to San Francisco when it was filmed.
Brandbilen som försvann, 1969
- The Fire Engine That Disappeared (translated by Joan Tate, 1970)
- Kadonnut paloauto (suom. Margit Salmenoja, 1980)
- film adaptation:1993, prod. Nordisk Film- & TV-Fond, RTL, Rialto Film, dir. by Hajo Gies, starring Gösta Ekman (as Martin Beck), Kjell Bergqvist, Rolf Lassgård, Niklas Hjulström, Holger Kunkel
Polis, polis, potatismos!, 1970
- Murder at the Savoy (translated by Amy and Ken Knoespel, 1971)
- Missä viipyy poliisi (suom. Marja-Riitta Ritanoro ja Kari Jalonen, 1974)
- films: Nezakonchennyy uzhin, 1980, dir. Janis Streics, starring Romualds Ancans (as Martin Beck), Ingrid Andrina, Lilita Berzina, Ivars Kalnis; 1993, prod. Nordisk Film- & TV-Fond, Rialto Film, Svensk Filmindustri (SF) dir. Per Berglund, starring Gösta Ekman, Kjell Bergqvist and Rolf Lassgård
Den vedervärdige mannen från Säffle, 1971
- The Abominable Man (translated by Thomas Teal, 1972)
- Komisario Beck tähtäimessä (suom. Marja-Riitta Ritanoro ja Kari Jalonen, 1974)
- film adaptation: Mannen på taket, 1976, prod. Svensk Filmindustri (SF), Svenska Filminstitutet (SFI), dir. by Bo Widerberg, starring Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt, Sven Wollter, Thomas Hellberg, Håkan Serner, Ingvar Hirdwall
Det slutna rummet, 1972
- The Locked Room (translated by Paul Britten Austin, 1973)
- Suljettu huone (suom. Kari Jalonen)
- film adaptation: De gesloten kamer, 1993, prod. Filmcase, Prime Time, dir. by Jacob Bijl, starring Jan Decleir (as Martin Beck), Els Dottermans, Warre Borgmans, Jakob Beks
Polismördaren, 1974
- Cop Killer (ttranslated by Thomas Teal, 1975; introduction by Liza Marklund, 2010)
- Poliisimurha (suom. Kari Jalonen, 1978)
- film adaptation in 1993, prod. Rialto Film, Svensk Filmindustri (SF), Sveriges Television (SVT), dir. by Peter Keglevic, starring Gösta Ekman (as Martin Beck), Kjell Bergqvist, Rolf Lassgård, Tomas Norström, Johan Widerberg
Terroristerna, 1975
- The Terrorists (translated by Joan Tate, 1976)
- Terroristit (suom. Margit Salmenoja, 1980)
- film adaptation: Stockholm Marathon, 1993, prod. Rialto Film, Svensk Filmindustri (SF), Sveriges Television (SVT), dir. by Peter Keglevic, starring Gösta Ekman (as Martin Beck), Kjell Bergqvist, Rolf Lassgård, Niklas Hjulström, Corinna Harfouch
Sista resan och andra berättelser, 2007
Roseanna, 2008 (A Martin Beck Mystery: 1; translated from the Swedish by Lois Roth; with a new introduction by Henning Mankell)
The Man Who Went up in Smoke, 2008 (A Martin Beck Mystery: 2; translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate; with an introduction by Val McDermid)
The Man on the Balcony, 2009 (A Martin Beck Mystery: 3; translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair; with an introduction by Jo Nesbø)
The Laughing Policeman, 2009 (A Martin Beck Mystery: 4; translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair; introduction by Jonathan Franzen)
The Fire Engine That Disappeared, 2009 (A Martin Beck Mystery: 5; translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate; with an introduction by Colin Dexter)
Murder at the Savoy, 2009 (A Martin Beck Mystery: 6; translated from the Swedish by Amy Knoespel; introduction by Arne Dahl)
The Abominable Man, 2009 (A Martin Beck Mystery: 7; translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal; with an introduction by Jens Lapidus)
The Locked Room, 2009 (A Martin Beck Mystery: 8; translated from the Swedish by Paul Britten Austin; with an introduction by Michael Connelly)
Cop Killer, 2010 (A Martin Beck Mystery: 9; translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal; introduction by Liza Marklund)
The Terrorists, 2010 (A Martin Beck Mystery: 10; translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate; introduction by Dennis Lehane)
Translator with Maj Sjöwall:
Ed McBain: Hämnden, 1968 (original title: Killer's Payoff)
Ed McBain: Hotet, 1968 (original title: King's Ransom)
Ed McBain: Hatet, 1968 (original title: 'Til Death)
Ed McBain: Handen, 1968 (original title: Give the Boys a Great Big Hand)
Ed McBain: Dröjaren, 1969 (original title: He Who Hesitates)
Ed McBain: Dråpet, 1969 (original title: Ax)
Ed McBain: Deckarna, 1969 (original title: Fuzz)
Some rights reserved Petri Liukkonen (author) & Ari Pesonen. 2008-2024. | ||||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 10 | https://scroll.in/article/908813/before-lisbeth-salander-the-couple-that-invented-nordic-noir-with-the-martin-beck-series-of-books | en | Before Lisbeth Salander: The couple that invented Nordic noir with the Martin Beck series of books | [
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"Amish Raj Mulmi"
] | 2019-01-12T12:30:00+05:30 | Bleak landscapes and brooding detectives with personal demons are par for the course in books and TV now because of Swedish writers Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. | en | Scroll.in | https://scroll.in/article/908813/before-lisbeth-salander-the-couple-that-invented-nordic-noir-with-the-martin-beck-series-of-books | In his 1950 essay, “The Simple Act of Murder”, Raymond Chandler wrote, “The realist in murder writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities...where the mayor of your town may have condoned murder as an instrument of money-making.” The popular cosy English country mysteries, best exemplified by Agatha Christie, did not “really come off intellectually as problems, and they do not come off artistically as fiction,” Chandler argued. Instead, he pitched for a depiction of crime as it occurs in the real world, “not a fragrant world, but it is the world you live in”.
12 years later, in 1962, Swedish journalists Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo would come together both in life and in art to write 10 books over 10 years that would take Chandler’s mission to heart. The Martin Beck series of books, which Swedish writer Henning Mankell has called “a modern classic”, took inspiration from hard-boiled American writing such as Ed McBain’s police procedural novels and “added a bit of journalistic approach by focussing on current issues in society, so as to highlight social problems, and that’s how it started,” Swedish crime writer Zac O’Yeah said over email. Together, these 10 books mark the beginning of what we now know as Nordic noir.
A new genre
Nordic noir, or Scandinavian crime writing, has taken the world by storm today. What had once been a locational attribute is an entire genre now: a ghastly crime contrasted by the bleakness of the landscape, a troubled investigator whose worldview borders on fatalism (and at times, nihilism) and who struggles with issues at home, and where “solving” the crime is often less important than why the crime occurs, or how. Film and TV adaptations are commonplace and most bookshops now have entire shelves dedicated to the genre, judiciously kept away from the Christies and the Conan Doyles.
To discover the beginnings of Nordic noir, however, one has to go back to Sweden of the 1960s: a time with anti-Vietnam war protests, very few immigrants, when “Sweden was still a society with closer ties to the past than to the future” and “everybody smoked all the time,” as Mankell writes in his introduction to Roseanna, the first book in Sjowall and Wahloo’s series.
Looking back, the publication of Roseanna was a historical landmark. Sjowall would later recall, “We wanted to describe society from our left point of view...We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality. We wanted to show where Sweden was heading: towards a capitalistic, cold and inhuman society, where the rich got richer, the poor got poorer.” This was a complete turnaround from how crime fiction had been approached up until then, with the British-style detective novel as the historically dominant form.
Real human beings
Martin Beck, the primary protagonist in the 10 novels, is “the prototype of the brilliant tormented detective”. His team at the Swedish National Police has equally intriguing characters: a detective with a photographic memory, another who doesn’t take too kindly to the state of affairs in Sweden, and one who comes from wealth and is disliked by most of the team. New recruits come and go, a member of the team is killed on duty and a patrol team is regularly pulled up for their ineptitude. They smoke a lot, get colds, are rude to each other, and face difficult questions in their relationships. In short, these are real human beings, “complete men and common men and yet unusual men”, to borrow from Chandler.
Despite being police procedurals, the books are often scathing in their criticism of force (and of the Swedish state itself, which came from the fact that its authors were both Marxists), such as the drive to militarise the police: “It had all started with demands for a more militant and homogenous police force, for greater technical resources, and for more firearms in particular. To get this it had been necessary to exaggerate the hazards that policemen faced,” one of the officers ruminates in The Locked Room, the eighth book in the series that O’Yeah says “had an unusual intertextual quality which made it into something more than just a crime novel”.
Sjowall and Wahloo were both journalists when they met in 1962 and fell in love. Wahloo had written novels earlier, “but they’d only sold 300 copies,” Sjowall told The Guardian. They planned a series of 10 books, with 30 chapters each. The first book, Roseanna, sold moderately well, she recalled: “Little old ladies took the books back to the shop, complaining that they were awful, too realistic. Crime stories in those days would not describe a naked dead woman as we did. Or describe a policeman going to bed with his wife. But on the other hand, students loved them.”
Taking root
The subsequent books in the series got better (or worse, if you look at it from the little old ladies’ perspective): they began to deal with paedophilia, serial killers, suicides, international espionage, the Cold War and mass murders (see The Laughing Policeman, a personal favourite along with The Fire Engine That Disappeared). Nordic noir hadn’t yet hit the jackpot, so although the two could quit their day jobs to focus on the books, Sjowall said she would sometimes “lie awake at night wondering how to pay the rent”.
Wahloo, nine years older than Sjowall, did not live to complete The Terrorists, the last book in the series and Sjowall wrote the last few chapters by herself. Together, their partnership allowed an entire new genre to take root, but the real success of Nordic noir would come later. “It [would be] another 25 years until the Nordic noir was born as a genre in the 1990s,” O’Yeah said, “so even if they [Sjowall and Wahloo] invented it, it was only after Henning Mankell’s astonishing global success that people started writing crime fiction in earnest.”
Swedish crime writing (and subsequently, Nordic noir) can be broken down in three phases. “Sjowall-Wahloo were among the first to get translated into other languages and find an international market, then Mankell boosted that by selling in the millions and being read all over the world, and of course Larsson pushed it even further by his books becoming such an internationally big product,” O’Yeah explained.
Today, it is arguably the most influential crime genre in the world. From True Detective to The Killing (originally a Danish TV show), from Broadchurch to Shetland, most crime dramas today owe a debt to Sjowall and Wahloo’s radical reimagining of the crime novel.
The new normal
At the same time, Nordic noir’s success has seen the genre crossing over from literature to marketing. The official Sweden tourism website advertises the “Stieg Larsson: Millennium tour”, where fans can go on a “two hour tour” with a trip to the apartment of Lisbeth Salander, the eponymous girl with the dragon tattoo and the punk-hacker-heroine of Larsson’s books. There’s also a Ystad tour, for the town that gave us Kurt Wallander, Mankell’s alcoholic police detective made famous by the BBC series starring Kenneth Branagh (one of the few actors to have portrayed two separate fictional detectives).
One can argue that if the hard-hitting writing of Sjowall and Wahloo was born as a response to the irrealism of cozy English mysteries, Nordic noir’s commercial success has made it as commonplace as the English country house detective once was. After Larsson died, the series has been turned into a franchise – a la Ian Fleming – that is mediocre at best. Also, any serious crime reader today will notice it is no longer uncommon to find bleak landscapes and troubled protagonists today. If anything, they are the norm.
This is not unusual. Popular writing – and the creative arts – tend to coalesce around ideas and tropes once a successful mantra has been identified. Perhaps it was similar in the 1920s and 1930s, with Christie, Sayers and Chesterton and their snug mysteries, and perhaps we will see a response to Nordic noir as it exists today. Writers like Tana French are already turning away from the “detective drama”, with keen psychological insights into ordinary human beings who end up committing a crime.
Despite the ubiquity of Nordic noir today, Sjowall and Wahloo’s reimagining of the crime novel elevated the form and structure of the genre. There aren’t any little grey cells or complex mysteries here; there’s only human fallibility, imperfect societies, and a relentless pursuit to uncover the secrets that make the crime. | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 45 | http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2006/05/youre-still-one-part-ix.html | en | The Rap Sheet: You’re Still the One, Part IX | [
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] | null | [] | null | Question: What one crime, mystery, or thriller novel do you think has been most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciat... | http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/favicon.ico | http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2006/05/youre-still-one-part-ix.html | Send Us News: The Rap Sheet is always on the lookout for information about new and soon-forthcoming books, special author projects, and distinctive crime-fiction-related Web sites. Shoot us an e-mail note here.
Text © 2006-2024 by The Rap Sheet or its individual contributors.
Rap Sheet logo by David Middleton. | ||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 3 | https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/per-wahloo/ | en | Per Wahloo Books In Order | [
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"Editorial"
] | 2022-03-24T20:23:12-07:00 | The masterful first novel in the Martin Beck series of mysteries by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sj wall and Per Wahl , finds Beck | en | Books In Order | https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/per-wahloo/ | Inspector Jensen Books In Publication Order
Standalone Novels In Publication Order
Martin Beck Books In Publication Order
Inspector Jensen Book Covers
Standalone Novels Book Covers
Martin Beck Book Covers
Per Wahloo Books Overview
Related Authors | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 2 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maj-Sjowall-and-Per-Wahloo | en | Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo | Biography, Books, & Facts | [
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"The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica"
] | 1998-07-20T00:00:00+00:00 | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were Swedish journalists and innovative writers of detective fiction. As a team, Per Wahlöö and his wife, Maj Sjöwall (married in 1962), wrote a series of detective stories in which Martin Beck and his colleagues at the Central Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm were | en | /favicon.png | Encyclopedia Britannica | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maj-Sjowall-and-Per-Wahloo | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
Swedish journalists and authors
Quick Facts
Born:
September 25, 1935, Stockholm, Sweden
Died:
April 29, 2020
Born:
August 5, 1926, Gothenburg, Sweden
Died:
June 22, 1975, Malmö
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (respectively, born September 25, 1935, Stockholm, Sweden—died April 29, 2020; born August 5, 1926, Gothenburg, Sweden—died June 22, 1975, Malmö) were Swedish journalists and innovative writers of detective fiction.
As a team, Per Wahlöö and his wife, Maj Sjöwall (married in 1962), wrote a series of detective stories in which Martin Beck and his colleagues at the Central Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm were the main characters. From Roseanna (1965) to Terroristerna (1975; “The Terrorists”), the series consists of 10 novels, all of which are translated into English and a number of other languages. In their psychological characterization and use of a police collective instead of a mastermind, the works bear similarities to the writings of both Georges Simenon and Ed McBain. What sets the series apart from other books in the same genre is the conscious use by Wahlöö and Sjöwall of the popular form of the detective story as a vehicle for social criticism. The crime itself, however intriguing, plays a subordinate role in each novel. Both the police force and the criminals mirror the shifting social forces within the Swedish welfare state. The authors strongly criticized the many abuses of power and the systematic use of propaganda in society. Many of these motifs recur in Per Wahlöö’s novels of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 13 | https://dorsetbookdetective.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/the-top-ten-scandinavian-crime-fiction-writers/ | en | The Top Ten Scandinavian Crime Fiction Writers | [
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] | null | [] | 2016-06-10T00:00:00 | Scandinavia has become the crime capital of the world thanks to the recent popularity of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, but there is so much more to the Nordic region than Larsson’s trilogy. Some truly phenomenal talent has emerged from Scandinavia, whose crime fiction scene stretches back far beyond Lisbeth Salander. Here… | en | The Dorset Book Detective | https://dorsetbookdetective.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/the-top-ten-scandinavian-crime-fiction-writers/ | Scandinavia has become the crime capital of the world thanks to the recent popularity of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, but there is so much more to the Nordic region than Larsson’s trilogy. Some truly phenomenal talent has emerged from Scandinavia, whose crime fiction scene stretches back far beyond Lisbeth Salander. Here I showcase ten of the very best crime fiction writers from across the region.
10. Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö– The Martin Beck novels created by this husband and wife team were among the very first crime fiction books from Scandinavia to garner international attention. The series is essential reading for anyone interested in crime fiction, and, despite at times being dense and difficult to read, serve as both stunning critiques of 1960s Swedish society and deftly crafted crime novels.
9. Stieg Larsson– The journalist who is often credited as having bought Scandinavian crime fiction into the mainstream, Larsson never lived to learn the true impact his phenomenal trilogy would have on the world. With murder, rape, torture and obscene corruption all regular features of his work, it is unsurprising that the Millennium trilogy is also highly emotive, with the writer skilfully combining violence and horror with human understanding. Strong characterisation really makes these novels stand out, and it is unsurprising that the trilogy has obtained a global following.
8. Jo Nesbø– Famed for his book Headhunters, which spawned a film featuring a member of the Game of Thrones cast, Nesbø is a highly diverse writer, capable of expressing the full plethora of human emotion. His Harry Hole novels, set in his native Norway, are both frightening and understandable, with the author showing a real eye for empathy and a true understanding of human emotion.
7. Peter Høeg– Whilst his The Quiet Girl is generally regarded as complete nonsense and his bibliography is far smaller than many on this list, Høeg deserves an entry on this list entirely for the excellence of his novel Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow. A beautiful, atmospheric novel which explores a number of key themes including motherhood, betrayal, colonialism and political corruption, this is the thrilling tale of Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen, and how her unique knowledge of the various types of snow leads her on a journey which begins with the death of a child leads her right back to her own past. Quite possibly one of the best books written in the last thirty years, I would strongly urge you to seek out a copy.
6. Karin Fossum– This successful Norwegian author is an excellent introduction to Scandinavian crime fiction, offering relatable plots and intriguing characters. Her detective, Inspector Konrad Sejer, is unusually polite, a very nondescript man with admirable dedication to his job whose overbearing niceness contrasts with the dark themes Fossum threads through her narrative. On the surface these novels are not typical of this genre but there is an essential creepy atmosphere that renders these novels excellent examples of why Scandinavian crime fiction is so popular.
5. Åsa Larsson– An award winning novelist, Larsson’s books are defined by the detail she puts into her setting and the atmosphere this creates almost seeps from the page. Her work is instantly recognisable, and her use of language and beautiful construction perfectly portrays the atmospheric and grimy side of the usually picturesque region which has made the genre internationally popular.
4. Karin Alvtegen– Alvtegen’s novels are tightly wound psychological thrillers that analyse human behaviour and are often terrifyingly identifiable. Her writing translates brilliantly and the novels are always terse, taunt and highly dramatic. The plots race along and the conclusion is always a dramatic, surprising climax. | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 46 | https://jiescribano.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/the-crime-fiction-alphabet-w-is-for-wahl-per-wahl/ | en | The Crime Fiction Alphabet: W is for Wahlöö, Per Wahlöö | [
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] | null | [] | 2011-06-20T00:00:00 | Esta entrada es bilingüe, desplazarse hacia abajo para ver la versión en castellano. The Alphabet in Crime Fiction, hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise, has arrived this week to letter W. You can click HERE to find out the contributions of other fellow participants, please do visit their blogs. I’m sure that you will… | en | A Crime is Afoot | https://jiescribano.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/the-crime-fiction-alphabet-w-is-for-wahl-per-wahl/ | Esta entrada es bilingüe, desplazarse hacia abajo para ver la versión en castellano.
The Alphabet in Crime Fiction, hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise, has arrived this week to letter W. You can click HERE to find out the contributions of other fellow participants, please do visit their blogs. I’m sure that you will find out some interesting books to read.
My W is for Wahlöö. Per Wahloo (1926 – 1975) was born in Goteborg. After graduating from the University of Lund, he worked as a journalist, covering criminal and social issues. In the 1950s Wahlöö was engaged in radical political causes, activities that resulted in his deportation from Franco’s Spain in 1957. Upon his return to Sweden, he wrote a number of television and radio plays and became managing editor for several magazines before becoming a full-time writer of political and science fiction novels.
Per Wahlöö is the legendary author behind the acclaimed Dictatorship series. In this extraordinary series – a batch of seven novels and one collection of short stories created over a course of 20 years – Per Wahlöö makes fascinating and highly intelligent use of a ‘thriller-like’ framework to explore the relationship between the individuals and the State.
In 1961, he met Maj Sjowall (Stockholm, 1935). They married the next year and together they conceived and wrote a series of ten novels (police procedurals) collectively titled The Story of a Crime. The novels revolve around a team of police investigators led by Martin Beck at the Central Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm. In 1987, H.R.F. Keating, writer, reviewer and acknowledged detective fiction expert, included Roseanna (1965) in his list of what he considered to be The best 100 Crime & Mystery Books. Several of the books have also been adapted into screen. According to Wahlöö, their intention was to “use the crime novel as a scalpel cutting open the belly of the ideological pauperized and morally debatable so-called welfare state of the bourgeois type.”
Thus far, I have read 7 of the 10 books in the series. My first posts were published in Spanish only, you can notice that by the titles. I’m planning to read the rest of the series soon. Stay tuned.
Roseanna
El hombre que se esfumó
Maj Sjöwall y Per Wahlöö – El hombre del balcón
Maj Sjöwall y Per Wahlöö – El policía que ríe.
The Fire Engine that Disappeared by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
Murder at the Savoy by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
The Abominable Man, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
The Locked Room
Cop Killer
The Terrorists
References:
Per Wahlöö (1926-1975) at books and writers
Per Wahlöö – Wikipedia
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö – Wikipedia
Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö: Top Crime Fiction Series
Per Wahlöö – Salomonssen Agency
The Martin Beck Mystery Series
El Alfabeto del Crimen: W es por Wahlöö, Per Wahlöö.
El alfabeto del crimen, organizado por Kerrie en Mysteries in Paradise,, ha llegado esta semana a la letra “W”. Puede hacer clic AQUÍ para ver las aportaciones del resto de participantes, por favor visite sus blogs. Estoy seguro de que usted encontrará algunas recomendaciones interesantes.
Mi W es por Wahlöö. Per Wahloo (1926 – 1975) nació en Goteborg. Después de graduarse de la Universidad de Lund, trabajó como periodista, cubriendo asuntos penales y sociales. En la década de 1950 Wahlöö se dedicó a defender causas políticas radicales, actividades que le llevaron a ser expulsado de España en 1957 durante la época de Franco. A su regreso a Suecia, escribió una serie de obras de teatro de radio y televisión y se convirtió en jefe de redacción de varias revistas antes de dedicarse a escribir a tiempo completo novelas de política ficción y de ciencia ficción.
Per Wahlöö es el legendario autor de la aclamada serie “Los Dictadores”. En esta extraordinaria serie- compuesta por siete novelas y una colección de historias cortas creadas durante el curso de 20 años – Per Wahlöö hace un uso fascinante y muy inteligente del ‘thriller, como “marco de referencia para explorar la relación entre los individuos y el Estado.
En 1961, conoció a Maj Sjöwall (Estocolmo, 1935). Se casaron al año siguiente, y juntos concibieron y escribieron una serie de diez novelas (procedimientos policíacos) tituladas colectivamente Historia de un crimen. Las novelas giran en torno a un equipo de investigadores policíacos, dirigidos por Martin Beck, de la Oficina Central de Investigación en Estocolmo. En 1987, H.R.F. Keating, escritor, crítico y reconocido experto en novelas policíacas, incluyó a Roseanna (1965) en su lista con los 100 mejores libros de crimen y misterio. Varios de estos libros también han sido adaptados a la gran pantalla. De acuerdo con Wahlöö, su intención era la de “utilizar la novela policíaca como un bisturí con el que diseccionar la ideología y la moral del llamado estado de bienestar burgués”.
Hasta ahora, he leído 7 de los 10 libros de la serie. Mis primeras entradas fueron escritas sólo en español, lo que se puede observar por los títulos de los libros. Pienso terminar de leer pronto el resto de la serie. Permanezcan sintonizados.
Referencias | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 49 | https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/05/06/the-origins-of-scandinavian-noir/ | en | The Origins of Scandinavian Noir | [
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"Wendy Lesser"
] | 2020-05-06T00:00:00 | When Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall set out to write the Martin Beck mysteries, nothing of the kind had ever appeared in Scandinavian literature. | en | /favicon.ico | The Paris Review | https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/05/06/the-origins-of-scandinavian-noir/ | Sometime in the early eighties, I began reading a series of mysteries that featured a Swedish homicide detective named Martin Beck. I was living in Berkeley at the time, studying for a Ph.D. in English literature as I worked a variety of part-time jobs, and I knew a lot of people both inside and outside the academy. Being a talkative sort, I started telling everyone around me about this incredible Scandinavian cop series. Soon we were all reading it.
What I knew at the time was that it was written by a couple, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, who had from the very beginning envisioned it as a sequence of ten books that would portray Swedish society from a distinctly Marxist perspective. Published between 1965 and 1975, the Martin Beck series grew noticeably darker as it moved toward its end—though whether this was because Sweden itself (not to speak of the world beyond it) had worsened during that decade, or because Per Wahlöö had learned in the early seventies that he was dying of cancer, was something no one could answer. Wahlöö died, I later learned, on the exact day in June of 1975 when the tenth volume was published in Sweden, having worked like a maniac to finish it on time. (Sjöwall, who was his equal partner in many ways—they would write their alternating chapters at night, so as not to be interrupted by their small children, and would then exchange chapters for editing—has said that at the very end Wahlöö was pretty much writing everything himself.) At any rate, he left behind exactly what he had intended to produce: ten books containing thirty chapters each, which, taken together, constitute a single continuous social narrative comparable in some ways to a Balzac, Zola, or Dickens project, though clothed in the garments of a police procedural.
It would be a melodramatic exaggeration to say that the Martin Beck series changed my life, but like all such exaggerations, this one would be built on a nugget of truth. Both my idea of Scandinavia and my sense of what a mystery could do were shaped by those books. If I later became a veritable addict of the form, gobbling up hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year in Kindle purchases of Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian mysteries, that habit could no doubt be attributed to many things besides the Martin Becks: the invention of digital books, for instance, which allowed for impulse buying and virtually infinite storage; the massive and surprising success of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, which encouraged American publishers to bring out any and every available Scandinavian thriller; the introduction of the long-cycle police procedural on American television, including such gems as Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, and ultimately The Wire, all of which cemented my fascination with the form; not to mention dozens if not hundreds of similar behavior-shaping factors that remain, for me, at an unconscious level. We never know for sure why we read what we read. I cannot, at the moment, even call to mind who first recommended the Martin Becks to me (though I know it was a person and not, say, a bookstore display or a newspaper review). Whoever it was, in any case, deserves my eternal gratitude.
What is so special about these ten books? Or—a slightly different question—what was it that so appealed to me back in 1981 or 1982, when I was about to turn thirty and America was on the verge of becoming what it is today?
Ronald Reagan, remember, had just been elected president. Many of us who voted against him (particularly among the Californians who had suffered through his governorship) had sworn that we would leave the country if he won. We didn’t actually carry out these threats—one never does, as I have learned repeatedly in the years since—but in my imagination I must have pictured Sweden, that haven for dissident Americans since the time of the Vietnam War, as one of the ideal refuges to which one could flee in such circumstances. That the society in which the Martin Beck novels took place represented a form of humane, non-Soviet socialism was certainly a great part of their appeal for me. What I failed to notice at the time was how severely Sjöwall and Wahlöö were in fact criticizing the inadequate socialism practiced in their country. Instead, what I saw was the difference between gun-crazy, corporate-run, murder-riddled America and this small, sensible nation where even police officers hated guns, where crime was seen as a social problem rather than an individual pathology, and where the rare appearance of a serial or mass killer instantly provoked comparisons to the well-chronicled history of such crimes in the United States.
And then there was the specific affection I felt for Martin Beck’s team of homicide detectives. The idea of a team was itself appealing, especially in contrast to the usual American detective, a hardboiled rogue who typically despised collective procedures and chose to work alone and unregulated. But beyond that, I loved the individual characters in the team, who over the course of ten volumes began to seem as familiar to me as most of my real-life acquaintances.
To begin with, there is Martin Beck himself, who exhibits rectitude, fairness, a decent sense of empathy even for murderers, a useful skepticism about the criminal justice system, a healthy dislike of stupidity, careerism, and greed, and a willingness to let those around him do their best work. His home life, perhaps, leaves something to be desired—alienated from his nagging wife and distant from his two small children, he spends as many hours as possible on the job—but this changes over the course of the ten volumes, as he and his wife divorce and as he bonds with his growing daughter. And though Martin Beck is something of a loner, with few strong emotional ties, he does have a best friend, in the form of Lennart Kollberg, his second-in-command on the national homicide squad.
Kollberg is one of the great characters of detective fiction. (He is almost always called simply “Kollberg” by the omniscient narrator of these books, just as Martin Beck is always called by his full name; it is only the other characters who address them as “Martin” or “Lennart.”) His fame, in the years since he came into being, has so transcended his original circumstances that a recent Norwegian mystery writer, Karin Fossum, can name her chief detective’s dog Kollberg and expect everyone to pick up the allusion.
It’s not easy to convey what is so lovable about Kollberg. His charm and wit, though notable, don’t lend themselves to brief quotation; they are cumulative, like everything else in the series. Nor is he particularly magnetic, at least in terms of looks. For one thing, he’s distinctly overweight, though that doesn’t prevent him from being very attractive to certain women (in particular his much appreciated and significantly younger wife, Gunnar). He doesn’t have any of the special talents some of his teammates possess—the phenomenal memory of Fredrik Melander, say, or the immense physical bravery of Gunvald Larsson, or even the sheer dogged persistence of the unimaginative Einar Rönn—but his all-round intelligence and sharp, ironic sense of humor make him an invaluable collaborator and sounding board for Martin Beck. As is often remarked in this series, the two of them can understand each other without explaining themselves, which is perhaps the essential definition of a close friendship. It is also, as Sjöwall and Wahlöö must have known, the defining element of any intimate collaboration on an important and prolonged piece of work.
*
In the early sixties, when Sjöwall and Wahlöö were formulating their idea for a ten-volume police procedural that would mirror the whole society, nothing of the kind had ever appeared in Scandinavian literature. America may have produced Dashiell Hammett and Ed McBain by then, not to mention numerous noir detective films and even some early urban TV shows, like Dragnet, that edged toward this territory. But the Scandinavian tradition was different. There were mysteries, true, but they utterly lacked the broad social perspective, the insistence on some kind of realism, that Sjöwall and Wahlöö were about to introduce.
One of the existing strands, for example, descended from the book Jo Nesbø has described as the original Nordic thriller: a 1909 mystery called The Iron Chariot, written by Norway’s Sven Elvestad under the pen name Stein Riverton. It’s a readable enough work, though a bit slow and (especially compared to latter-day practitioners like Nesbø himself) grotesquely unsuspenseful. The Iron Chariot is basically a country-house murder mystery, set in an idyllic landscape somewhere on the southern Norwegian coast at the height of summer—a location and a season that together allow for a great deal of crepuscular light shimmering on the ocean at midnight and other effects of that sort. The mysteriously clanking and reputedly ghostly “chariot” of the title turns out to be a newfangled flying machine invented by a local professor, one of the murder victims. In the end, the murderer is revealed to be the story’s narrator, a weirdly impalpable creature whose crimes and methods are exposed by the Holmes-like detective called in from the nearest city—though not before we have pretty much figured them out by ourselves. The whole novel is like a combination of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, a narrative that is at once logical and insane, but in any case very particular and very enclosed, with an extremely limited pool of suspects and no perspective whatsoever on the society at large.
Another precedent—perhaps even further from the Martin Becks in style and intent, though closer temporally and geographically—consisted of the various Swedish mysteries written for children in the mid-twentieth century. These included Åke Holmberg’s novels about the private eye Ture Sventon, issued between 1948 and 1973, and Nils-Olof Franzén’s illustrated books about the detective Agaton Sax, which came out around the same time. Those detective characters, too, were clearly modeled on Holmes, though with certain features—such as a jolly round figure and an animal associate, in the case of Sax—that would make them especially appealing to children. The most famous series in this genre, perhaps because it actually employed a child as the detective, was Astrid Lindgren’s trio of mysteries featuring a schoolboy named Kalle Blomqvist (a central character who, when the books proved popular enough to export, was later renamed Bill Bergson). These three tales, which appeared in Sweden between 1946 and 1953, are somewhat reminiscent of America’s Nancy Drew series, with a youthful amateur detective who, together with the necessary age-appropriate sidekicks, always succeeds in outwitting the bad guys. Even now, the books remain sufficiently well known in Sweden so that present-day readers of the Stieg Larsson books are expected to get the joke when Lisbeth’s ally, the crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist, is nicknamed “Kalle” by his friends. (This would seem to be a joke that never stales among Swedish mystery writers, for Leif G. W. Persson brings it up again in his recent novel The Dying Detective.)
But the Larsson and Persson books did not exist until decades after the Martin Becks were first published. It took a particular pair of authors working together at a specific moment in history to create that now-dominant form, the modern-day Scandinavian mystery. And despite the fact that they were naive beginners, or perhaps in some ways because of that, their achievement in the form has never been topped.
*
Let’s agree to dispense with any discussion about brow levels. If I happen to invoke Dickens, Balzac, or Dostoyevsky when talking about these books, it is not to insist that Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall are their equals as the writers of sentences and paragraphs—though nor would I want to grant outright that they are not at the same level in some other way. After all, Wilkie Collins was a thriller writer of the late nineteenth century whose best novels we are still reading with enormous satisfaction today; with each passing decade, he comes to seem more and more of a Victorian classic. One could also argue that Eric Ambler is as much a twentieth-century stylist as Ernest Hemingway, along the same spare lines, and it is not yet clear, if you ask me, which we’ll be reading longer. My point is not just that we can’t, from our limited perspective, answer questions about longevity and importance. It’s also that I don’t particularly want to.
What matters to me is how persuasively these mystery writers manage to create a world that one can imaginatively inhabit—for the duration of a first reading, initially, but also long after. The various features of Martin Beck’s world, including his Stockholm streets, his police department colleagues, his lovers, his friends, the crimes he solves, the murderers he pities, the politicians and bureaucrats he deplores, even the apartments he inhabits, all seemed terribly real to me when I first encountered them, and all continue to seem so today, even after one or more rereadings. This is the mystery novel not as a puzzle that can be forgotten as soon as it is solved but as an experience one is living through along with the characters. If they are sometimes “flat” characters in the manner of Dickens’s grotesques or Shakespeare’s clowns, that is not an absence of realism, but rather a realistic acknowledgment that in our own lives most other people remain opaque to us, often memorable mainly through their caricature-able qualities. We do not have the capacity, as George Eliot famously noted, to be fully empathetic at all times. Much of our observant life, and even much of our own experience, is conducted in a kind of shorthand.
Yet part of what makes the Sjöwall/Wahlöö books great, in comparison to most other mystery series, is precisely the opposite of this shorthand. They are oddly inclusive, with an eye for extraneous detail and a concern with the kinds of trivialities (subways ridden, meals eaten, suspicions vaguely aroused, meandering conversations, useless trains of thought, sudden bursts of intuition, random acts or events that cause everything to change suddenly) that make up not only every life, but every prolonged police investigation. This means that the timing of the books is, for some readers, excessively slow: we often have to wait for the necessary facts to surface, so we tend to find ourselves floating along rather than racing toward an increasingly visible conclusion. I always tell people that they have to wade through at least the first two volumes, Roseanna and The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, before things really get going in the Martin Beck series. Only when they reach The Man on the Balcony or, even better, The Laughing Policeman will they be able to judge how much they like the series. Patience is required of the reader, just as it is of the detective.
Nor are these the sort of “fair” mystery that lays out all the potential suspects and relevant clues (if perhaps in cleverly disguised form) early enough for you to arrive at the solution yourself. Leave that to Agatha Christie and the other puzzle-mongers. In the Martin Beck novels, the murderer might be someone we meet on the first page, but he equally well might not appear until nearly the end of the volume. The solution is only part of the point; it is getting there that matters.
Wendy Lesser is the founder and editor of The Threepenny Review. She has written one novel and eleven previous works of nonfiction; recent books include Music for Silenced Voices, Why I Read, and You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn, which won the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing and the PEN America Award for Research Nonfiction. A recipient of grants and fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Swedish Academy, and numerous other organizations, she currently divides her time between Berkeley, California, and New York City. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 50 | https://thebookdecoder.com/series-in-order-martin-beck-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | en | Series in Order: Martin Beck by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö | [
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] | null | [] | 2023-12-11T02:36:10+00:00 | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's Martin Beck series in order | en | The Book Decoder | https://thebookdecoder.com/series-in-order-martin-beck-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | The Martin Beck series is a collection of ten police procedural novels written by Swedish authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö during the 1960s and 1970s. The series follows the protagonist, Martin Beck, a police inspector in Stockholm, Sweden.
The series is renowned for its extensive character and setting development throughout the books. The authors plotted and researched each book together, then wrote alternate chapters simultaneously. This careful planning resulted in a series that covers ten years in the life of Martin Beck.
The series became international bestsellers and have sold over 10 million copies. The character of Martin Beck has inspired countless other characters in crime fiction. The books have been adapted into films and television series, further cementing their influence in popular culture.
Martin Beck Mysteries in Order | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 52 | https://meh.com/forum/topics/favorite-mysterycrime-writer | en | Meh: Favorite mystery | [
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] | null | [] | 2024-04-01T16:00:00.313000+00:00 | null | So many!!!
Dorothy L. Sayers
PD James
Sue Grafton
Nevada Barr
Margaret Maron
Ian Rankin
Colin Dexter
Henning Mankell
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
Nicolas Freeling
Janwillem van de Wetering
John D. MacDonald
and that’s not including thriller and spy novels. Or writers I only know through TV shows, like Andrea Camilleri, who wrote the Inspector Montalbano mysteries.
Yeah, I overdid it.
Ross MacDonald… our yellow lab is named Archie after Lew Archer
Also, just finished the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters… not the best ‘mysteries’ but beautiful writing
Old timey, with no explicit blood & gore (or sex), then Agatha Christie is hard to beat.
More modern, (with lots of explicit B, G, & S), then Stieg Larsson (the Millennium Trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) and even his successor (David Lagercrantz) in the series are top-notch.
At least the first four of the series can be read for free from archive.org
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780857055538/page/n9/mode/2up
[create an account, sign in, borrow… - they don’t spam] | ||||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 91 | https://www.thehawaiiproject.com/book/Martin-Beck-(10-Book-Series)--by--Per-Wahloo--355508 | en | Get great book recommendations from The Hawaii Project | [] | [] | [] | [
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] | null | [] | null | The Hawaii Project - personalized book recommendations | en | /favicon.ico | https://www.thehawaiiproject.com | ||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 32 | http://bitterteaandmystery.blogspot.com/2013/08/r-is-for-roseanna.html | en | Bitter Tea and Mystery | [
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] | null | [] | null | Today I am featuring Roseanna (1965) by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö for my submission for the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme. Roseanna is t... | http://bitterteaandmystery.blogspot.com/favicon.ico | http://bitterteaandmystery.blogspot.com/2013/08/r-is-for-roseanna.html | |||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 71 | https://www.culturecrossroads.lv/index.php/cc/article/view/48/41 | en | View of NORDIC NOIR INNOVATIONS – “ FOLLOW THE MONEY ” AND “ THIN ICE ” | [] | [] | [] | [
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] | null | [] | null | en | null | ||||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 87 | https://nordics.info/show/artikel/crime-fiction | en | Nordic crime fiction | [
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"Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen"
] | 2024-08-29T11:36:34+02:00 | Since 1990s, Nordic crime fiction has been a significant sub-genre within the global genre of crime fiction. Usually characterised by social realism, gloomy locations and morose detectives, crime novels and TV series from across the Nordic region provide puzzling mysteries and thrilling stories that use the crime plot to investigate the state of justice, equality, vulnerability and current debates specific to the Nordic welfare societies. The genre includes modern TV classics such as the Danish Forbrydelsen (The Killing, 2007-2012), the Danish/Swedish co-production Bron/Broen (The Bridge, 2011-2018) and global bestsellers by the Norwegian Jo Nesbø and the Swede Stieg Larsson, but it also includes dark and critical images of the underbelly of the Nordic states, which extend further back in history, even to literary works from the nineteenth century. | en | https://cdn.au.dk/favicon.ico | https://nordics.info/show/artikel/crime-fiction | *Listen to this article as a podcast in Danish or English!
In the twenty-first century, Nordic crime fiction is a literary genre and a publishing phenomenon which has maintained its local socio-critical potential in a global market place for books and entertainment. The success of the genre is increasingly reinforced by film adaptations and series made for television. Arguably, Nordic crime fiction only became recognised as constituting a common ‘regional genre’ when crime novels from the Nordic countries became translated and television series subtitled, dubbed or remade into a wide range of languages. The reasons for the international success of Nordic crime fiction abroad are many ranging, from the ability of authors and screen writers to blend regional particularities with widely recognisable international forms, to Nordic publishing and media industries’ growing internationalisation since the 1990s.
In some countries outside the Nordic region, the twenty-first century crime boom coincided with a wider fascination with the apparently successful Nordic welfare states and desirable Nordic stereotypes including happiness, quality designer furniture and New Nordic food. The publishing and media industries have benefited greatly from the global ‘brand’ of the Nordic countries and participated in stimulating a desire for ‘all things Nordic’ abroad. Nordic crime fiction as an intermedial genre and a twenty-first century global brand is often referred to as ‘Nordic noir’.
Origins of Nordic crime fiction
Crime fiction in the Nordic countries has a long history with early examples being the Danish Steen Steensen Blicher’s Præsten i Vejlbye (1829) (The Pastor of Vejlbye, 1991) and the Norwegian Maurits Hansen’s detective story Mordet på Maskinbygger Roolfsen (1839) (The Murder of Engineer Roolfsen). It is in the period since the Second World War, however, that Nordic crime fiction has contributed a particular accent and a growing number of globally successful authors to a predominantly Anglo-American genre.
Nordic crime fiction since the Second World War is indebted to the British Golden Age of crime writers in the 1920s and 1930s, with writers such as Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, and shares many traits with the American hard-boiled private detective stories of Raymond Chandler and the police procedurals of Ed McBain. However, it was with the Swedish author duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s ten-volume series about Martin Beck (1965-75), collectively known as ‘Roman om ett brott’ (‘Report of a Crime’), and the new wave of crime writing in the 1990s, that Nordic crime fiction added to the various sub-genres of crime fiction an emphasis on social realism and criticism, gloomy Nordic locations and the trademark morose detective.
The success of the Nordic police procedural
In the 1960s, Sjöwall and Wahlöö translated into Swedish several of Ed McBain’s ‘87th precinct’ novels which were pioneering police procedurals. This inspired the use of a formula wherein the private lives and personal struggles of police officers are mirrored in the larger socio-political landscape of Sweden’s folkhem (People’s Home), the particular Swedish version of the Nordic welfare state. The Swedes Sjöwall and Wahlöö went on to write the Report of a Crime series, which is often cited as the single most influential work of socio-critical crime fiction to subsequent writers in the genre across the Nordic region and beyond.
From their Marxist-Leninist perspective, Sjöwall and Wahlöö explicitly aimed to use their crime novels as a means to analyse the Swedish welfare state, to relate crime to its political and ideological doctrines, and to reveal its perceived fascist nature. The subtitle of the novel, ‘Report of a crime’, was then both an indicator of the genre and a programmatic statement criticising the ‘criminal’ subservience of the welfare state to capitalism. From Roseanna (1965) (Roseanna, 1967) to Terroristerna (1975) (The Terrorists, 1976), Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s crime novels follow Martin Beck and his homicide squad from the sex murder of an American tourist to the murder of the prime minister of a Swedish police state, anticipating the murder of the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme by a decade. In their investigations, Beck and his team are constantly faced with an impenetrable police bureaucracy, a metonymy for a brutal society that gradually overshadows the idyllic Swedish post-war welfare state.
Less politically radical in his critique of Danish society, Anders Bodelsen from Denmark similarly used the social realistic thriller to explore the new realities of the welfare state in his Tænk på et tal (1968) (Think of a Number, 1969). Bodelsen insisted that collective conflicts should be understood through the private; and in his breakthrough novel the personal conflict of a bank cashier, who is tempted to hide the loot from a bank robbery, is reflected in society’s balancing act between materialism and social responsibility.
In the late 1980s and the 1990s, the Nordic thriller gained international attention with the Swede Jan Guillou’s Coq Rouge series (1986-2006) featuring the Swedish spy Carl Hamilton, a nobleman with socialist leanings, and with the work of Danish Leif Davidsen, whose political thrillers focused on Russia and the new Europe, e.g. in Den russiske sangerinde (1988) (The Russian Singer, 1991) and Den serbiske dansker (1996) (The Serbian Dane, 2007). Like Bodelsen and later Stieg Larsson (Sweden), these writers were already well-known and, in the case of Guillou, a controversial journalist, who used the sub-genre of the thriller to criticise and reflect on the changing national and global socio-political climate in the final years of the 20th century.
The police procedural rode the cusp of the new wave of Nordic crime fiction in 1990s.
1990s wave of Nordic crime fiction
It was the police procedural in the style of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s that would ride the cusp of the new wave of Nordic crime fiction in the 1990s. Henning Mankell’s (from Sweden) Inspector Kurt Wallander, Åke Edwardson’s (also Swedish) Chief Inspector Erik Winter, Arnaldur Indriðason’s (from Iceland) Detective Erlendur, Matti Yrjänä Joensuu’s (Finland) Detective Sergeant Timo Harjunpää and Håkan Nesser’s (both from Sweden) Chief Inspector Van Veeteren have all become synonymous with the Nordic police procedural’s male anti-hero investigator.
Mankell’s Wallander series: From Mördare utan ansikte (1991) (Faceless Killers, 1997) to Den orolige mannen (2009) (The Troubled Man, 2011), Mankell’s Wallander series takes place in and around the provincial southern Swedish town of Ystad on the shore of the Baltic. Mankell intended the Wallander series as an investigation into the deterioration of the often celebrated Swedish social consciousness infected by a growing sense of insecurity and xenophobia. While set in a provincial borderland, Mankell’s crime fiction is global in scope, confronting the attitudes of a provincial Swedish microcosm towards border-crossing phenomena such as:
immigration (Mördare utan ansikte, 1991; Faceless Killers, 1997);
organ trafficking in the developing world (Mannen som log, 1994; The Man Who Smiled, 2005);
human trafficking (Villospår, 1995; Sidetracked, 2000);
Swedish mercenaries in the Congo (Den femte kvinnan, 1996; The Fifth Woman, 2001); and
an international conspiracy to destroy the financial system to right the wrongs of worldwide economic inequality (Brandvägg, 1988; Firewall, 2004).
Rather than focusing solely on crimes and their investigation, Mankell’s texts devote much attention to Wallander’s thought processes, his poor habits, ailing body and deteriorating relationships. Throughout the series, Wallander, with his psychological and bodily wounds, becomes a complex reflector of a society unable to commit ethically and with solidarity to the challenges of a globalised world.
Nesser’s Van Veeteren series: This series is less explicitly critical of contemporary society and less interested in international affairs than Mankell’s, as its setting in the fictitious European country Maardam suggests. However, a recurrent theme that Nesser’s crime fiction shares with several other Nordic crime novels is the abuse of women by men, most explicitly explored in Kvinna med födelsemärke (1996, Woman with Birthmark, 2009).
Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow: It was arguably with the Dane Peter Høeg’s Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne (1992, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, 1993) that the Nordic crime novel broke through to the international market as a global brand and blurred the boundaries between high and popular culture. Offering a highly critical view of Denmark’s colonial exploitations of Greenland through the Greenlandic-Danish scientist-protagonist Smilla Jaspersen, the novel also contributed to discussions of cultural belonging, gender and identity in a postcolonial, globalised era.
Other contributions: Although not exclusively writers of genre fiction, and focusing to a larger extent on the psychological and communal effects of crime, Swede Kerstin Ekman and Norwegian Karin Fossum have similarly explored the geographical and cultural peripheries of late-modern Scandinavia in internationally acclaimed crime novels. Examples are Ekman’s Händelser vid vatten (1993) (Blackwater, 1996) and Fossum’s series about Konrad Sejer, including Se deg ikke tilbake! (1996) (Don’t Look Back, 2002).
Key themes
Female protagonists: Dominating the debates about Nordic crime writing in the 1990s, and to a large extent the bestseller lists, was what first became known in Sweden as the femikrimi, crime novels with a female protagonist, written by women often from a feminist perspective. This new wave of women crime writers includes Liza Marklund and Camilla Läckberg (both from Sweden); Gretelise Holm and Sara Blædel (both from Denmark); Anne Holt (Norway) and Leena Letholainen (Finland). While indebted to the (often masculine) conventions of the genre and the Nordic social realist tradition, including the focus on gender and sexual politics, these writers reverse the traditional depiction of women in the genre as passive, asexual and inferior. From an explicit feminist perspective, Liza Marklund’s series with the journalist Annika Bengtzon, beginning with Sprängaren (1998, The Bomber, 2000), recounts the struggles facing an ambitious female crime reporter, juggling family responsibilities in her everyday life in a male dominated world, and solving crimes that also include domestic violence.
Violence against women, the corruption of the welfare state and moral bankruptcy of capital: These were central themes in Danish Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q series (including Kvinden i buret (2007) (Mercy, 2011)) and Swedish Stieg Larsson’s posthumously published international blockbuster the Millenium Trilogy: Män som hatar kvinnor (2005, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2008), Flickan som lekte med elden (2006, The Girl Who Played with Fire, 2009) and Luftslottet som sprängdes (2007, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, 2009). The global success of Nordic crime fiction in the new millennium is indebted to the unprecedented sales and global reach of these three novels (and their later film adaptations and additional instalments written by David Lagercrantz). However, the Millennium Trilogy also shares a more local and critical interest in revising the culturally suppressed influences of right-wing ideologies and the legacy of the Second World War on contemporary Swedish society with novels such as Arne Dahl’s (Sweden) Dödsmässa (2004) (Requiem), Gunnar Staalesen’s (Norway) I mørket er alle ulver grå (1983, At Night All Wolves are Grey, 1986), and Jo Nesbø’s (Norway) third Harry Hole novel, Rødstrupe (2000, The Redbreast, 2006).
Twenty-first century success of Nordic noir
In the twenty-first century, Nordic crime fiction is a literary genre and a publishing phenomenon which has maintained its local socio-critical potential in a global market place for books and entertainment with strong traditions and publishing catalogues in all of the Nordic countries. The success of the genre is increasingly reinforced by adaptations into film and series made for television, as well as original TV drama productions. For instance:
Mankell’s Wallander series was made into a TV series produced by Svensk Filmindustri and Yellow Bird (2005-2010);
Yellow Bird also produced a UK remake of Wallander (2008-);
The Danish television drama Forbrydelsen (The Killing, 2007-2012) was produced by DR (Danmarks Radio, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation);
The US remake of The Killing (2011) was produced by Fox Television Studios and Fuse Entertainment;
The series was also novelised by the British writer David Hewson; and,
The Danish/Swedish co-production Bron/Broen (The Bridge, 2011-2018) has been remade for several regions including the French-British The Tunnel and the US-Mexican The Bridge.
Further reading: | |||||
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] | null | [] | null | en | the swede life in toronto | null | I am craving some tasty Swedish summer food which is delicious for this hot summer we’re enjoying! In this heat, people love to eat cool, crispy salads, fresh fish and creamy creme fraiche and these video recipes hit the spot. Tina Nordström, a well-known Swedish chef from Skåne (Southern Sweden) was a host for New […]
It’s not too late to pick up a great book (or books) to read this summer. I have been thinking of putting up a list of favorite Swedish crime novels. There’s nothing so thrilling as to read a dark, mysterious crime story in a distant place such as Sweden! Some of these authors have a […] | ||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 24 | https://www.jasonhalf.com/blog/book-review-roseanna-1965-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo | en | JASON HALF : writer | http://www.jasonhalf.com/uploads/2/7/3/3/2733505/published/wahloo-roseanna1.jpg?1523118206 | http://www.jasonhalf.com/uploads/2/7/3/3/2733505/published/wahloo-roseanna1.jpg?1523118206 | [
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] | null | [] | null | It is no secret that by the 1960s the Golden Age Mystery puzzle in its cosy body-in-the-library form had largely given way to a more realistic crime-and-solution narrative. In America and abroad, the... | en | JASON HALF : writer | http://www.jasonhalf.com/1/post/2018/04/book-review-roseanna-1965-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo.html | It is no secret that by the 1960s the Golden Age Mystery puzzle in its cosy body-in-the-library form had largely given way to a more realistic crime-and-solution narrative. In America and abroad, the police procedural developed into the preferred genre for crime fiction. Indeed, some Golden Age authors who continued their mystery series into the 1950s and beyond, such as George Goodchild, Michael Gilbert, and Henry Wade, found a natural progression by focusing on the routines and team resources of a police department. Crime writers beginning their careers and launching their detectives in the second half of the 20th century quickly embraced the procedural, both because it was a popular story type and because it allowed for a greater experience of verisimilitude for the reader (even with fictional liberties taken).
Authors in Europe were certainly interested in using the police procedural to investigate not only contemporary crimes but also regional and social attitudes toward a variety of subjects, from class and gender inequalities to law enforcement and the psychological makeup of citizens, criminals, and victims. I have a personal affinity for the thoughtful novels of Nicolas Freeling, who contributed two series featuring Dutch detective Piet Van der Valk and, later, French police inspector Henri Castang. Recently, while listening to Professor David Schmid's entertaining Great Courses lectures on mystery and suspense fiction, I was reminded of the set of ten crime stories featuring Swedish detective Martin Beck and written by the wife-and-husband team of poet Maj Sjowall and journalist Per Wahloo. I was also reminded that I had not read a single one, so I decided to address that oversight.
The first Martin Beck mystery, 1965's Roseanna, is a solid and quite simple story that deliberately tamps down any flamboyance or peculiarities that often make the Golden Age puzzles of three decades prior such amusing reads. No egghead-shaped detectives with fussy mustaches or slang-speaking, upper-class amateur detectives are found here. Martin Beck – always referred to in the third-person narration by his full name, never just Beck – is aggressively ordinary, neither particularly inspired nor incompetent as a detective. Sjowall and Wahloo seem to prefer a sketch to a full composite, at least with this book: we know Martin Beck has a wife and two children, and that the marriage has staled; we know that an inability to resolve a case can haunt him; we know he is middle-aged and in average shape. But the authors barely allow Beck to be more intriguing or accessible to the reader than the other characters, including his colleagues in the division. And that choice is okay, but it certainly keeps one dispassionate, even when the crime under investigation earns anger and pathos from the reader.
A woman's naked body is found in the canal waters, and investigation of missing persons in Sweden yields no success. Beck and his colleagues, including the sardonic, talkative Kollberg and the quieter Melander, are forced to wait as inquiries are made globally. (One principal theme seems to be the act of waiting, or the reliance on factors beyond a person's control, in this novel.) A break comes with contact from a sheriff named Kafka in Lincoln, Nebraska. The woman is identified as Roseanna McGraw, an American who was a passenger on a tour boat. Through interviews and examination of vacation photos and film, Beck and his colleagues identify a potential suspect, and then wait once more when they hope that patient and prolonged surveillance may be enough to catch the person in another act of assault.
Sjowall and Wahloo succeed in stripping their description of police work down to its unglamorous essentials of routine, repetition, and legwork. For their first series novel, they chose to present a case that is the opposite of surprise-a-minute; when there is a lead, weeks and months have often gone past, and (we are told) the failure of Martin Beck to solve the case—or even to advance it through his own agency—has left him restless and numb. Roseanna provides interesting characterization through the words in transcript form of witnesses and suspects, and it does build to a recognizable crime fiction climax where the police rush to stop the villain Before It's Too Late. But it is also a very subdued introduction to this series, with a determinedly unremarkable detective at its center. | |||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 73 | https://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/maj-sjowall-marxist-author-of-detective-stories-dies-at-84/ | en | Maj Sjowall, Marxist author of detective stories, dies at 84 | [
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] | null | [] | 2020-05-07T00:00:00 | In September 2014, I wrote a review for CounterPunch titled "Sweden and the Renaissance of Marxist Crime Stories" that referred to the writing team of Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall. Today I read an obituary for her in the NY Times that I reproduce below to get past the paywall. While my review covered a… | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist | https://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/maj-sjowall-marxist-author-of-detective-stories-dies-at-84/ | In September 2014, I wrote a review for CounterPunch titled “Sweden and the Renaissance of Marxist Crime Stories” that referred to the writing team of Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall. Today I read an obituary for her in the NY Times that I reproduce below to get past the paywall. While my review covered a range of Swedish Marxist crime novelists, I will quote the passage that dealt with Wahloo and Sjowall who were not only great writers but smart enough to see through the notion of the “Swedish model”:
In 1965 the husband and wife writing team of Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall published their first novel “Roseanna” that introduced Stockholm Chief Inspector Martin Beck to the world. Both were committed Marxists and hoped, in Wahlöö’s words, to “rip open the belly of an ideologically impoverished society”.
Like the “Wallander” series reviewed below, the Swedish television series titled “Beck” should probably be described as “inspired” by the novels rather than a direct treatment that was faithful to the authors’ radical vision of Swedish society. That being said, “Beck” retains the noirish sensibility of the original and can be relied upon to hold the dark side of Swedish society to scrutiny as well as being first-rate television drama.
In the premiere episode of season one that aired in 1997, two teen-age immigrant male prostitutes have turned up dead. The first reaction of Beck and his fellow cops is to wonder if another “laser killer” was on the loose again, a reference that would be obscure to most non-Swedish viewers but key to understanding the preoccupations of the writers.
From August 1991 to January 1992 John Ausonius shot 11 people in Sweden, most of whom were immigrants, using a rifle equipped with a laser sight—hence his nickname. The shootings occurred when the New Democracy was on the rise in Sweden, a party that had much in common with Golden Dawn and other fascist parties throughout Europe.
Not long into the investigation, Martin Beck refocuses it on a search for a homicidal pederast. Like Bjurman, the social worker who preys on Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, the killer is a respectable member of Swedish society. This is the most common element of all the television series reviewed here: the moral rot of the people at the top.
As Beck and his team make their rounds interrogating suspects in the dark of night, Stockholm is recast as a noir landscape under dark clouds and rain. This is not a city of strapping male and female blondes preparing for a weekend skiing trip but of junkies and prostitutes who belong in William S. Burroughs’s “Naked Lunch”.
Nobody could ever confuse Beck with the Aryan ideal. With his thinning hair, homely face and flabby body, the fifty-something cop played by Peter Haber, who resembles Karl Malden, looks more like an accountant or a middle manager than someone heading up a homicide investigation—or at least what American television would put forward for such a role. Nor is Beck particularly assertive in his relations with people outside his department. After he refuses to co-sign a loan his daughter needs to move into an apartment obtained illegally (likely violating Sweden’s strict housing codes), she bawls him out in a crowded restaurant as if he were an errant child.
In the first episode, we meet two of the characters with major roles in “Beck”, his subordinate Gunvald Larsson who is constantly bending or breaking rules in Dirty Harry fashion and Lena Klingström, a cyber-cop who spends her working day on the Internet looking for clues rather than going out and busting heads like Larsson. In this first episode, bending rules and trawling the Internet both produce results.
Comic relief occurs in every episode when the divorcee Beck returns home each night to his lonely apartment. Like clockwork, he runs into his unnamed sixtyish neighbor who has hennaed hair and a neck-brace that is never explained. Played by veteran actor Ingvar Hirdwall, he is always musing on the decline and fall of everything, a perfect Greek chorus of one to accompany some classic crime stories.
“Beck”, seasons one through three, can be seen on Amazon streaming. | ||||
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7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 5 | https://crimereads.com/maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-a-crime-readers-guide-to-the-classics/ | en | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics | [
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] | 2021-01-22T09:10:46+00:00 | “One of the most authentic, gripping, and profound collection of police procedurals ever accomplished.” – Michael Connelly Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were pioneers. First of all, they virtually cre… | en | CrimeReads | https://crimereads.com/maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-a-crime-readers-guide-to-the-classics/ | “One of the most authentic, gripping, and profound collection of police procedurals ever accomplished.” – Michael Connelly
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Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were pioneers. First of all, they virtually created Scandinavian noir, and all the giants who followed them happily admit it. Second, with Ed McBain, they revolutionized the police procedural, emphasizing the squad as a whole, people who sometimes argued and fought and failed again and again, but who ultimately complemented one another as a team: “normal people with normal lots, normal thoughts, problems, and pleasures, people who are not larger than life, though not any smaller either,” in the words of Jo Nesbø
Third, and just as important, they took those normal people and used their cases as a way to shine a light on the world as it really is. Any reader of crime fiction today knows that the genre not only entertains, but often acts as a mirror to society; crime does not exist in a vacuum, the books say, it grows out of our systemic flaws. Sjöwall and Wahlöö blazed that trail.
All of that was accomplished with a minimum of preaching (well…usually); a remarkable gift for plotting; lean, propulsive prose that could hit like a gut punch; and bursts of humor that erupted when you least expected it, from sly, dark wit to outright slapstick.
They wrote ten books in all, one a year from 1965 to 1975, but they envisioned them not as individual volumes, but as one long story, thirty chapters each, a three-hundred-chapter saga called “The Story of a Crime.” In it, they tackled pedophilia, serial killers, suicide, drug-smuggling, pornography, arms-dealing, and madness; their characters aged, married, divorced, retired; died; and the country of Sweden itself, as they saw it, veered more and more to the right, the cracks in its “social utopia” growing ever wider, its institutions more geared to the well-off.
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At the books’ heart are the men (only men at that time, though a key woman officer is introduced later) of the National Homicide Squad. The central figure is Martin Beck, whom we see progress from first deputy inspector to detective superintendent to chief. He is dyspeptic and dogged; his stomach is bad; and his marriage disintegrating—it is moribund even in the first book, Roseanna (1965), and during the series we see him move from his bedroom to the living room couch to an apartment of his own. He is intelligent, but no super-detective; systematic, but open to sudden inspiration; solitary, but able to talk easily to people; quiet, but with an excellent sense of humor, which he often uses to mock himself:
“Martin Beck, the born detective and famous observer, constantly occupied making useless observations and storing them away for future use. Doesn’t even have bats in his belfry—they wouldn’t get in for all the crap in the way” (The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, 1966).
Also among Martin Beck’s qualities (and the narrator always refers to him as “Martin Beck,” never “Martin,” never “Beck,” unless it’s in dialogue): his good memory; his obstinacy, which is occasionally mule-like; and his capacity for logical thought. Another is that he usually finds the time for everything that has anything to do with a case, even if this means following up on small details that later turn out to be of no significance—because sometimes they are significant. In one case, a two-week-old overheard phone call proves key; in another, the mention of a lost toy; in a third, a sheet of paper overlooked on a desk; in a fourth, a shared name in separate cases which suddenly tie the two together.
Beck also sometimes gets, well, “feelings”—a sense of danger, that something is about to happen. His colleagues call it his intuition, but he hates that word. “Police work is built on realism, routine, stubbornness and system,” he says in The Abominable Man (1971). “Intuition has no place in practical police work. Intuition is not even a quality, any more than astrology or phrenology are sciences. And still it was there, however reluctant he was to admit it.”
Beck is a policeman’s policeman, through and through. That doesn’t mean that he’s happy with the way the police force has been going lately. In 1965, the old local police system in Sweden was utterly changed—nationalized into “a centrally directed, paramilitary force with frightening technical resources” (The Terrorists, 1975). It also significantly coarsened the kind of man recruited into the ranks. As his colleague Lennart Kollberg tells him, “There are lots of good cops around. Dumb guys who are good cops. Inflexible, limited, tough, self-satisfied types who are all good cops. It would be better if there were a few more good guys who were cops” (The Fire Engine That Disappeared, 1969).
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Kollberg is not only his colleague, but his best friend, a former paratrooper with a sarcastic manner who refuses to carry a gun after, as a young cop, he accidentally shot and killed a fellow policeman. “Imaginative, systematic, and implacably logical” (Murder at the Savoy, 1970), Kollberg has worked with Beck so long that they know each other’s thoughts without talking. There is no one Beck trusts more, and it is reciprocated: “If you weren’t there, God only knows whether I’d stay on the force,” he tells Beck in The Laughing Policeman (1968). Ultimately, even that is not enough. In the second to last novel, Cop Killer (1974), citing the way the police force has changed, he writes a letter of resignation, and in the last book, The Terrorists, the final words are his: “The trouble with you, Martin, is just that you’ve got the wrong job. At the wrong time. In the wrong part of the world. In the wrong system.”
Kollberg’s antagonist on the force is Gunvald Larsson, a bull of a man, lacking in social niceties, impatient with human weakness, and capable of striking terror in criminals and subordinates alike. He is not popular among his colleagues, but when a house explodes in the early pages of The Fire Engine That Disappeared, it is Larsson who singlehandedly saves the lives of eight people: “Blood-stained, soot-streaked, drenched with sweat and his clothes torn, he stood among the hysterical, shocked, screaming, unconscious, weeping and dying people. As if on a battlefield.”
The only colleague that Larsson actually gets along with, even vacations with, though no one knows why, is Einar Rönn, “a mediocre policeman with mediocre imagination and a mediocre sense of humor” (The Man on the Balcony, 1967). He is a very calm person, however, and hard-working, with a simple, straightforward attitude and “no talent for creating problems and difficulties which did not exist” (The Laughing Policeman), which makes him a valuable member of the team.
Another calming detective with his own unique abilities is Fredrik Melander. The veteran of hundreds of difficult cases, he is a very modest man, even dull, who never gets a brilliant idea but does have a remarkable capacity for always being in the toilet when anyone wants to get hold of him. What makes him singularly valuable, though, is his legendary memory: “In the course of a few minutes, Melander could sort out everything of importance he’d ever heard, seen or read about some particular person or some particular subject and then present it clearly and lucidly in narrative form. There wasn’t a computer in the world that could do the same” (The Abominable Man).
Other colleagues come and go, grow, mature, transfer, retire. They even die: Åke Stenström, the youngest on the squad, is murdered in The Laughing Policeman, causing his widow, Åsa Torell, to pick up the torch and become a police officer herself, to notable effect in the later books (and a one-night stand with Beck himself). So does Kurt Kvant. Kvant and Karl Kristiansson are two spectacularly, often hilariously, inept patrolmen—“Kvant almost always reported whatever he happened to see and hear, but he managed to see and hear exceedingly little, Kristiansson was more an out-and-out slacker who simply ignored everything that might cause complications or unnecessary trouble” (The Abominable Man)—who, despite mucking up any crime scene they’re at, manage to be on the spot for some of the most dramatic events and set pieces in the series. Kvant dies in one of them, only to be replaced by Kenneth Kvastmo, just as inept, though a bit more gung-ho.
And then there are the squad’s superiors, always to be viewed with exasperation or dismay: Chief Superintendent Evald Hammar, an inveterate slinger of cliches and truisms, is counting the days until his retirement “and regarded every serious crime of violence as persecution of himself personally” (The Fire Engine That Disappeared); the man who replaces him, Stig Malm, is even worse—rigid, officious, ignorant of practical police work, his rise due solely to political powers-that-be, to whom he is invariably obsequious, even when they kick him in the teeth; and worst of all, the unnamed National Commissioner of Police, a preening speechifyer whose bright ideas, especially those involving excessive force, inevitably end in disaster and fatalities.
The crimes that face all these policemen, both good and bad, range from the smallest—drunks, break-ins, petty larceny—to monumental—mass murder, serial murder, and political assassination. It is here that Sjöwall and Wahlöö demonstrate their plotting prowess in several different ways:
A book begins with a small, eccentric moment that leaps into something much bigger, as when a comedy of bureaucratic buck-passing over the dredging of a canal in Roseanna turns into a worldwide hunt for a sadistic killer;
A storyline that is clearly going in one direction suddenly veers off into something else entirely, catching the reader on the back foot—in The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, Beck is sent to Hungary to search for a missing journalist, but that becomes a plot about international drug-smuggling, and that becomes…well, I won’t tell you.
A book begins slowly, agonizingly, adding small detail upon small detail, building tension as the notes become more and more discordant, and you know that something dreadful is in store and that it is only a matter of time before things explode. The Man on the Balcony is a masterful example of this. For several pages in the very first scene, we’re with a man on his balcony looking out over the city in the early morning: “The man was nondescript and he was dressed in a white shirt with no tie, unpressed brown gabardine trousers, gray socks and black shoes. His hair was thin and brushed straight back, he had a big nose and gray-blue eyes.” The man is smoking—ten butts are already in a saucer—we see street sweepers, pedestrians, a police car glide silently past, there’s the tinkle of a shop window breaking, then running footsteps. A lone figure walks in the distance, perhaps a policeman. An ambulance goes by. Then the door of an apartment building opens, and a little girl comes out. The man on the balcony stands quite still and watches her until she turns the corner, then he drinks a glass of water, sits down, and lights another cigarette.Oh, you know this is going to be bad, don’t you? And it is.
The book opens with exactly the opposite, a shocking set piece and tour de force of mayhem, which then leads into many complicated directions. In The Fire Engine That Disappeared, that would be the exploding house and Larsson’s extraordinary heroism. In The Laughing Policeman, it is the discovery of a busful of machine-gunned passengers.
Two entirely different cases intertwine, seeming to have nothing to do with one another—until they do. In The Locked Room (1972), a task force is trying, not always competently, to solve a rash of bank robberies, while Beck, recovering from a near-fatal wound, is given an abandoned case to keep him occupied, that of a badly decomposed corpse found in a room locked and bolted from the inside. The man died of a gunshot wound, but there is no gun. Watching Beck slowly work out such a classic puzzle during the course of the book is a pure delight. Finding out how it intersects with the other plotline will make you break out into a grin—Sjöwall and Wahlöö have gotten you again.
All of this Sjöwall and Wahlöö limn with impeccable prose—direct, evocative, and effective:
Beck contemplating the details of a case:
“Unpleasant. Very unpleasant. Singularly unpleasant. Damned unpleasant. Blasted unpleasant. Almost painfully so” (The Man Who Went Up in Smoke).
Beck encountering an unlikely counterpart:
“He was a rather young, corpulent man, dressed in a houndstooth-checked suit of modern, youthful cut, a striped shirt, yellow shoes and socks of the same fierce color. His hair was wavy and shiny; he also had an upturned mustache, no doubt waxed and prepared with a mustache form. The man was leaning nonchalantly on the reception desk. He had a flower in his buttonhole and was carrying a copy of Esquire magazine rolled up under his arm.
“He looked like a model out of a discotheque advertisement…
“The secret police were on the scene.” (Murder at the Savoy)
Gunvald Larsson observing anti-assassination security techniques in an unnamed Latin American country:
“The motorcade was moving very quickly. The first of the Security Service cars was already below the balcony. The security expert smiled at Gunvald Larsson, nodded assuring and began to fold up his papers.
“At that moment, the ground opened, almost directly beneath the bulletproof Cadillac.
“The pressure waves flung both men backward, but if Gunvald Larsson was nothing else, he was strong. He grabbed the balustrade with both hands and looked upward.
“The roadway had opened like a volcano from which smoking pillars of fire were rising to a height of a hundred and fifty feet. Atop the flaming pillars were diverse objects. The most prominent were the rear section of the bulletproof Cadillac, an overturned black cab with a blue line along its side, half a horse with black and yellow plumes in the band round its forehead, a leg in a black boot and green uniform material, and an arm with a long cigar between the fingers” (The Terrorists).
And throughout, Sjöwall and Wahlöö keep an unwavering eye on why they created “The Story of a Crime” in the first place—to hold up the crime novel as a mirror to society. Here are only two examples, and they are scorching:
“Stockholm has one of the highest suicide rates in the world—something everyone carefully avoids talking about or which, when put on the spot, they attempt to conceal by means of variously manipulated and untruthful statistics. For some years now, however, not even members of the government had dared to say this aloud or in public, perhaps from the feeling that, in spite of everything, people tend to rely more on the evidence of their own eyes than on political explanations. And if, after all, this should turn out not to be so, it only made the matter still more embarrassing. For the fact of the matter is that the so-called Welfare State abounds with sick, poor, and lonely people, living at best on dog food, who are left uncared for until they waste away and die in their rat-hole apartments. No, this was nothing for the public” (The Locked Room).
From a young woman lost in the cracks, who has committed one last desperate act. “It’s terrible to live in a world where people just tell lies to each other. How can someone who’s a scoundrel and traitor be allowed to make decisions for a whole country? Because that’s what he was. A rotten traitor. Not that I think that whoever takes his place will be any better—I’m not that stupid. But I’d like to show them, all of them who sit there governing and deciding, that they can’t go on cheating people forever. I think lots of people know perfectly well they’re being cheated and betrayed, but most people are too scared or too comfortable to say anything. It doesn’t help to protest or complain, either, because the people in power don’t pay any attention….That’s why I shot him” (The Terrorists).
Phew. So who were Sjöwall and Wahlöö and how did this all come about?
***
Maj Sjöwall was born in Stockholm in 1935. Her father was the manager of a Swedish hotel chain, and she grew up in a top-floor hotel room with round-the-clock room service, a life that she early on came to see as unnaturally privileged. “When I was eleven, I realized that I did not have to live the life my mother had,” she later recalled. The marriage was chilly, and her children unhappy—“I was rather tough. You get tough when you grow up unloved. I had an attitude. I was rather wild.”
At the age of 21, she discovered she was pregnant by a man who had already left her. Refusing the abortion her father insisted on, she accepted the proposal of a family friend twenty years older: “He was nice. I wasn’t very much in love with him, but I admired him.” That did not last. She married again, to another older man—“I think I had a father complex”—who wanted to move her to the suburbs and have more children and—that didn’t work out, either.
Meanwhile, she was making a name for herself as a journalist, art director, and translator for several publications when, a single mother with a six-year-old daughter, she met Per Wahlöö.
Wahlöö, nine years older, was well-known as a journalist covering criminal and social issues, and a committed Marxist, deeply involved in radical political causes, activities that resulted in his being deported from Franco’s Spain (which he no doubt regarded as a badge of honor). He’d also written television and radio plays, as well as several novels dealing with abuses of power and the dark side of society when, working at a magazine in 1962, he met a woman working at another magazine by the same publisher.
The attraction was immediate. “There was a place in town where all the journalists used to go,” she said. “We all went to the same pubs. Then Per and I started to like each other very much, so we started going to other pubs to avoid our friends and be on our own.” He was married, and neither liked the idea of cheating on his wife, but within a year, Per had left her and moved in with Maj and her daughter. Their first son was born nine months later.
It was at one of those pubs that they came up with the idea for the books. They both liked Simenon and Hammett, and realized they could use crime novels to illuminate society from their own point of view. Ten novels, they agreed, thirty chapters each. The first plot came to them on a canal trip from Stockholm to Gothenburg. “There was an American woman on the boat, beautiful, with dark hair, always standing alone,” Sjöwall said. “I caught Per looking at her. ‘Why don’t we start the book by killing this woman?’ I said.”
Seven months of research followed, mapping out the geography, the streets, the distances; taking hundreds of pictures—an accumulation of authentic detail that would characterize every one of their books. “If you read of Martin Beck taking off on a certain flight,” Sjöwall said, “there was that flight, at that time, with those same weather conditions.”
They worked at night, after the children were in bed, at opposite ends of a table in their study, writing in longhand from ten or eleven pm until the children woke up. They had a detailed synopsis in front of them—“If Per started with chapter one, I would write chapter two at the same time”—and the next night they edited and typed the other’s work. “We never talked about the story when we were writing it,” said Sjöwall. “The only things we said were, ‘Pass me the cigarettes’ and ‘It’s your turn to make some tea.’” (“I don’t see how you do it,” an American mystery writer told Wahlöö. “My wife and I can’t even collaborate on boiling an egg.”).
They were very conscious of the style. They didn’t want anything that sounded too much like him or like her—just something that would fit the books and their characters and that would appeal to a large audience.
When the first book, Roseanna, was done, Wahlöö took it to his publisher, telling him, “This is by a friend of mine and I just want to hear what you think.” The publisher wasn’t fooled, liked the book, and struck a deal for all ten of the projected series.
The reviews were mixed for Roseanna. It was considered a bit dark and brutal—“Little old ladies took the books back to the shop,” said Sjöwall, “complaining that they were too awful, too realistic”—and the sales were modest, mainly to young left-wing students. It wasn’t really until the fourth book, The Laughing Policeman, won the Edgar Award for best novel, that the market started to wake up. It was about that time, too, that a review compared them to Ed McBain. In fact, they had never heard of McBain before, but they read some of his books, loved them, and urged their publisher to buy the Swedish rights. He did—and asked if they’d like to do the translations. They ended up translating a dozen of the 87th Precinct novels.
They never got rich from their books. “Back then, no one had an agent,” said Sjöwall, and the royalties were small. “We always had money problems. Sometimes I would lie awake at night wondering how to pay the rent.” Eventually, subsidiary rights—foreign and movie/TV deals—would come in, but most of it was too late for Per Wahlöö.
In 1971, he complained of a swelling, then his doctors said his lungs were filled with water, and eventually they realized his pancreas had burst. He was in and out of hospitals all the time, gradually getting thinner and thinner. In 1975, they rented a bungalow in Malaga, and Wahlöö wrote feverishly on what would become the last book, The Terrorists, doing most of the writing while Sjöwall acted as editor. “Sometimes he would just fall off the chair because he couldn’t write any more. In the morning, the words would be illegible.”
They came home from Spain in March, the book was sent to the printer, and Wahlöö died in June, from a morphine overdose: “Either on purpose or because, you know if it didn’t work he took one more, if that didn’t work he’d take another one. He fell into a coma and never came round.”
He was 48, they had been together 13 years, and never married—“We said, well, obviously marriage is not the thing for us,” she said. “We just knew we really loved each other and loved not having the papers to prove it”—although, apparently, their early publishers billed them as a husband-and-wife team on the book jackets of their English-language editions, to avoid upsetting the sensibilities of those perhaps less liberated than the Swedes.
After Wahlöö’s death, Sjöwall admitted she got “kind of wild for a while. With guys, with pubs,” and then settled down with the kids for a “more bohemian” life. She didn’t mind not having money: “Better free than rich.”
Despite offers to continue the Martin Beck books, she never did, though she did try a couple of other collaborative ventures and happily continued her translations, this time of Robert B Parker’s Spenser series.
She died at the age of 84, on April 29, 2020, in her home on Ven, a small island off the southwestern coast of Sweden. She had no regrets. “This is a part of my life that I didn’t expect,” she said. “I never thought the books would last all my life, or that I’d still be thinking about them after all this time. I think Per would be amazed. I always think of him when we get a prize, or when I have to talk in public. I always think, Per would have loved this.”
At Crimefest 2015 in England, she was the guest of honor, interviewed by Lee Child. When she entered the room, she received a standing ovation.
___________________________________
The Essential Sjöwall and Wahlöö
___________________________________
With any prolific author, readers are likely to have their own particular favorites, which may not be the same as anyone else’s. Your list is likely to be just as good as mine—but here are the ones I recommend.
Roseanna (1965)
“They found the corpse on the eighth of July just after three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Most crimes are a mystery in the beginning,” says the Public Prosecutor at a press conference three days later, but this crime will remain a mystery for far longer than that. The woman’s body lying in the dredger’s bucket is naked, with no jewelry, no identifying characteristics.
“We brought her up eight days ago,” says the local policeman to First Detective Inspector Martin Beck. “We haven’t learned a thing since then. We don’t know who she is, we don’t know the scene of the crime, and we have no suspects. We haven’t found a single thing that could have any real connection with her.”
As the months pass, that’s exactly where things remain, until a chance observation by Beck leads to the first real clue, and then another, and then—to the real enormity of the task in front of them. She was tossed off a tourist boat: “Eighty-five people, one of whom was presumably guilty, and the rest of whom were possible witnesses, each had their small pieces that might fit into the great jigsaw puzzle. Eighty-five people, spread over four different continents. Just to locate them was a Herculean task. He didn’t dare think about the process of getting testimony from all of them and collecting the reports and going through them.”
Yet that is what Beck and his colleagues do, the trail stretching from Ankara to Durban to Copenhagen to Lincoln, Nebraska, the agonizingly slow pace finally quickening, then racing frantically, as it becomes clear who the murderer is—and the drastic measures that will have to be taken to stop him.
The climax to the book is breathtaking, and it shakes Beck to the core. Years later, it will still haunt him. It’ll shake you, too.
The Laughing Policeman (1968)
Stockholm, curtains of rain coming down, and 400 policemen occupied in keeping Vietnam protestors from the American embassy: “The police were equipped with tear gas bombs, pistols, whips, batons, cars, motorcycles, shortwave radios, battery megaphones, riot dogs, and hysterical horses. The demonstrators were armed with a letter and cardboard signs.”
And in another part of the city, somebody boards a red double-decker bus and machine-guns all the passengers.
There is no discernible motive. There is no connection between any of the people on the bus. For weeks, the squad tracks down each victim’s family, friends, and associates, looking for any clues, but always circling back to one victim in particular: a young, ambitious, up-and-coming detective in their own squad named Åke Stenström. Why was he on that bus so late at night? Why was he carrying his service weapon? Why did his fiancé insist that he had been working very long hours, when in fact crime had been slow? Why did Stenström have photos of nude women in his office desk?
And what did all this have to do with a sixteen-year-old cold case, one of the most notorious unsolved murders in Stockholm’s history?
The answers, when they come, will only cause more death. It is a superb police procedural, full of atmosphere, brilliant plotting, and memorable characters, down to the smallest bit players.
The Terrorists (1975)
“Gunvald Larsson ducked as a mass of flammable objects began to rain down on him. He was just thinking about his new suit when something struck him in the chest with great force and hurled him backward onto the marble tiles of the balcony….
“[He] got to his feet, found himself not seriously hurt and looked about to see what it was that had knocked him down. The object lay at his feet. It had a bull neck and a puffy face, and strangely enough, the black enamel steel-framed glasses were still on….
“[He] looked down at his suit. It was ruined. ‘Goddammit,’ he said.
“Then he looked down at the head lying at his feet. ‘Maybe I ought to take it home,’ he said to himself. ‘As a souvenir.’”
International terrorists are at the core of the series’ final volume, and a bad bunch they are, a professional group who work for hire all over the world, the politics irrelevant, their methods carefully planned and varied. It is to guard against their targeting an important U.S. Senator’s visit to Stockholm that Larsson has been sent to Latin America and had his suit ruined, and things will continue to go against plan all the way through the book, not least of all when the self-regarding Eric Möller, head of the Security Police, takes a list prepared by Larsson headed CS, for “Clod Squad,” consisting of those officers who should be allowed nowhere near the assassination detail, and, mistaking it to mean “Commando Section,” places exactly those officers in the most sensitive positions possible.
This is, however, not the only case of importance facing the Homicide Squad. Another concerns the murder of a prominent pornographic film maker, whose favorite m.o. is to get girls hooked on drugs before press-ganging them into his movies. A third case concerns a naïve young woman who thought she could get money from a bank just by going into any one of them and asking for it, which sets off a chain reaction of event that ends up with her on trial for armed robbery. Thanks to a capable court-appointed lawyer and the help of Martin Beck, she is set free, only to tumble quickly down the rabbit hole of the social welfare system, to cataclysmic and tragic effect.
Who are the terrorists in the book? They are everywhere, destroying the innocent and the guilty alike.
A towering achievement, and a fitting end to an extraordinary series.
___________________________________
Movie and Television Bonus
___________________________________
All of the Martin Beck books have been made into movies, some more than once, mostly in Swedish, but also Danish and Hungarian (starring Derek Jacobi!). They also served as a basis for a Swedish television series that ran for a remarkable 18 years, some of which ran on the BBC in 2015, with subtitles. All ten books also received radio dramatizations on BBC Radio 4 in 2012-2013.
The only English language film ever made was The Laughing Policeman in 1973. It was set in San Francisco and starred Walter Matthau as “Jake Martin” and Bruce Dern as “Leo Larson.” It’s a gritty movie, appropriately gloomy, and is, one might say, “loosely adapted” from the book, though some of the bones remain: the bus massacre, the dead detective, the cold case.
Whenever one of my authors got a movie deal, I always told them just to cash the check, but that if, against all the odds, it actually got made, they should just go to the theater, buy some popcorn, and pretend it was made from someone else’s book entirely. If Sjöwall and Wahlöö ever saw this one, I hope they followed that advice.
___________________________________
Book Bonus
___________________________________
As noted before, after Wahlöö’s death, Sjöwall twice collaborated with other writers on books: in 1989, with Bjarne Nielsen, on Dansk Intermezzo, and in 1990, with Dutch writer Tomas Ross, on The Woman Who Resembled Greta Garbo. The latter was about a visiting governmental minister who turns on a porn movie in his Stockholm hotel, and sees his own daughter. To my knowledge, neither book made much of a splash.
Per Wahlöö wrote eight other, most of them novels before he started with Sjöwall: The Chief (1959), The Wind and Rain (1961), A Necessary Action (1962), The Assignment (1963), Murder on the Thirty-First Floor (1963), No Roses Grow on Odenplan (1964), The Generals (1965), and The Steel Spring (1968). These were mainly suspense novels, sometimes set in the near future, about coups, assassinations, social malaise, and politics, and some of them are still available today in English translations.
___________________________________
American Crime Bonus
___________________________________
Fredrik Melander perusing the report on the bus massacre:
“’We have no Swedish precedents….Unlike us, the American psychologists have no lack of material to write on. The compendium here mentions the Boston strangler; Speck, who murdered eight nurses in Chicago; Whitman, who killed sixteen persons from a tower and wounded many more; Unruh, who rushed out onto a street in New Jersey and shot thirteen people dead in twelve minutes; and one or two more whom you’ve probably read about before.’
“’Mass murder seems to be an American specialty,’ Gunvald Larsson said….
“’I read somewhere that out of every thousand Americans, one or two are potential murderers,’ Kollberg said. ‘Though don’t ask me how they arrived at that conclusion.’
“’Market research,’ Gunvald Larsson said. ‘It’s another American specialty. They go around from house to house asking people if they could imagine themselves committing a mass murder. Two in a thousand say, ‘Oh yes, that would be nice.’”
The Laughing Policeman
Three policemen puzzle over the small caliber of the bullet used to kill industrialist Viktor Palmgren:
“’A .22,’ Melander said thoughtfully. ‘That seems strange….Who the hell tries to kill somebody with a .22?’
“Martin Beck cleared his throat….’In America it’s almost considered proof that the gunman is a real craftsman,’ he said. ‘A kind of snobbishness. It shows the murderer is a real pro and doesn’t bother to use more than what’s absolutely necessary.’
“’Malmö isn’t Chicago,’ Mansson said laconically.
“’Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy with an Iver Johnson .22,’ said Skacke, who was hanging around in the background.
“’That’s right,’ Martin Beck said, ‘but he was desperate and emptied the whole magazine. Fired like crazy all over the place.’
“’He was an amateur, anyway,’ Skacke said.”
___________________________________
Title Bonus
___________________________________
In Murder at the Savoy, the above Viktor Palmgren is shot in the back of the head while speaking to some dinner companions, and falls face first into his dinner, comprised of “crenelated mashed potatoes around an exquisite fish casserole a la Frans Suell.”
Happening to look at the copyright page, I noticed that the Swedish title of the book was Polis, Polis, Potatismos! Surely, that couldn’t be…I thought, and put it into Google Translate.
Sure enough, the original title of Book Six of “The Story of a Crime” was: Police, Police, Mashed Potatoes!
___________________________________
A Policeman’s Lot Bonus
___________________________________
“Being a policeman is not a profession. And it’s not a vocation, either. It’s a curse.”
Sjöwall and Wahlöö, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke
“Why the hell would anyone ever choose police work as his profession, he wondered.”
Ed McBain, ‘Til Death
“When constabulary duty’s to be done, to be done,
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.” | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 12 | https://saturdayreader.wordpress.com/2018/09/01/the-abominable-man-and-the-locked-room-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | en | “The Abominable Man” and “The Locked Room” by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö | [
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] | null | [] | 2018-09-01T00:00:00 | Why would a pair of Communist Party members choose to write a book with a policeman as protagonist? Maj Sjöwall has explained that she and Per Wahlöö began writing a series of crime novels because "we wanted to describe society from our left point of view. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies.… | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | The Saturday Reader | https://saturdayreader.wordpress.com/2018/09/01/the-abominable-man-and-the-locked-room-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | Why would a pair of Communist Party members choose to write a book with a policeman as protagonist? Maj Sjöwall has explained that she and Per Wahlöö began writing a series of crime novels because “we wanted to describe society from our left point of view. Per had written political books, but they’d only sold 300 copies. We realized that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality.”
In The Abominable Man, Sjöwall (who now says she identifies as a Socialist) and the late Wahlöö for the first time in their series present a truly unflinching look at what happens to a society when the police are allowed to basically get away with anything. The novel, which was originally published in 1971, will seem eerily timely to anyone who’s aware of the many well-known cases here in the U.S. where police have not been held accountable for killing civilians. After a police captain is murdered in a particularly grisly fashion, Martin Beck and a colleague sift through a stack of complaints alleging police brutality that had been submitted to Stockholm’s Justice Department Ombudsman. All of them yielded the same results: “Inspector Nyman dismisses the suggestion that he or anyone else mistreated the complainant… No action.”
If one of those complainants decided to take matters into their own hands and enact some vigilante justice, there are a lot of suspects to choose from, since Nyman was known to be a violent bully. Martin Beck’s friend and fellow policeman Kollberg, who knew Nyman when they both served in the army, tells Beck that “he’s probably committed hundreds of outrages of one kind or another. Toward subordinates and toward arrestees. I’ve heard various stories over the years… A man like Nyman always sees to it that there are policemen ready to take an oath that he hasn’t done anything… the kind of men who are already so indoctrinated they figure they’re only doing what loyalty demands.”
Kollberg, who refuses to carry a gun, has already begun to express doubts about continuing to serve on the force, but Martin Beck finds himself confronting certain truths about his job for the first time in this book. A report on the comparative dangers of police work versus other professions revealed that “police work wasn’t a bit more dangerous than any other profession… The number of injured policeman was negligible when compared with the number of people annually mistreated by the police.” (Construction workers, lumberjacks and taxi drivers are all jobs cited by the authors, and almost 50 years later, statistics bear out that people who work in those professions are still in more danger of dying on the job than police.)
Lest you fear that The Abominable Man is a dull bit of leftist anti-police propaganda, be assured that it’s one of the most pulse-pounding entries in the series, climaxing with a thrilling confrontation with an armed and dangerous man intent on revenge. And the authors don’t shy away from describing the loneliness, long hours and threats from hostile members of the public that police officers confront. Sjöwall and Wahlöö always wrote with great compassion about police and civilians alike.
The Locked Room continues the authors’ critique of Swedish society and the police force, as well as presenting a pair of “impossible” mysteries that hearken back to the Golden Age: a locked-room murder and a bank robbery where the witnesses’ accounts are all completely different. Martin Beck is back on the job after taking some time off to recover from injuries sustained in The Abominable Man. He now suffers from recurring nightmares and has been told by his doctors to quit smoking (the horror!). The mysterious death of Karl Svärd—“a most interesting case,” says Kollberg—is presented to Beck as something he can mull over in his spare time. Svärd was found dead in his apartment, with the windows shut and numerous bolts and locks secured from the inside; it took overwhelming force for the police to gain access. He had been shot, so one would think it was a suicide, but no gun was found on the premises.
The other case involves a bank robbery where a customer was murdered by the gun-wielding perpetrator during the course of the crime. Witnesses say the robber was definitely a woman—unless it was a man in a wig. And she definitely escaped in a car—unless she got away on foot. The police have very little to go on, and meanwhile, Stockholm banks are under siege. “A year ago there had been a drive against people passing bad checks… The National Police Board objected to checks being accepted as legal tender,” and the resulting influx of cash led to bank robberies, muggings and assaults. (It’s true that Sweden got rid of personal checks many years ago, but now they’ve gotten rid of cash, too.)
The Locked Room is one of the longer books in the series and it’s pretty heavy on the anti-capitalist and anti-police rhetoric. Also, it seems like most of the Martin Beck books contain at least one reference to poor pensioners having to eat cat food to get by. Was this ever really a thing? I don’t doubt that there are still struggling seniors in Sweden, but my research into this (i.e. 10 minutes of Googling variations on pensionärer + kattmat) seems to indicate that it was something of a myth.
As always, things are changing in Stockholm, and not for the better; the new National Police Board building is under construction, and “from this ultramodern colossus… the police would extend their tentacles in every direction and hold the dispirited citizens of Sweden in an iron grip. At least some of them. After all, they couldn’t all emigrate or commit suicide.” But as the two investigations progress, some unexpected rays of sunshine emerge in Martin Beck’s life, providing an unexpected tinge of optimism as we head into the final two books of the series. Will Sjöwall and Wahlöö give their protagonist a few hard-won moments of joy? Considering that the title of the next book is Cop Killer, I’m not holding my breath. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 47 | https://smithereens.wordpress.com/category/swedish-writers/ | en | Swedish writers | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/82209b3042b68b8e8a20a3b70e143e7c8b6a8e6d7e1a6e2bd81b5d245727512f?s=200&ts=1723901417 | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/82209b3042b68b8e8a20a3b70e143e7c8b6a8e6d7e1a6e2bd81b5d245727512f?s=200&ts=1723901417 | [
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] | null | [] | 2024-03-05T17:32:25+01:00 | Posts about Swedish writers written by S | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/82209b3042b68b8e8a20a3b70e143e7c8b6a8e6d7e1a6e2bd81b5d245727512f?s=32 | Smithereens | https://smithereens.wordpress.com/category/swedish-writers/ | This book is set in 1880s Sweden and follows 12-year-old Mika as she goes about her chores and minds other kids at the Public orphanage. Her life is difficult, but she grows worried when some kids are starting to behave suspiciously, and then altogether disappear. Something is not right: she suspects they have skipped school and run away to become pickpockets. But as Mika starts to investigate, with a little help from an old friend from the police force, she soon finds herself in deep trouble.
I knew from Netgalley that this is the second installment of a middle-grade historical series, but it didn’t stop me from enjoying it tremendously! For sure I would have liked it even more if I’d read the first one but I could understand most of it. The pace was good and the setting in 19th century Sweden kept me interested all the way. I found Mika very likeable, and also believable, even when the adventures were really stretching credibility. Mika is a mature 12-year-old, no doubt wise beyond her years because of the hardships, and she has a sense of duty and integrity. There’s a very nice balance between being hopeful to improve her life condition and that of her friends and doing the right thing in difficult circumstances.
The book gets a little dark at times and so I would probably recommend it for older middle school kids. There are elements of suspense around Mika’s origin story, and I would love to follow her in the next adventure!
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley. I received a free copy of this book for review consideration.
And so it comes to an end… I wanted to complete it before the end of 2021 and so I did. Still, there’s something bittersweet to know that there won’t be another Martin Beck book after this one. It took me 11 years, one more than it took to t Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö to write it (and yes, I know now how to write their names without hesitation!) The characters grew on me, as they have grown on each other. I missed Lennart Kollberg in this book probably as much as Martin Beck (he retired, disgusted by the police as an institution). I loved seeing Rhea Nielsen and her relationship to Martin Beck blossom. Martin Beck says in this book that he’d needed 5 years to get to know Gunvald Larsson and 5 years to understand how he things, and that maybe they would be friends in another 5 years – and I do feel the same. Gunvald Larsson felt like an insufferable prick in previous episodes, and this one shows how brave and dedicated he actually is.
The main thesis (not even thinly veiled here) is that Sweden is in a state of moral decadence, that capitalism has created violence, greed, promoted incompetence and destroyed the sense of community. Of course, the 1970s were a dark decade. Indeed morale was low after the idealistic communist-utopia-fueled youth riots of the late 1960s. But were they as bad? (Ahem, I feel that it actually got much worse in the 1980s). Were Sjöwall and Wahlöö right to judge their country so harshly at that point of history? I can’t tell, but here in Europe Sweden has always been envied for its social-democrat, egalitarian and caring social system. Scandinavian countries are supposed to be fairer, moderate and more reasonable than southern states, and the plot of this book (as the rest of the series, and many Scandi-noir novels after that) is in stark contradiction with this image. Perhaps it’s because of the high expectation and the subsequent disillusion that the authors are so melancholy at the end of the book. It famously ends with the sentence “X like Karl Marx” (My translation from the French version). But when you know the state of the USSR in the 1970s…
I could write several posts about the story itself. There are a major plot involving terrorists (not the communist-inspired of the 1970s, but more like ultra-reactionary mercenaries sent across the globe to spark unrest and kill blindly – contrary to our modern Isis and Bataclan killers they strike terror by being ultra efficient and also totally devoid of ideology or religion), and two subplots highlighting how Swedish institutions fail the weak and the young. Contrary to normal procedurals, a lot of the book is spent preparing and trying to foil a future terrorists attack, and things don’t turn as expected. I kind of regret reading the book out of order, because to me this novel seems the logic continuation of #8 The Abominable Man, but #9 Cop Killer is a bit fuzzy in my mind. Time for a re-read perhaps?
Although this one is #7 in the series (of 10), this is my penultimate book (as I didn’t read it in order, but in function of what was at the library). Strangely enough, the library doesn’t have the whole series, and they might have been scared by such an abominable title. (or by the book cover). Another version would be that it was so good that a reader stole the library copy. Whatever the version I choose, I’m glad I have bought this copy, because it’s quite memorable.
The Abominable Man (in Swedish version The repulsive man from Saffle) is not the killer. It’s actually the victim. A man is killed with a bayonet as he lies defenseless in a hospital bed. He was a high-ranking policeman and a former soldier. But don’t cry for him just yet. As Martin Beck and his team investigate, they discover that this man was the epitome of police brutality. By his negligence, prejudices, direct or indirect actions, he’s responsible for the death of several innocent people and the harassment and unfair indictment of countless others. In short, he won’t be missed much and it’s rather difficult to narrow down a list of suspects. To make it even more relevant to some recent cases in the media, a lot of people among the police force were aware of his cruelty and abuses, and they all kept silent.
Contrary to several books of the series, where the crime is rather banal and the investigation is long and tedious, this book is flashy and cinematic. The killer with the bayonet will not stop just with one victim, his despair and hatred have turned against the whole police force and he’s not afraid to die. It’s a tragedy of epic dimensions, and the humor of the previous volumes is scarce. The denunciation of the systemic corruption of capitalist (patriarchy, conservative, insert any of the more current vocabulary) Swedish society gets more obvious, but never at the cost of forgetting the human dimension. That’s why Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s books are still so relevant today.
The book is so full of tension, it’s hard to stop reading, especially the last quarter of the book. There’s a rampage of violence, with a single man on one hand, and the entire Swedish armed forces on the other hand. The cliff-hanger is absolutely nail-biting, but I spoiled it a bit for myself by having read book #8 before. Don’t make the same mistake!
In a twisted way, it reminded me of a classic 1975 French movie with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Peur sur la ville (The Night Caller in UK/US), where the whole of the police force is hunting a cunning killer throughout a dehumanized landscape of modern towers, but in many important ways the movie and this book are polar opposites. In the movie, no soul-searching about the systemic violence of the police, no social criticism, but instead a not-so-subtle manly man demonstration of force to protect weak single women from evil killers who certainly aren’t worth a fair trial, and barely the bullet of the good detective’s gun. Unless you’re interested in cultural movie history, don’t bother watching this dud, but I guess the relentless movie music by Enio Morricone would be the perfect soundtrack for the Sjöwall & Wahlöö book.
We’re now in December, and only one last book left in the series to complete! I can’t wait!
And so, to make things a bit more interesting, I decided to complete the Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö novels by the end of 2021. Because it feels great to check some goals off and, quite frankly, this one seems a lot more reachable than others I had in my 2021 list (hello, mastering basic Korean verbs! Realistically, you will probably remain as mysterious as you were on Jan. 1)
This book is in the middle of the series (#6 out of 10), and the themes and characters are by now well established. The random violence, the strong of location (here in Malmö), the social injustice, the fastidious and methodical investigation, the mistakes and length of the search for clues. There are as in some other books an element of comic, slapsticks even, as stupid policemen get bogged down by procedure. The original title of the book refers, if I understand well, to a common insult against Swedish policemen who are compared with potatoes. This comes up a few times in the novel and contrast with the upper class delicacies that hotel guests eat at the Savoy, including Martin Beck himself.
American readers may be surprised how Swedes seem to take a relaxed approach to sex. The victim’s young and beautiful widow enjoys summer sun in the nude (with her lover), and finds nothing embarrassing when the inspector arrives to ask questions, and Beck has sex with a young colleague, but no strings attached. I can’t say if it’s Sweden, 1969, or if Sjöwall and Wahlöö meant something political by it.
Just as in Roseanna, luck and unluck play a part in the investigation, but in the end, Beck is more depressed than satisfied by having brought a criminal to justice. Compared with my last read of them, The man on the balcony, this one is a lot less tense, one might even say hysterical, as the crime itself is less showy, and we feel that nobody really feels sorry for the victim. But the book is still a solid mystery, and I can’t wait for the next one, which I already downloaded on my Kindle.
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, The Man on the Balcony (1967)
It was only one month ago that I finished reading #8 in the series and that I resolved to be more intentional if I wanted to complete the whole series. And I do want it very much! (all the more as the last series I’d completed was not a huge success, in a whole other genre). But within a few weeks, what a change of tone! The book I read in March was a lot of fun with literally LOL moments, this one is chilling and rather stark.
The book starts with a daily, ordinary scene in Stockholm. While people go about their daily business and kids go out to school or to the park, a man just looks down at the street from his balcony. Nothing more. But as we know we’re reading a police investigation, we just wonder where the blow will come from and expect the worse from any ordinary character.
And so we should. In this rather short book, Beck and his colleagues are confronted with a senseless murder and no clues whatsoever. Someone has attacked, raped and murdered a little girl in a park, and nothing can point to the murderer. The police are clueless and can only resort to the feeblest attempts by rounding up the usual suspects, by making more rounds in the various parks of the city, but they’re really looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. The worst is that police can only secretly hope that there will be another murder to find more clues. Martin Beck’s colleagues, who seemed so stupid and grotesque in the book I read before (and which is a later installment of the series), are now tragic figures who are all too aware of their powerlessness. They sift through telephone calls in search for the tiniest clue, and we witness how ungrateful this effort is and how little it yields. Just like Roseanna which I read many years ago, the resolution will come by a combination of sheer luck and good memory. Which is not very comforting.
This book, which is rather early in the series, is less politically-heavy handed than the later ones and it was nice. The authors clearly want to denounce the Swedish society from the 1960s where people live in anonymous large buildings without knowing, or caring for their neighbors, and where petty crime is growing. But to me people in this book, besides the tension created by the plot itself, seemed rather carefree and reasonably content. Is it the Swedish character? I’m not sure, but I look forward to reading the rest of the remaining books.
Major Sjöwall and Per Wahloo, The Locked Room (Swedish, 1972)
The last time I read one of these Swedish mysteries was in 2019. In fact, it seems that I need to wait 2 years or more before getting to another one in this series, which is probably not the most efficient way to do it. But who says reading has to be efficient? This leisurely pace really suits me, as my memory gets a bit blurry, but I still feel as if I am meeting old friends again. And as always, I don’t read it in order, as I depend on which volume is available at my local library. This time, I was in the mood for a locked room mystery (having recently watched with the kids The Mystery of the Yellow Room, inspired by the Gaston Leroux novel) and the book was perfect.
If I try to be a bit more systematic with the poor detective inspector Beck who is nothing if not methodical, persistent and logical, I have to conclude that I have read more than half of the books in the series, beginning by Roseanna (1965) and The Man who went up in smoke (1966) read in 2010 (back when I still read books in order, or maybe it was sheer luck), then in 2013 I moved to #4: The Laughing Policeman (1968). Then 4 more years passed before I started again, this time with Cop Killer (1974), which is the penultimate one. Then in 2019 I moved back to the #5 The Fire Engine that Disappeared (1969). And now The Locked room (1972) which is #8.
Have I ruined any pretense of being orderly? Is it enough to make your head spin? I’m only missing #3 (because there’s a child killer), #6 and #7 and #10. Mmmh… Which means that I probably shouldn’t count on luck only to help me find the ones I haven’t read yet.
The best thing about this book is that it made me laugh out loud. Yes! (even in Covid year!) I had called these detective stories gloomy, terse, depressing and painstaking. I remembered I loved them, but I didn’t remember how much fun they really were. In this book, the Swedish police force is mobilized against a series of bank robberies. As always with Sjöwall and Wahlöö, there is always a strong social(ist) commentary that condemns the anti-democratic tendencies of the police and how desperate the social and political situation is. But at the same time, those policemen are real clowns! They are both full of themselves and stupid, a combination that ensures that they are always too slow to catch the robbers. There’s a scene of pure slapsticks where a whole policemen squad ends up injured and almost dead in an empty flat, by a combination of ineptitude and bad luck.
On the other hand, Martin Beck is patient and perceptive. He has survived an almost fatal injury (which I don’t know much about as I haven’t read the previous book), and as he’s returning to his job, he’s given an obscure case to get back on his feet. An old man found dead, shot by a gun, in a locked flat, with doors and windows all closed. No gun on the premises, but by the fault of policemen’s ineptitude, it was first ruled as a suicide. Beck is the opposite of all his colleagues. He doesn’t jump on conclusions, he doesn’t hurry to arrest anyone, he’s polite and patient. The ending of the book really questions what is real justice.
Also, as I had remembered how Beck was stuck in an unhappy marriage, it made me really happy that he seemed to find a nice girlfriend. Don’t you see how I feel Beck was an old friend I was seeing from time to time? I really wish his new relationship will work out. Well, we’ll see, probably in a year or two…
The Fire Engine That Disappeared by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (Swedish, 1969)
After reading some Maigret in December, I decided that classic noirs and old police procedurals are totally worth returning to at regular intervals. And It was waaay too long since I’d read a Martin Beck police mystery. Fall of 2017, to be exact (thank you, blog archives!).
So as soon as 2019 rolled in, I reconnected with the Swedish police force, and it was as if not a day had passed since I’d left them. Beck is still at odds with his wife (and brother-in-law). Kollberg is still his grumpy old self. Melander is brilliant but boring. Gunvald Larsson is an unlikely hero. And there’s a newbie, a rookie policeman who is hilariously ambitious and clumsy (a dangerous combination).
I had forgotten how funny these books are. I mean, seriously laugh out loud funny, with just a few words for a full effect. People are so real, in their petty concerns, wishing for the weekend, hating the cold weather, bad-mouthing the colleagues… By any standards people are not very expansive and prone to emotional outpours but it delivers a punch. They do have a life beside the office, and in part because of that, and also because life is complicated, investigations often progress at snail pace, which is way more realistic than the 50 minutes open-and-shut cases of SVU and CSI. These books are not for hurried readers who want cheap thrill and twists in each page, but if you’re good with that, it is a real treat.
The fire engine that disappeared is a tongue-in-cheek title, because the story starts with an explosion, that could be arson, or murder, or suicide, or plain accident, and it takes a long time to settle between these possibilities. The fire engine that would have extinguished the fire took a very long time coming (yes, things don’t run as smoothly in Stockholm as the ideal country of hygge would have us think). There actually is a toy fire engine that gets lost in the story too, and this mystery too gets resolved in the end.
Viveca Sten, Closed Circles (Sandhamn #2; Swedish 2009, English 2016)
This one is a thick (454p) trade paperback offered by Dear Mr. Smithereens on Mother’s Day. Let’s just say that this one is not really a keeper (the book of course! Not the hubby! Darling do keep on getting me new crime novels, I love you!)
This is a Swedish cosy mystery (by which I mean that the level of violence is very light, and at any rate inferior to the level of violence and exasperation that I felt reading it), but technically it might qualify as a police investigation. The victim is a rich lawyer and the next president of the Royal Swedish Yacht Club. The killer has to be one of the many people attending a regatta close to Sandhamn Island. Pick you choice.
Aside from pushing me to check on Sandhamn exquisite holiday homes for the wealthy Swedish (red-painted bungalows! breathtaking seaviews!), this book didn’t work for me (perhaps a photo version would work better). The Swedish reputation for very noir, gritty, scary mysteries is not really upheld here. Viveca Sten is no Camilla Läckberg, Jo Nesbo or Henning Mankell. I mean, I don’t need gory crime scenes at all costs, but it wasn’t what I expected. It didn’t help that I guessed the killer halfway through. The red herring was so fat it was practically Moby Dick.
I wasn’t expecting a Pulitzer, but the writing itself grated on my nerves. I don’t know if the translator (Laura A. Wideburg) remained true to the original but the sentences are all very short and spare, and no chapter is longer than 3 pages (which explains why there are 90+ of them). It feels like a book made of blog posts, not a true novel.
Well, at least I could add Sandhamn as a new dream destination for summer holidays (given the price tag, it’s just a fantasy), so not all is lost! And given that plenty of Goodreads reviews are 5 stars, you can still give it a try, it’s the perfect season for a regatta…
Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, Cop Killer (Swedish 1974)
Part of the fun to decide to read another Martin Beck police investigation is to search through the library shelves and try to remember how exactly both names of the writers are spelled. In my head, they are Maj and Per, which doesn’t exactly help. And you can’t really get help from the librarian if you don’t know how to pronounce them, right?
This one is Martin Beck’s ninth book, and they can be read out of order, but it’s probably best not to start with this one, because one can witness the trajectory of Martin Beck’s mood and beliefs from the beginning in the sixties to this one in the mid-seventies. In short, it’s not a spoiler to say that it doesn’t get better. Also, it’s better to have read Roseanna before, because one of the suspects of this investigation is a character from the first novel in the series.
If I was dealing with real people and if being gloomy was not part of the gumshoe’s and detective’s cliché image, I would be tempted to suggest a strong dose of Prozac to Beck and his close colleagues. Sjöwall & Wahlöö are part of the tradition that uses the conventions of the police procedural to denounce everything that goes wrong in society: miscarriages of justice, hasty judgments, unregulated use of violence by the police force, but also a country where young people struggle to find a right place, where they don’t find jobs and don’t find meaning in the jobs they may find. A country where press and politicians manipulate the news (has anything changed since?). 1974 is a time when young Swedish people are disenchanted, and except for smoking dope and having long hair, Swedish policemen such as Beck and Kollberg are just as disenchanted as they are. 1974 is the year heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped, the year Abba released Waterloo and when lots of bombings by extremists and the economic crisis worried people all over the world. The 1970s were dark and bleak and the book does reflect this mood.
Reading a Maj & Per book is not about big twists and big shockers, it’s about the work and the time policemen put in to find a killer, often without much recognition. Only dogged determination, and a part of chance too. The pace is slow and it takes more than half the book to understand why the book is titled Cop Killer, but I promise, this is all worth it.
Johanna Thydell, I taket lyser stjärnorna (Swedish 2003); In the Ceiling the Stars Are Shining (French 2010)
I continue my investigation of the YA / Middle Grade shelves at the library, and I took this one home because I wanted to try another Scandinavian novel.
Yes, I readily acknowledge that this is very vague. And probably unsatisfactory to you. There was the nice cover art (I’m sort of partial, and I hate to be). There was the glowing blurbs and the fact that the book won a national prize for YA literature in Sweden. There was also the French publisher, Thierry Magnier, that regularly publishes very intriguing YA books.
Yet as I came home and started reading, I had to wonder how come I was spending hours of my limited free time reading about a Swedish 13-year-old middle-school girl whose mother was dying of breast cancer. This is no fun.
No fun to Jenna indeed, who is having all these very normal qualms about boys, BFFs, body changes, curfew, getting invited to parties, possible alcohol drinking, possible kissing and generally growing up and becoming a young woman. All that, while her mother is getting weaker and weaker and spending more and more time in hospitals. Jenna’s mother is a single parent, which means that Jenna’s grandparents come over and start taking care of her, which is all the more difficult for her to accept.
Despite the difficult subject (things don’t magically go better, this is no spoiler), Thydell has managed to hook me and I read the whole book in a few sittings. I bet teenagers will cry buckets over it. As an adult and a mother, it was also heartbreaking to read because of course I couldn’t help but identify with Jenna’s mother.
What is the magic formula that Scandinavian writers have to pull us readers in, although I have never set a foot in Sweden? Is it the relatability? The tell-it-like-it-is approach, the one that pulls no punches? The simplicity that makes it universal? (I’m not approaching the Ikea cliché, no I won’t). Is it the noticeable absence of prudish tiptoeing around issues like sex, death, religion and body? I’m sure there must be some characteristics of Swedish culture that are very specific, exotic and not understandable to me, but this book spoke to me and made me see life through Jenna’s eyes without filter nor distance. Which is a testament to the quality of the book, and made it totally worthwhile. | ||
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Publication Order of Martin Beck Books
By: Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö
Maj Sjöwall is a Swedish interpreter and creative writer. She is best known for the joint work with her collaborator Per Wahlöö on a progression of ten books about the adventures of Martin Beck, a cop analyst in Stockholm. In 1971, the fourth of these books, The Laughing Policeman (an interpretation of Den skrattande polisen, initially distributed in 1968) won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Novel. They likewise composed books independently. Sjöwall had a 13-year association with Wahlöö which kept going until his demise in 1975.
We shall review this author’s most read books in this article.
Roseanna #1 Martin Beck Police Mystery
The breathtaking first novel in the Martin Beck series by the world recognized prestigious crime author Maj Sjöwall, details Beck chasing for the killer of a lonely explorer. On a July evening, a young lady’s body is dug from Sweden’s delightful Lake Vattern. Without any hints, Beck starts an examination to find the murderer as well as to find who the casualty was. After three months, all Beck knows is that her name was Roseanna and that she could have been choked by any of eighty-five individuals on a trip. As the melancholic Beck limits the rundown of suspects, he is attracted progressively to the puzzler of the casualty, a free-energetic traveler with an affinity for easygoing sex, and to the psychopathology of a killer with an unmistakable – to be sure, frightening – feeling of respectability.
The Swedish analyst Martin Beck is unassuming. He comes down with high instinctive level like an influenza bug, drinking coffee, feeling quite debilitated, yet he drinks it, and riding the metro makes him queasy, but he needs to ride it. When he isn’t drained, he is weary very nearly depressed. He works unusually long hours for a mix of reasons mostly that he is engrossed in his cases and his marriage is rocky. He wedded the lady that he needed for the most part since she was upbeat, an antitoxin to his miserable nature. When she had children, similar to what occurs with a great many people, she changed. It leaves one wondering whether men or ladies are crazier. The notion that ladies that wed men hoping to transform them, or men that marry ladies, assuming they will remain the same.
At the point when Beck is home, he takes a shot at a model ship enabling his brain to openly wander over his caseload. His children are merely foundation clamor for his life. He doesn’t appear to be keen on them. They are only indications to the ailment of his fizzled marriage.
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke #2 Martin Beck Police Mystery
Police analyst Martin Beck joins his family during the midyear season, yet gets back to work before he even has sufficient energy to acquire a beautiful sunburn. A writer named Alf Matsson has vanished while on an assignment in Budapest and with the daily paper he worked for debilitating to cause a political fuss, the Swedish government calls on Beck to find Mr. Matsson. Beck flies to Hungary in a book written way back in the sixties, and Beck has no official status as he tries to find Matsson.
Unlike The Cold War Era in America, we see a Western European cop going into the Eastern bloc policing politics investigations under an unforgiving communist state while managing unfriendly Hungarian police. In any case, the Budapest described in the novel appears like a real get-away spot, and the cops are gracious and genuinely accommodating to Beck. It was a decent surprise. This was a higher amount of cop-out-of-his-element kind of narrative instead of a story with political/trick hints.
This installment gets a considerable measure of glory for being among the first police procedurals, and it’s anything but awkward to see the impact they had on the series. Val McDermid has an awesome presentation in this release; he discusses how pivotal the books were at the time and what number of the mechanisms acquainted in them went ahead with a move toward becoming clichés. Tragically, this edition has adapted to a beautiful writing style enough to empower one to figure the answer to the mystery about mid-way through the book.
Beck’s feelings and thoughts are explained using his actions and not work or discourse. There are a few indications that his marriage isn’t going so well and you get the inclination that he respects the opportunity to make tracks in the opposite direction from a family get-away. However, it’s never communicated doubtlessly. The way we just know Beck through his approach to his police work helps considerably to remember the early Matt Scudder books by Lawrence Block. Great read!
The Laughing Policeman #4 Martin Beck Police Mystery
This book rotates around two of the criminologists: Lennart Kollberg and Åke Stenström. The central puzzle of the book is the shooting of Stenström and seven others on a double-decker bus on the edge of Stockholm and Solna. Nobody has any thought what Stenström is doing on the bus, and the chase for a mass killer in 1968 Sweden is every one of the somewhat dreamlike to the criminologists who expect that sort of thing in Vietnam war-torn USA, however not late-sixties Sweden.
The examination (refreshingly deprived of the “cop executioner” chest beating we’ve expected from our police procedurals) dives profound into the life of Stenström, endeavoring to make sense of what made him hop on that bus in the first place. We meet his better half and future cop Åsa Torell; we find their sexual proclivities, Stenström’s affection for firearms, and his grandiose aspirations.
It is Kollberg who does the majority of the work on this front, become a close confrère with Åsa Torell after Stenström’s demise and going so far as to welcome her to remain with him, his significant other, Gun, and their infant (just a single now) for some time. We find considerably more about Kollberg’s Socialist political issues, his repulse for weapons, his and Gun’s sexual inclinations, and that he is a damn smart investigator. No big surprise he and Beck get along so well.
The Kollberg and Stenström stuff is precisely the sort of things I cherish. Becoming more conversant with characters amidst whatever it is they do. In any case, what Kollberg should do, alongside Beck and Melander, Larsson and Rönn, is finding a serial mass killer. Furthermore, that piece of the story is as fulfilling as it can be. If you revere mystery books, and if you’re even somewhat keen on Swedish crime fiction, you will love this book.
Book Series In Order » Characters » Martin Beck
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] | null | [] | 2014-06-25T00:00:00 | ~post by Molly As Scandinavian detective fiction has exploded onto the international scene over the last twenty years, it is sometimes easy to forget that the genre has been experiencing international renown since the late 1960s. With so much attention paid to contemporary authors, it is time to contextualize the recent history of Scandinavian detective… | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | https://mysterypeople.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/international-crime-month-maj-sjowall-per-wahloo/ | ~post by Molly
As Scandinavian detective fiction has exploded onto the international scene over the last twenty years, it is sometimes easy to forget that the genre has been experiencing international renown since the late 1960s. With so much attention paid to contemporary authors, it is time to contextualize the recent history of Scandinavian detective fiction in terms of the region’s most classic crime writers, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.
These two authors, over the course of ten years and ten novels, single handedly created the modern police procedural. Their oeuvre has been the model for Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, and pretty much every detective show on television. Their cast of detectives, cantankerous, flawed, and with all the personality clashes of long-time coworkers, have become the template for cop dramas at home and abroad. Their detective, Martin Beck, has been played by Walter Mathau, which by itself indicates their commitment to portraying the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Their story, too, has been the model for many an author’s journey. The two began in investigative journalism and from there decided to put political opinions to paper in a popular and accessible format. Inspired by the social criticism in such authors as Dashiell Hammett and George Simenon, they chose detective fiction as their medium.
Unusually, however, they wrote as a team – Sjöwall and Wahlöö lived together as a common law couple and each night, after putting their children to bed, each wrote an alternating chapter. The next day, they would switch chapters and edit each other’s work. In this way, they wrote one novel a year, for ten years. In the tenth year of their collaboration, Per Wahlöö died, and Maj Sjöwall never wrote again.
As a collaborative team, they found common ground not only in their mutual affection, but in their shared left-wing politics. They established a model for social criticism in Scandinavia still used today, in which they focused on examining the shadowy nature of capitalism embedded within the post-war welfare state. They wrote in a time of social and political upheaval, especially in terms of gender roles, and the crimes investigated are carefully chosen to match the spirit of the times. Many of the Scandinavian crime writers we most associate with the genre draw heavily from the allegorical nature of Sjöwall and Wahlöö ‘s crimes, and in such pointed pieces as Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo we find increasingly refined and yet somehow less immediate variations on a theme.
Despite their politically motivated message, the two never wrote in a heavy-handed manner, choosing to embrace the simplest prose and the most compelling discourse as a way of creating Marxist critiques accessible to all. Their police procedurals are humanistic and humorous, with plots carefully crafted to entertain and flawed detectives with whom any reader can empathize. Their detectives hem and haw at the demands of the state, try to get out of riot cop duty, and try to solve as many real crimes as possible. When it is winter, and a character smokes too many cigarettes, he gets a cold.
Their vision has endured; forty years after their original publication, their work is still in print. Their message is as immediate and urgent as ever, and their combination of humor and humanism is still unmatched by their peers. Read them in order for the best experience, but to get hooked, start with The Laughing Policeman.
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] | null | [] | 2022-10-24T21:37:54+00:00 | H.R.F Keating was an English crime fiction writer most notable for his series of novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID. He was also a crime books reviewer for The Times for fifteen years and published a book of his "The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books" in 1987. I needed a new reading… | en | Sue Waters | https://suewaters.com/hrf-keating-100-best-crime-mystery-books/ | H.R.F Keating was an English crime fiction writer most notable for his series of novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID. He was also a crime books reviewer for The Times for fifteen years and published a book of his “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books” in 1987.
I needed a new reading challenge after completing my Top 100+ Crime and Mystery novel list challenge so decided to read through all 100 books in H.R.F Keating’s “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books”.
About H.R.F Keating’s “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books”
H.R.F Keating’s “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books” is based on his favorite books from the genre. His list is written in order of date published from Edgar Allan Poe (1845) through to P.D James (1986) with a two-page synopsis of his thoughts about the author and their novel. It’s a sort of history of crime writing using the exact approach I ended up following when I worked through my Top 100+ Crime and Mystery novel list challenge – except I wasn’t aware he had used the same approach until I brought his book!
His rules for selecting which books he included were based on:
No author should be represented by more than three titles.
Adding a few personal favorites that other reviewers mightn’t have included.
Books must have crime in them and weren’t pure thrillers, espionage novels, horror stories, pure suspense stories, or considered proper novels like Dostoiesvski’s “Crime and Punishment”. This is why authors like Dick Francis, Daphne Du Maurier, Mary Higgins Clark, and John Le Carre aren’t included in his list.
Books were also chosen on the basis that in 1987 you were still able to get hold of the book.
I started my H.R.F Keating’s “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books” reading challenge in August 2022. I’ve already read some of his books as they were in my Top 100+ Crime and Mystery novel list challenge. My H.R.F Keating’s “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books” reading challenge is documented on this page and includes a summary of each author and their novels as well as tips for finding the books from his list. I’ve focused on key points I felt would be helpful to others who might want to read the books from his list. For a more detailed review, you need to read H.R.F Keating’s “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books” two-page synopsis of each author and their novel.
I normally prefer reading physical versions of the books rather than e-books and in my previous reading challenge I was able to purchase the majority of the books from charity shops or second-hand book shops.
Books from H.R.F Keating’s “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books” have been harder to source and the harder to find ones I’ve borrowed from the Internet Archive using the one hour borrow option.
Here is H.R.F Keating’s “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books” for those wanting a copy of his list.
Edgar Allan Poe (1841)
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) – Classic
The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) – Classic
The Purloined Letter (1844) – Classic
The Gold Bug (1843) – Classic
Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination is a compilation of Poe’s suspenseful tales. Poe is better known for his dark tales of terror and the supernatural however many consider Edgar Allan Poe’s three Auguste Dupin short stories as the first detective stories published.
I’ve listed the four short stories to read for those who prefer to read his key short stories rather than the entire Tales of Mystery and Imagination book.
His three Auguste Dupin short stories provide insight into early detective stories and it’s helpful to be aware of these stories because some of the early 1900’s crime novels reference Dupin. His “The Gold Bug” story was heavily nominated by the Mystery Writers of America and isn’t a detective story; it’s an old-fashioned deciphering of a cryptogram in a tale without a crime.
Below are links to free ebooks that include the short stories:
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe – Volume 1
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe – Volume 2 – The Purloined letter
Wilkie Collins (1860)
The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright whose two novels The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868) are considered by many as the precursors of modern mystery novel and suspense novels.
The novel was originally published in serial form by Charles Dickens, a close friend of Wilkie Collins, in “All the Year Round” and afterward published in book form.
I was originally reluctant to read Wilkie Collins’s novels as I was worried being written in the 1800s that they would be hard to read and include content I couldn’t relate to. I love all his novels. “The Moonstone” uses the multi-narration method where different sections of the novel are told by different characters which isn’t commonly used nowadays but was very effective in developing the stories.
The Moonstone is about a priceless stone that goes missing soon after being given as a present on a birthday and the investigation to find what happened to the stone.
The book can be downloaded as free ebooks from Project Gutenberg. I sourced my paperback version from a charity shop.
Charles Dickens (1870)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel written by Charles Dickens and he dies before he finished this novel. No one knows how he intended to end it and only six of the planned twelve installments were published.
An incredible novel that I really enjoyed reading. Wasn’t easy to find in charity shops and wish I had realized sooner that I could have downloaded the free ebook here.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)
The Complete Sherlock Holmes (1887-1927)
H.R.F Keating lists the following Arthur Conan Doyle books on his list:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
The Hounds of the Baskerville (1902)
I’ve listed “The Complete Sherlock Holmes” book as that is the best way to read his stories if you are interested in his character development.
Being reluctant to read Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories after watching the different movie and TV adaptations, I now appreciate how amazing his stories are and how they’ve withstood the test of time.
Sherlock Holmes wasn’t the first fictional detective but he is the “most portrayed movie character” in history. The Sherlock Holmes stories have had a profound and lasting effect on mystery writing and popular culture.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories, has been credited as an influence on forensic science due to Holmes’ use of methods such as fingerprints, trace evidence, serology, ciphers, and footprints long before they were commonly used by the police.
You can read my detailed review of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his work here.
My hardest task was working out where to start so here’s my recommendation of order to read:
A Study in Scarlet (1887) – introduces Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.
The Sign of Four (1890) – introduces Dr. Watson’s future wife Mary.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – 12 short stories published in The Strand in 1891-1892 with the most famous being “A Scandal in Bohemia” which introduces Irene Adler.
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – 11 short stories published in The Strand in 1892-1893 with the most famous being “The Final Problem” which kills off Sherlock Holmes.
The Return of Sherlock Holmes – 13 short stories published in The Strand in 1903-1904 with the most famous being “The Adventures of the Empty House” where Sherlock Holmes is resurrected.
The Hound of the Baskervilles – serialized in the Strand in 1901-1902. Considered by many as the best Sherlock Holmes novel.
The Valley of Fear – serialized in The Strand from 1914–1915.
His Last Bow: Some Later Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes – stories published 1908–1917.
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes – stories published 1921–1927.
You can read as individual novels or you’ll find them all in The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His books can be downloaded as free ebooks or easily found in charity shops.
E.W. Hornung 1899-1904
The Collected Raffles
H.R.F Keating lists the novel as “The Amateur Cracksman” however it wasn’t until I read “The Amateur Cracksman” that I realized two of the stories, “The Fate of Faustina” and “A Jubilee Present”, he includes in his two-page synopsis of E.W. Hornung is from “The Black Mask”.
The best option is to read E.W. Hornung’s “The Collected Raffles” which includes his entire collection of Raffles stories – his character Raffles was referred to as the Amateur Cracksman. I’m assuming when H.R.F Keating lists “The Amateur Cracksman” he was actually referring to “The Collected Raffles”.
“The Collected Raffles” is E.W. Hornung’s collection of Raffles short stories and is based on A.J Raffles, a gentleman thief in late Victorian Great Britain who is assisted by his friend Harry “Bunny” Manders.
H.R.F Keating rates E.W. Hornung stories about A.J. Raffles, a gentleman burglar, squarely beside Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. E.W. Hornung was married to Arthur Conan Doyle’s sister. Holmes stories are narrated by Watson while Raffles stories are narrated by his sidekick Bunny. Holmes and Raffles are polar opposites with Raffles being like an inversion of Holmes. Holmes fights crime and Raffles plans crime.
In Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1924 autobiography, Memories and Adventures, he said “I told him so before he put pen to paper, and the result has, I fear, borne me out. You must not make the criminal a hero.” E.W. Hornung died in 1921 so I decided to find out what crime books reviewer said about E.W. Hornung’s Raffles stories around the time he died compared to H.R.F Keating’s review. I have the benefit of being able to find reviews that were published when E.W. Hornung died which H.R.F Keating didn’t have when he published his book in 1987.
An excerpt from The Passing of E.W. Hornung published on Thursday 16 June 1921 said “For Sherlock Holmes represented the reaction against crime, and lives in the public favor in virtue of his eccentric skill in fighting it. Raffles, the criminal, is as dead as any Deadwood Dick hero that ever had a brief hour of popularity. With the younger generation, a reference to him almost needs an explanatory note. Older readers and theatre-goers recall him with languid indifference. The vogue of Raffles only ran through a very few years and would have faded out still more quickly but for the clever stage presentation.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s comment in his 1924 autobiography was a reflection that by the time E.W. Hornung died Raffles was no longer popular.
“The Collected Raffles” contains:
The Amateur Cracksman (1899)
The Black Mask (1901)
A Thief in the Night (1905)
I’m not sure I would have appreciated the Raffles stories as much if I only read “The Amateur Cracksman” as the characters developed more with each book.
His books can be downloaded as free ebooks or occasionally found in charity shops/second-hand bookshops.
Jacques Futrelle (1907)
The Thinking Machine (1907)
Jacques Futrelle was an American journalist and mystery writer best known for his short detective stories featuring Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen who was known as “The Thinking Machine” for his use of logic when solving mysteries supported by his friend and companion, Hutchinson Hatch, reporter of a fictional newspaper called The Daily New Yorker. He died shortly after his thirty seventh birthday on board the Titanic.
The Thinking Machine book contains the following three short stories:
The Problem of Cell 13
The Case of the Flaming Phantom
The Mystery of the Silver Box
Here is a link for reading the Thinking Machine Book using the Internet Archive. I read it by purchasing The First Thinking Machine Omnibus: The Problem of Cell 13 & The Thinking Machine on the Case eBook as didn’t realize the book was available in the Internet Archive.
Mary Roberts Rinehart (1908)
The Circular Staircase (1908)
Mary Roberts Rinehart was considered America’s Agatha Christie. The Circular Staircase is considered the pioneer of “had I but known” mystery writing.
I love reading her novels as her style is similar to Agatha Christie. In addition to The Circular Staircase I’ve read the following novels:
The Man in Lower Ten (1909)
The Window at the White Cat (1910)
The Case of Jennie (1913)
The After House (1914)
Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front (1915)
The Door (1930)
Enjoyed reading her autobiography My Story (1931) and the updated version of My Story (1948) that she published in later years.
All of her books I’ve read as ebooks as I’ve only once seen her books in a shop in Australia. Some of her ebooks can be downloaded for free here.
G.K Chesterton (1911)
The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)
The Father Brown short stories were originally published in various magazines and later collated into five books. The first of the books published was The Innocence of Father Brown in 1911.
Can’t decide how I feel about the Father Brown stories. I’ve only managed to get so far the series of stories each time I try to read The Innocence of Father Brown! Worth reading for those that enjoy the Father Brown TV series to see how the show evolved from the stories.
I might have had more luck if I downloaded the free ebook rather than forgetting which short story I was up in my book!
Melville Davisson Post (1918)
Uncle Abner (1918)
Melville Davisson Post was an American writer best known for his short stories based on Uncle Abner, a mystery solving, justice dispensing West Virginian backwoodsman. His Uncle Abner stories first appeared in American newspapers. He published 22 Uncle Abner stories between 1911 until 1928.
Here is a link to the Complete Uncle Abner book on the Internet Archive.
Edgar Wallace (1925)
The Mind of JG Reeder (1925)
Edgar Wallace was one of the most prolific thriller writers of the early 1900s. He was once considered second in popularity to Dickens and his popularity diminished after his death. At one stage he was producing one in every four novels sold in England.
The Four Just Man was the first novel of his I read and I really struggled reading it. It was only after reading some of his other novels that I appreciated how enjoyable his novels can be. Part of the issue may be I struggled to relate the earlier spy novels compared to crime novels.
The Mind of JG Reeder can be read online here and is a series of short stories featuring a police officer working for the Director of Public Prosecutions. It was published as The Mind of JG Reeder in the UK and The Murder Book of JG Reeder in USA. The order of the short stories varied between the UK and USA edition. The short stories were originally published in magazines before being published as a book.
It is common to see his books in charity shops. Some of his ebooks, including “Four Just Men”, can be downloaded for free here.
Agatha Christie (1926)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) Poirot novel – The Golden Age
Murder on the Orient Express (1934) Poirot novel – The Golden Age
Sleeping Murder (1976) – stand-alone novel
I’m probably classified as an Agatha Christie fan based on my collection of her novels and other books related to her work and life. I read a selection of her novels when I was a teenager and initially started by reading “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” in my Top 100+ Crime and Mystery novel list challenge and ended up reading over 50 of her books.
I feel I would have appreciated “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” if I had read the Hercule Poirot novels in order of date published. The four novels included in this list are considered the best but aren’t my favorites. At least two of these novels represent a unique or different approach to crime writing that hadn’t been done before.
My recommendation is to start with “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” in the Hercule Poirot series. You can download a Poirot Reading List here which includes tips on the order and which to read. Here is the Miss Marple Reading list and you’ll find the complete Agatha Christie Reading list here.
“Sleeping Murder” was written during the Second World War but published after her death. Some consider this book one of her best.
You can download a few of her books as free ebooks here or buy them from charity shops. There is always a wide selection of her books being sold cheaply in charity shops due to their popularity. I was lucky enough to have purchased almost a complete collection of her Agatha Christie Crime Collection series at a charity shop.
Her An Autobiography is the best autobiography I’ve read written by an author and well worth reading once you’ve read some of her novels.
Dashiell Hammett (1929)
Red Harvest (1929) – hard-boiled detective
The Maltese Falcon (1929) – hard-boiled detective
Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and is widely considered one of the finest mystery writers of all time.
In hard-boiled detective novels, the typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as organized crime itself.
I’ve read all of Dashiell Hammett’s novels. My favorite is the “Maltese Falcon”.
You can borrow his novels from the Internet Archive or download his ebooks for free here. It’s fairly common to see his novels in charity shops.
CHD Kitchin (1929)
Death of My Aunt (1929) – The Golden Age
CHD Kitchin was a British novelist best known for his four detective stories featuring amateur sleuth Malcolm Warren, a stockbroker.
Death of My Aunt was his first Malcolm Warren novel. The story is based around Malcolm Warren, a conservative stockbroker, solving the mystery of his aunt’s murder before he becomes the prime suspect after being tricked into delivering a fatal dose of poison to his wealthy aunt.
Dorothy L Sayers (1930)
Documents in the Case (1930) – The Golden Age
The Nine Tailors (1934) – The Golden Age
“Documents in The Case” was written by Dorothy L Sayers and Robert Eustace. It is her only novel that doesn’t include Lord Wimsey, her most famous detective character. I would start by reading her Lord Wimsey novels before reading “Documents in The Case” as it isn’t like her other books and is very different from how most novels are written. It is an epistolary novel where the novel is written as a series of letters. This is the same style of writing used in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1987). Robert Eustace was an English doctor and writer who often collaborated with other writers. He supplied the main plot idea and supporting medical and scientific details for “Documents in The Case”. I’m not sure if I would have included “Documents in The Case” in a list of “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books”. It wasn’t as well-written an epistolary novel as Dracula or as good as other crime and mystery books that weren’t included in the list.
‘Gaudy Night’ was the first Dorothy L Sayers novel I read and I read this book first as it was her highest-ranked novel on my Top 100+ Crime and Mystery novel list challenge but is the tenth novel in her Lord Wimsey series. I would have appreciated ‘Gaudy Night’ if had read her novels in order of the Lord Wimsey series.
I recommend starting with ‘Whose Body?’ first as an introduction to the Lord Wimsey characters and then reading “The Nine Tailors” if you don’t want to read all the books in the series.
Here’s the complete list of her detective novels:
Whose Body? (1923)
Clouds of Witness (1926)
Unnatural Death (1927)
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)
Strong Poison (1930)
The Documents in the Case (1930) – stand-alone
The Five Red Herrings (1931)
Have His Carcase (1932)
Murder Must Advertise (1933)
The Nine Tailors (1934)
Gaudy Night (1935)
Busman’s Honeymoon: A Love Story With Detective Interruptions (1937)
‘Whose Body?’ can be downloaded as a free ebook. Some of her books can be borrowed from the Internet Archive or downloaded as ebooks here. Most of her books I sourced from libraries or brought from second-hand shops/charity shops. I’ve read and enjoyed all her novels.
Arthur W Upfield (1931)
The Sands of Windee (1931) – The Golden Age
Arthur Upfield was an English Australian writer best known for his detective fiction featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte of the Queensland Police Force, a mixed-race Indigenous Australian.
“The Sands of Windee” was his second book in the Detective Inspector Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte series and was a a story about a “perfect murder”, where Upfield invented a method to destroy carefully all evidence of the crime.
As an Australian I really enjoyed reading “The Sands of Windee” as I could relate to the Australian characters and story. It was also interesting to learn that the murder plot used for the book was used in a murder before the book was published. Upfield had been having trouble with the plot of planning the perfect murder and had discussed ideas with other people. “Snowy” Rowles, an itinerant stockman, was at one of the discussions and committed a series of three murders known as the Murchison Murders using the murder methods they had discussed which he described a foolproof way to dispose of a body and thus commit the perfect murder which Upfield published in his The Sands of Windee novel.
Frances Iles (1929)
Before the fact (1932) Frances Iles – Psychological suspense
Anthony Berkeley Cox was an English crime writer who wrote under several pen names, including Francis Iles, Anthony Berkeley, and A. Monmouth Platts.
His book “Malice Aforethought” was on The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time created by the British-based Crime Writers Association and I loved Lesley Grant-Adamson’s comment in her Psychological suspense chapter in Hatchards Crime Companion where she says I don’t like “Malice Aforethought”. “Malice Aforethought” had 30% more votes than any of the rest in the British Crime Writers ‘Psychological suspense category’ and I also wouldn’t clarify this as his best novel. The novel was unique for its time and is credited as being the first book to tell the reader from the onset what happened and then spent the remainder of the book sharing details of how it happened. “Before the Fact” was selected by H.R.F Keating for his “The 100 Best Crime & Mystery books”. I enjoyed reading “Before the Fact” more than “Malice Aforethought”.
You can borrow a few of his novels from the Internet Archive. The books I’ve read have been sourced from second-hand bookshops or charity shops.
Erle Stanley Gardner (1933)
The Case of the Sulky Girl (1933) – Legal
Erle Stanley Gardner, a former lawyer and prolific American author, is best known for his Perry Mason legal detective series. He published 87 books in his Perry Mason series and “The Case of the Sulky Girl” is his second book in the series. His approach to each story follows a similar format, a very formula fiction approach, with a different plot to solve.
“The Case of the Sulky Girl” is a fast enjoyable read.
James M Cain (1934)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) – criminal
James M Cain was an American author most commonly associated with hardboiled American crime fiction. Both of these novels are typical of his writing style that show the crime and its consequences from the point of view of the criminal.
“The Postman Always Rings Twice” was his first novel and is considered one of the more important crime novels of the 20th Century. Its title is a red herring as a postman doesn’t appear in the novel or is alluded to. The saying refers to “The postman used to ring twice if there was something that needed an answer or signing for.” The story is narrated by a drifter who ends up working in a diner and conspires with the beautiful young wife, the operator of the dinner, to kill her older husband.
This novel was made into films and can be borrowed from the Internet Archive.
John Dickson Carr (1933)
Three Coffins (USA) The Hollow Man (UK) (1935)– The Golden Age
John Dickson Carr is an American author who lived for years in England and most of his novels have English settings with English characters. He is considered one of the greater “Golden age mystery” writers with plot-driven stories with complex puzzles. He was considered the master of the locked room mystery where a detective solves an apparently impossible crime.
“Three Coffins” published as “The Hollow Man” in the UK is a classic example of his locked room mystery. The story revolves around how Gideon Fell solves two murders to explain how Professor Charles Grimaud received his visitor in his study and when a gunshot is heard from the study, the alarm is raised – the door is broken down and Grimaud is found, shot dead, and alone. While just as nobody could have left that room, nobody could have murdered Pierre Fley in Cagliostro Street, shot at close range in front of witnesses but with nobody in sight and again, surrounded by undisturbed snow.
“Three Coffins” published as “The Hollow Man” in the UK is part of his Dr Gideon Fell series so I started by reading his earlier Fell novels before reading this one:
Hag’s Nook – 1933
The Mad Hatter Mystery – 1933
The Eight of Swords – 1934
The Blind Barber – 1934
Death-Watch – 1935
The Hollow Man – 1935 (US title: The Three Coffins)
Many of his novels can be borrowed from the Internet Archive. It’s fairly common to see his novels in charity shops. I borrowed “The Devil in Velvet” from a local library. He also published under the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, and Roger Fairbairn.
Rex Stout (1935)
The League of Frightened Men (1935) – Detective
Rex Stout was an American author best known for his detective stories based on Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin. He published over 40 novels based on Nero Wolfe and “The League of Frightened Men” is his second in the series which was originally published as “The Frightened Men” in six issues in the “Saturday Evening Post”.
Fast paced enjoyable novel!
Ethel Lina White (1936)
The Wheel Spins (1936) – The Golden Age
Ethel Lina White was a British crime writer best known for “The Wheel Spins” which Alfred Hitchcock based his “The Lady Vanishes” movie on.
“The Wheel Spins” is based on protagonist Iris Carr a beautiful, young socialite on her way back home to England after vacationing in the mountains of central Europe travelling alone on a train through Europe. She befriends Miss Froy, who disappears without a trace. No one on the train believes that Miss Foy is missing in fact they don’t believe she even exists.
Fast moving enjoyable story.
Nicholas Blake (1938)
The Beast Must Die (1938) – The Golden Age
The Private Wound (1968) – Whodunnit
Nicholas Blake is the pseudonym of Cecil Day-Lewis, the famous poet.
“The Beast Must Die” is a clever novel about a mystery novelist investigating who was responsible for the hit-and-run accident that killed his son. Packed full of twists and turns – very engaging and fast-moving.
“The Private Wound” is very different from the “The Beast Must Die”. Set in the summer of 1939 and it tells the story of an English writer, Dominic Eyre, who, while staying in a small village in the West of Ireland, gets entangled in a love affair with the wife of a former IRA commander. The wife, Harriet Leeson, known as Harry ends up being murdered and Dominic becomes involved with trying to solve the crime to clear his name. Well written mystery novel.
Cornell Woolrich (1940)
The Bride Wore Black (1940) – Thriller
Cornell Woolrich was an American author who originally published “The Bride Wore Black” under the pseudonym William Irish.
The novel is based on a bride whose husband was killed by a shot as they were leaving the church. She spends the next few years tracking down and killing the men she believed were responsible for her husband’s death.
Fast moving enjoyable novel.
Ngaio March (1940)
Surfeit of Lampreys or Death of a Peer (1940) – The Golden Age
Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealand mystery writer and theater director. She was primarily known for her Inspector Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective who works for the Metropolitan Police in London and was considered as a queen of crime along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham.
“Surfeit of Lampreys” published as “Death of a Peer” in USA, was the tenth novel in the Roderick Alleyn series. The plot is about solving who murders an English peer and the title “Surfeit of Lampreys” is a reference to the abundance of Lamprey relatives who were present at the time of the murder and who made solving the crime complicated.
I’m wondering if I had read the Inspector Roderick Alleyn novels in order if I would have enjoyed it more?
Raymond Chandler (1942, 1953)
The High Window (1942) – Hard-boiled/Private Eye
The Long Goodbye (1953) – Hard-boiled/Private Eye
I’ve read all of Raymond Chandler’s novels. “The Big Sleep” was the first hard-boiled/Private Eye novel I read and it is an absolute classic. His ability to describe and set scenes, and create the imaginary, in this novel is incredible. The ending frustrated me as someone more used to Golden Age novels. Hard-boiled incorporates the tone of realism and is more cynical, and hard-edged. Golden Age Crime fiction is based on a puzzle plot detective storyline with elements of whodunnit and fair play.
He originally published stories in the pulp magazine Black Mask and most of his novels were written by cannibalizing these short stories into his novels. The plot was less important to him than the atmosphere and the characters. When he merged the short stories together he spent most of the time on the descriptions of people and places and less time on the plot – which is why there can be gaps in his plots.
“The Long Goodbye” is one of his last novels and the hardest to read. Some reviewers consider this his best novel and others consider it the worst. My mum’s comment on reading it was it should have been called “The Painful Goodbye”. She didn’t like it whereas I enjoyed it more because of the insight into the author. It is longer than his other novels and dragged on.
You can borrow his novels from the Open Library or download his ebooks for free here. It’s fairly common to see his novels in charity shops.
Cyril Hare (1942)
Tragedy at Law (1942) – Detective
Cyril Hare was the pseudonym for Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark who was an English judge. “Tragedy at Law” is his best-known crime novel and is considered among the best whodunnits set in the legal world. Enjoy able novel that kept me guessing.
You can borrow this novel from the Open Library or download the ebook for free here.
Ellery Queen (1942)
Calamity Town (1942) – The Golden Age
Ellery Queen was the pseudonym of two American writers cousins Manfred B. Lee and Frederic Dannay and also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murder cases. They wrote more than thirty novels and their books were among the most popular of American mysteries published between 1929 and 1971.
There is differing opinions on which are the best Ellery Queen novels to read. Below is a list of their more popular books.
The French Powder Mystery (1930) – Ellery Queen Detective #2
The Tragedy of X (1932) – Drury Lane #1
The Siamese Twin Mystery (1933) – Ellery Queen Detective #7
The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1934) – short stories
The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (1940) – short stories
Calamity Town (1942) – Ellery Queen Detective #16
Ten Days’ Wonder (1948) – Ellery Queen Detective #19
“Calamity Town” is the sixteenth novel in the Ellery Queen Detective series and is set in the fictional town of Wrightsville where Ellery Queen moves to get some peace and quiet to write a book. The novel doesn’t include his police inspector father Richard Queen.
Christianna Brand (1943)
Green For Danger (1943) – The Golden Age
Wasn’t easy finding a paper-based version of the novel. Finally found a copy late 2020. Murder mystery based in a wartime hospital.
You can borrow this novel from the Open Library.
Michael Innes (1937)
Appleby’s End (1945) – The Golden Age
The New Sonia Wayward (1960) – The Golden Age
Michael Innes was a Scottish novelist and academic who published crime fiction under this pseudonym. His academic work was published under his real name J.I.M Stewart (John Innes Mackintosh Stewart). He was a lecturer in English at the University of Leeds from 1930 to 1935, then became Jury Professor of English in the University of Adelaide, South Australia. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1946 where he continued to lecture in English.
John Appleby is his best-known series.
I started by reading his first John Appleby novel “Death at the President’s Lodging” (1936) (also known as Seven Suspects). Appleby’s End is the tenth novel in his Appleby’s series.
Some of Michael Innes’s novels can be borrowed from the Internet Archive. It’s fairly common to see his novels in charity shops.
Edmund Crispen (1946)
The Moving Toyshop (1946) – Whodunnit
I’ve read most of Edmund Crispin’s novels. I find his novels less enjoyable compared to other Golden Age crime writers as characters and plot development aren’t as good.
You can borrow this novel from the Open Library .
Elizabeth Ferrars (1946)
Murder Among Friends (1946) – Whodunnit
Elizabeth Ferrars was a British crime writer. “Murder Among Friends” is an exploration of love, friendship, betrayal set in London during World War II.
Helen Eustis (1946)
The Horizontal Man (1946) – Whodunnit
Helen Eustis was an American writer who only published two novels. “The Horizontal Man” was her first novel, and only crime novel, won Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1946. The story is set on the campus of a New England women’s college where a young, womanizing English professor is murdered. The novel is written in experimental format without chapters and line breaks and is one of the earliest psychological studies in murder mystery format.
Fredric Brown (1947)
The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947) – Hardboiled Detective
Fredric Brown was an American science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. “The Fabulous Clipjoint” was his first mystery novel and won the Edgar Award for outstanding first mystery novel. It is both a coming-of-age story and a murder mystery set in the underbelly of Chicago, navigating a world of seedy bars, gambling dens, and suspicious characters.
Margery Allingham (1948)
More Work for The Undertaker (1948) – Golden Age
Tiger in the Smoke (1952) – Golden Age
Margery Allingham is another of the well-known English novelists from the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction. I’ve read 16 of her novels.
“More Work for the Undertaker” and “Tiger in the Smoke” are part of her Albert Campion novel series so if you wanted to read in the order published you would read:
The Crime at Black Dudley (1929: US title The Black Dudley Murder)
Mystery Mile (1930)
Look to the Lady (1931: US title The Gyrth Chalice Mystery)
Police at the Funeral (1931)
Sweet Danger (1933: US title Kingdom of Death/The Fear Sign)
Death of a Ghost (1934)
Flowers for the Judge (1936: US title Legacy in Blood)
Dancers in Mourning (1937: US title Who Killed Chloe?)
Mr. Campion: Criminologist (1937: short stories)
The Case of the Late Pig (1937: originally appeared in Mr Campion: Criminologist)
The Fashion in Shrouds (1938)
Mr. Campion and Others (1939: short stories)
Traitor’s Purse (1941: US title The Sabotage Murder Mystery)
Coroner’s Pidgin (1945: US title Pearls Before Swine)
The Casebook of Mr Campion (1947: short stories)
More Work for the Undertaker (1948)
The Tiger in the Smoke (1952: serialised in US newspapers as Tiger Loose)
Frequently see her books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops. You can borrow her novel from the Open Library .
Josephine Tey (1948)
The Franchise Affair (1948) – Whodunnit
The Daughter of Time (1951) – History Mystery
Josephine Tey was a pseudonym used by Elizabeth MacKintosh, a Scottish author. She also wrote plays under the name of Gordon Daviot.
I’ve read all Josephine Tey’s novels and this is another example of where I should have read her novels in order of the series rather than reading what was considered her best novel first.
The first novel of hers that I read was “The Daughter of Time” which I am sure I would have appreciated more if I had read the earlier novels first. I encourage anyone who reads this novel to research the background behind the story and the influence this novel had. The story is entirely based on the detective stuck in a hospital bed researching the mystery of Richard III.
Incredible author and I enjoyed reading the biography of her life.
I often see her books in charity shops and you can download her ebooks for free here.
John Frankin Bardin (1948)
Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly (1948) – Psychological suspense
John Franklin Bardin was an American crime writer. “Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly” dives into the psychological torment of Ellen, a talented harpsichordist released from a mental institution. Returning to her seemingly perfect life with her conductor husband Basil, a dark secret from her past resurfaces.
Ellen encounters Jimmy Shad, a folk singer she had a passionate but destructive affair with during her youth. This encounter throws her fragile sanity into question. The narrative blurs the lines between reality and delusion as Ellen grapples with her past trauma and a possible alternate personality named Nelle.
As Ellen attempts to resume her musical career, the pressure mounts. The reappearance of Jimmy and the doubts about her sanity lead to a chilling climax. The novel explores themes of mental illness, guilt, and the destructive power of the past, leaving the reader to question the truth and Ellen’s ultimate fate.
Georges Simenon (1949)
My Friend Maigret (1949) – Police Procedural
The Stain On The Snow (1950) – psychological crime fiction, hardboiled detective
Maigret in Court (1960) – Police Procedural
Georges Simenon’s crime novels can be categorized into two main areas:
Inspector Maigret Series – These were Georges Simenon’s most famous work, featuring the iconic Parisian detective Jules Maigret. Maigret is a methodical detective who relies on observation, intuition, and understanding human psychology to solve crimes. The stories typically focus on character development and revealing the motivations behind the crime, rather than intricate puzzles or action sequences.
Standalone Novels (Romans Durs) – These are independent stories outside the Maigret series. They often fall under the umbrella of psychological crime fiction or hardboiled detective fiction. The “hardboiled” elements can include gritty settings, morally ambiguous characters, and a focus on the underbelly of society. However, Simenon goes beyond the typical hardboiled trope by adding a deeper psychological exploration of his characters and their motivations. These novels delve into themes of social alienation, mental illness, and the destructive power of the past.
“My Friend Maigret” and “Maigret in Court” are part of his Inspector Maigret series while “Stain on The Snow” is one of his standalone novels.
WR Burnett (1949)
The Asphalt Jungle (1949) – Criminal
Burnett was a prolific American author known for his contributions to crime fiction and noir literature. His writing career spanned from the 1920s to the 1950s, and he was highly regarded for his gritty realism and ability to depict the criminal underworld with authenticity.
Burnett’s novels often featured hardened criminals, detectives, and ordinary people caught up in dangerous situations. His works are characterized by their strong narratives, vivid characters, and sharp dialogue. He is perhaps best known for writing “Little Caesar” (1929), a seminal work in the genre that explores the rise and fall of a mobster named Rico.
“The Asphalt Jungle” (1949) was adapted into a classic film directed by John Huston. His stories typically delve into themes of greed, betrayal, and the consequences of criminal behavior, portraying a world where moral ambiguity reigns and characters must navigate complex ethical dilemmas.
Michael Gilbert (1950)
Smallbone Deceased (1950) – Whodunnit
Unable to find a paperback version I read it via Amazon Unlimited. A very enjoyable murder mystery set in a lawyer’s office that kept you guessing.
Hillary Waugh (1952)
Last Seen Wearing (1952) – Police Procedural
Last Seen Wearing is generally considered the finest early example of the police procedural. Excellent novel. Unable to find an ebook or paperback ending up borrowing from the Internet Archive. Based on the disappearance of a female freshman, the search into her disappearance, the discovery of her body, the inquest, and the subsequent police investigation to find her murderer.
Guy Cullingford (1953)
Post Mortem (1953) -Golden Age
Constance Lindsay Taylor was a British writer, playwright and screenwriter who wrote under the pseudonym Guy Cullingford.
“Post Mortem” is a crime novel that centers around Detective Chief Inspector David Morgan. The story begins with Morgan investigating the murder of a wealthy woman named Lady Caroline Faye. As he delves deeper into the case, he uncovers a web of deceit, jealousy, and secrets among the elite social circles of London.
The novel explores the complexities of the investigation as Morgan navigates through various suspects and motives. It also delves into the personal lives of the characters, revealing their vulnerabilities and hidden agendas. Throughout the narrative, Cullingford weaves a tale of suspense and intrigue, keeping the reader guessing about the true identity of the murderer until the very end.
“Post Mortem” is praised for its intricate plotting, well-developed characters, and the atmospheric depiction of London’s high society. It combines elements of traditional detective fiction with psychological insights into human behavior, making it a compelling read for fans of the genre.
John Bingham (1953)
Five Roundabouts to Heaven (1953) – Cold War-era spy fiction
John Bingham was a British crime and espionage author.
“Five Roundabouts to Heaven” follows Bill Howard, a seemingly ordinary man who becomes entangled in a web of intrigue and danger when he encounters a mysterious woman named Sally. As their relationship develops, Bill finds himself drawn into a world of espionage and betrayal.
Set against the backdrop of post-World War II Europe, the novel explores themes of identity, trust, and the consequences of one’s actions. Bill’s journey takes him through various European cities, each represented metaphorically as “roundabouts,” where he navigates through twists and turns of both physical and emotional landscapes.
Bingham’s narrative is known for its atmospheric prose, complex characters, and suspenseful plot twists. “Five Roundabouts to Heaven” is regarded as a compelling example of Cold War-era spy fiction, blending elements of thriller and psychological drama to create a gripping story of intrigue and moral dilemmas.
Shelley Smith (1954)
The Party at No. 5 (1954) – psychological thriller
Shelley Smith was a British crime and mystery writer.
“The Party at No. 5” story revolves around a group of people attending a party at a house numbered 5, where tensions and secrets among the guests quickly escalate into a deadly confrontation.
The novel unfolds as various characters with their own motives and hidden agendas navigate through the evening. When a murder occurs during the party, suspicion falls on each guest as they try to unravel the truth behind the crime.
Shelley Smith’s narrative skillfully blends elements of mystery and psychological suspense, exploring themes of deception, betrayal, and the consequences of past actions. The novel is known for its intricate plotting, well-developed characters, and the atmospheric portrayal of the party setting, which serves as a microcosm of society’s darker impulses and desires.
Margaret Millar (1955)
Beast in View (1955) – Psychological suspense
Beyond This Point (1970) – Psychological suspense
Margaret Millar was one of the leading American ladies of crime writing and this is considered her best work. “Beast in View” won the Edgar Award in 1956 and was adapted into an episode in Alfred Hitchock Hour. Margaret Millar published under her married name. Her husband Kenneth Millar was also a crime novelist better known under the pen name Ross MacDonald.
“Beast in View” was enjoyable fast-reading novel that I completed within a day. I found a copy in a second-hand book shop and it can be borrowed as a free ebook from Open Library.
Patricia Highsmith (1950)
The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) – Psychological suspense
The Tremor of Forgery (1969) – Psychological suspense
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist widely known for her psychological thrillers. Many of her novels have been made into popular movies but I’m not a fan of her obsessive, disturbing characters in her novels I’ve read so far.
She is considered the queen of the modern psychological thriller; her focus is more on the investigation of the human mind rather than the crime puzzle. What is interesting is Patricia Highsmith’s novels were more popular in Europe than in USA. This trend was highlighted in the two crime lists with her novels ranking higher on the UK list vs the USA crime writers list.
Frequently see her books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops. You can borrow her novel from the Open Library.
J.J. Marric (1955)
Gideon’s Day (1955) – Police Procedural
Gideon’s Week (1956) – Police Procedural
I read “Gideon’s Day” on my Top 100+ Crime and Mystery novel list challenge. Written under the pseudonym J.J Marric by John Creasy, the Gideon series is considered his best-known. “Gideon’s Day” is a police procedural based on telling the story of the main character Gideon with a glimpse into his personal life while juggling overseeing a series of different crimes. Quick and easy read – read within 24 hours.
Ellin Stanley (1956)
Mystery Stories
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Dorothy Hughes (1963)
The Expendable Man
Nicholas Freeling (1963)
Gun Before Butter
Jim Thompson (1964)
Pop. 1280
EB Eberhart (1966)
R.S.V.P. Murder
Emma Lathen (1967)
Murder Against the Grain
George Sims (1967)
The Last Best Friend
Julian Symons (1967)
The Man Who Killed
The Players and the Game
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (1965)
Roseanna (1965)- Police Procedural
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were Swedish authors, and partners, who are best known for their series based on police detective Martin Beck. Their novels are an example of nordic noir, a genre of crime fiction usually written from a police point of view and set in Scandinavia or Nordic countries.
They wrote 10 novels in the Martin Beck series and Per Wahloo died just before the last book in the series was published:
Roseanna (1965)
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966)
The Man on the Balcony (1967)
The Laughing Policeman (1968)
The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969)
Murder at the Savoy (1970)
The Abominable Man (1972)
The Locked Room (1973)
Cop Killer (1975)
The Terrorists (1976)
“The Laughing Policeman” won the Edgar Award in 1971 for Best Mystery Novel.
I occasionally see their books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops.
Helen McCoy (1968)
Mr. Splitfoot
Peter Dickinson (1968)
The Glass-Sided Ants’ Nest (1968) – The Whodunnit
The Poison Oracle (1974)
Peter Dickinson was an English author and The Glass-Sided Ants’ Nest was his first novel in the Jimmy Peddle detective series.
“The Glass-Sided Ants’ Nest” introduces Superintendent Jimmy Pibble who is called in to investigate the murder of tribal leader of a group of indigenous people who have lived in England after migrating with the daughter of an English missionary who had lived with the tribe in Papua New Guinea. The leader of the tribe decided to migrate after members of the tribe and the missionary were murdered by the Japanese during World War II.
The title “The Glass-Sided Ants’ Nest” is in reference to the fact that the daughter becomes an anthropologist and lives with the tribe where she is able to observe them living an adapted life while maintaining their customs like you might ants in a glass-sided ants’ nest.
Story line was bizarre.
Chester Himes (1969)
Blind Man With a Pistol (1969) – Police Procedural
Chester Himes was an American author best known for his Harlem Detective novels featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones.
“Blind Man with a Pistol” was his eight novel and final novel in the series. The novel tells the story of one night and a day in Harlem, and includes several murders, riots and looting. None of the murders, or who is responsible for the riots is answered in the story because Chester Himes wasn’t really interested in solving the mysteries. He is making a sociological and philosophical on white and black worlds. His goal is to make the point that most violence is like a blind man shooting a pistol, without aim, without strategy, without a point.
I listened to this book on Audible. You need to accept when reading it that is isn’t a typical crime novel; the storyline is chaotic and it’s was his way of making a statement about violence, crime and what life was like for those living in Harlem in the late 60’s.
Joan Flemming (1970)
Young Man, I Think You’re Dying
Ed McBain (1956)
Sadie When She Died (1972) – Police Procedural
Ed McBain was considered the author who perfected the police procedural sub-genre – where the crime is solved by an entire police department as opposed to a single detective.
Cop Hater was his first novel in the 87th Precinct series. I read numerous Ed McBain novels when I was younger. Cop Hater didn’t engage me until almost the end of the novel; maybe the ones I read in my younger years had evolved more or my tastes changed?
Frequently see his books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops.
George V Higgins (1970)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970) – Criminal
George V Higgins was an American author and lawyer best known for his crime novels that established the Boston noir genre of gangster tales.
“The Friends of Eddie Coyle” was his debut novel published when he as an Assistant United States Attorney in Boston.
Think I might have brought the ebook from Amazon after being unsuccessful in finding a physical copy of the novel.
Tony Hillerman (1973)
Dance Hall of the Dead (1972) – Police Procedural
Tony Hillerman was an American author best known for his detective series featuring Navajo Tribal Police Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.
“Dance Hall of the Dead” was his second novel and featured only Joe Leaphorn.
There was no ebook version of this novel and I think I brought it online as secondhand books.
Gregory Mcdonald (1974)
Fletch (1974) – Humorous
Gregory Mcdonald was an American mystery writer best known for his comic investigative reporter Irwin Maurice “Fletch” Fletcher.
“Fletch” is a fast-moving enjoyable novel and was Edgar Awards winner for Best First Novel.
Think I might have brought the ebook.
Celia Fremlin (1975)
The Long
Colin Watson (1975)
The Naked Nuns
P.D James (1971)
Black Tower– The Whodunnit
A Taste of Death (1986) – The Whodunnit
P.D James was an English novelist known for her detective novels featuring Adam Dalgliesh, a police commander, and poet.
To the best of my knowledge, I read all the P.D James novels when I was younger. Always enjoyable reads.
Her Adam Dalgliesh series in order is:
Cover Her Face (1962)
A Mind to Murder (1963)
Unnatural Causes (1967)
Shroud for a Nightingale (1971)
The Black Tower (1975)
Death of an Expert Witness (1977)
A Taste for Death (1986)
Devices and Desires (1989)
Original Sin (1994)
A Certain Justice (1997)
Death in Holy Orders (2001)
The Murder Room (2003)
The Lighthouse (2005)
The Private Patient (2008)
Common to see her books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops.
Dorothy Salisbury Davis (1976)
A Death in the Life
Dorothy Uhnak (1976)
The Investigation
Ross Macdonald (1976)
The Blue Hammer (1976) – Hardboiled Detective
Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar known for his hardboiled novels set in Southern California. He was married to Margaret Millar who was one of the leading American ladies of crime writing.
Ruth Rendell / Barbara Vine (1976)
A Judgement in Stone (1977) Ruth Rendell – Psychological thriller
Ruth Rendelll was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries. I read most of her and PD James novels when I was younger.
She published her novels that explored the psychological background of criminals and their victims under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.
“A Judgement in Stone” is a fast moving suspense thriller where you know the killers at the start and the plot is about the events that lead to the murders and the eventual capture of the killers.
Common to see her books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops.
William McIvanney (1977)
Laidlaw
Donald E Westlake (1967)
Nobody’s Perfect – Humorous
Donal E Westlake was an American writer who specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers.
“God Save The Mark” is a classic Donald Westlake comic crime novel and Edgar award winner for best novel;. The main character is a person who is often taken advantage of by cons. He inherits money from an Uncle he never knew, who was a well-known conman, and ends up being entwined in murders and being harassed as people try to recover the money he has inherited.
“The Hot Rock” is an enjoyable read about a team of criminals trying to steal an emerald and having trouble constantly losing it. Multiple heists to finally steal it. “Bank Shot” is a hilarious comic caper of a group of thieves stealing a bank. These two novels are part of his well known Dortmunder series.
Common to see his books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops.
Reginal Hill (1978)
A Pinch of Snuff (1978) – Police Procedural
Reginal Hill was an English crime writer best known for his Dalziel and Pascoe series.
I read most or all of his Dalziel and Pascoe novels when I was younger. I also loved watching the TV series but was annoyed that the TV story lines didn’t follow the novels.
Here is his series in order of date published for those interested in reading the series:
A Clubbable Woman (1970)
An Advancement of Learning (1971)
Ruling Passion (1973)
An April Shroud (1975)
A Pinch of Snuff (1978)
A Killing Kindness (1980)
Deadheads (1983)
Exit Lines (1984)
Child’s Play (1987)
Underworld (1988)
Bones and Silence (1990)
One Small Step (1990), novella
Recalled to Life (1992)
Pictures of Perfection (1994)
The Wood Beyond (1995)
Asking for the Moon (1996), short stories
“The Last National Service Man”
“Pascoe’s Ghost”
“Dalziel’s Ghost”
“One Small Step”
On Beulah Height (1998)
Arms and the Women (1999)
Dialogues of the Dead (2002)
Death’s Jest-Book (2003)
Good Morning, Midnight (2004)
The Death of Dalziel (2007), Canada and US Title: Death Comes for the Fat Man
A Cure for All Diseases (Canada and US title: The Price of Butcher’s Meat) (2008)
Midnight Fugue (2009)
Common to see his books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops.
John D MacDonald (1979)
The Green Ripper (1979) – Hardboiled/ Private Eye
John D MacDonald was one of the most successful novels of his time.
“The Dreadful Lemon Sky” is the 16th novel in his Travis McGee series. Enjoyable read like reading a Sue Grafton novel. Former friend Carrie asks Travis to safe keep some money and when she dies 2 weeks later he and his friend Meyer investigate her death and where the money came from.
I occasionally see his books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops.
Joseph Hansen (1979)
Skinflick
PM Hubbard (1979)
Kill Claudio
Amanda Cross (1981)
Death in a Tenured Position
John Wainwright (1981)
All On a Summers Day
Joseph Wambaugh (1981)
The Glitter Dome (1981) – Police Procedural
Joseph Wambaugh is an American writer best known for writing about police work in the United States.
Joseph Wambaugh is considered the father of modern-day police novels and started writing while working as a policeman for the LAPD. Reason he left he said was “I knew that when I wrote “The Choirboys,” it would be very hard to maintain my job, because “The Choirboys” was absolutely outrageous black comedy. Dark, dark comedy that ends up as a tragedy. I knew that I couldn’t write that book I envisioned and stay a cop with the LAPD.”
I struggled reading “The Choirboys”.
Common to see his books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops.
Peter Lovesey (1970)
The False Detective Dew (1982) – Historical
Peter Lovesey is a British writer known for his historical and contemporary detective novels.
“The False Detective Dew” was the Gold Dagger award by the Crime Writers’ Association in 1982. It’s a very clever story with multiple unexpected twists. For those intereted in history Inspector Dew was the detective who apprehended at sea American dentist Dr. Crippen and his mistress who murdered his wife in 1910 and escaped by ship on the S.S. Mauritania.
I occasionally see his books in charity shops and second-hand bookshops.
June Thomson (1982)
To Make a Killing
James McClure (1984) | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 7 | https://www.lunabooks.in/post/maj-sj%25C3%25B6wall-and-per-wahl%25C3%25B6%25C3%25B6-the-martin-beck-series | en | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö: The Martin Beck Series | [
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"Shilpa"
] | 2023-08-02T08:34:59.657000+00:00 | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, are widely regarded as the pioneers of Scandinavian crime fiction. Both left-wing journalists, they met in 1962 and fell in love. While they never married, they lived together, with the children from their previous marriages. Over the decade that followed, they collaborated on a unique writing project. 10 novels written over ten years, each with 30 chapters, and focused on the National Homicide Bureau in Sweden - the Martin Beck series. The Story of a Crime, they call | en | https://static.parastorage.com/client/pfavico.ico | Luna Books | https://www.lunabooks.in/post/maj-sjöwall-and-per-wahlöö-the-martin-beck-series | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, are widely regarded as the pioneers of Scandinavian crime fiction. Both left-wing journalists, they met in 1962 and fell in love. While they never married, they lived together, with the children from their previous marriages. Over the decade that followed, they collaborated on a unique writing project. 10 novels written over ten years, each with 30 chapters, and focused on the National Homicide Bureau in Sweden - the Martin Beck series. The Story of a Crime, they called it.
The couple would write alternate chapters, mostly at the kitchen table at night, after putting their children to bed. They would then swap chapters the next day and edit each other's work before moving on. They found and agreed on a tone and style that worked for them both and were consistent with it. It's impossible to tell them apart on the page. In an interview Sjowall said “We worked a lot with the style. We wanted to find a style which was not personally his, or not personally mine, but a style that was good for the books."
Mere entertainment was not their purpose though. What they wanted to do was to use crime and criminal investigations to hold up a mirror to Swedish society. They believed that crime novels could effectively include social criticism. Each of their ten novels was based on painstaking research, the crimes were fairly gruesome, and through each story, they tried to highlight what they saw as the increasingly materialistic culture they saw around them.
"We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality. We wanted to show where Sweden was heading: towards a capitalistic, cold and inhuman society, where the rich got richer, the poor got poorer.” (Sjöwall, in an interview with the Guardian, Nov 22, 2009)
Their influences included crime writers such as Ed MacBain, Georges Simenon and Dashiell Hammett.
With the ten novels comprising the Martin Beck series, Sjöwall and Wahlöö are credited with introducing the 'police procedural'. Criminal investigation in their books is not heroic or thrilling. It is long hours and days and weeks of dogged police work, many times leading nowhere. But Beck and his colleagues keep at it. Beck as a character is dour and dyspeptic, not a hero by any standards. But he is a committed policeman and a patient one. The characters are all ordinary. There is no genius at work here who can see what no one else can. They look at everything together and painstakingly piece together a solution. And this is in the age before mobile phones, DNA testing and the internet. An age when everyone smoked all the time. Today most cops or detectives in books or on TV shows are dour and cheerless and we are used to this, but Beck was the prototype for this sort of detective.
The books are international bestsellers, with over 10 million copies sold so far. They’ve been made into films and adapted for television. Sjowall and Wahloo’s work has inspired crime writers such as Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Michael Connelly, and many others. Established now as classics of the genre, readers of any generation can appreciate the meticulous procedurals stitched together by this couple. Per Wahlöö died at the age of 49 shortly before the final book in the series was published. Sjöwall declined to continue or expand the series without her partner.
Here are the ten books in the Martin Beck series:
Roseanna (1965)
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966)
The Man on the Balcony (1967)
The Laughing Policeman (1968)
The Fire Engine that Disappeared (1969)
Murder at The Savoy (1970)
The Abominable Man (1972)
The Locked Room (1973)
Cop Killer (1975)
The Terrorists) (1976)
Sources include: | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 31 | https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/per-wahloo/ | en | Per Wahloo Books In Order | [
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"Editorial"
] | 2022-03-24T20:23:12-07:00 | The masterful first novel in the Martin Beck series of mysteries by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sj wall and Per Wahl , finds Beck | en | Books In Order | https://www.addall.com/books-in-order/per-wahloo/ | Inspector Jensen Books In Publication Order
Standalone Novels In Publication Order
Martin Beck Books In Publication Order
Inspector Jensen Book Covers
Standalone Novels Book Covers
Martin Beck Book Covers
Per Wahloo Books Overview
Related Authors | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 28 | https://smithereens.wordpress.com/2021/10/27/maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-murder-at-the-savoy-1970/ | en | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Murder at the Savoy (1970) | [
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] | null | [] | 2021-10-27T00:00:00 | And so, to make things a bit more interesting, I decided to complete the Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö novels by the end of 2021. Because it feels great to check some goals off and, quite frankly, this one seems a lot more reachable than others I had in my 2021 list (hello, mastering basic… | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/82209b3042b68b8e8a20a3b70e143e7c8b6a8e6d7e1a6e2bd81b5d245727512f?s=32 | Smithereens | https://smithereens.wordpress.com/2021/10/27/maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-murder-at-the-savoy-1970/ | This book is in the middle of the series (#6 out of 10), and the themes and characters are by now well established. The random violence, the strong of location (here in Malmö), the social injustice, the fastidious and methodical investigation, the mistakes and length of the search for clues. There are as in some other books an element of comic, slapsticks even, as stupid policemen get bogged down by procedure. The original title of the book refers, if I understand well, to a common insult against Swedish policemen who are compared with potatoes. This comes up a few times in the novel and contrast with the upper class delicacies that hotel guests eat at the Savoy, including Martin Beck himself.
American readers may be surprised how Swedes seem to take a relaxed approach to sex. The victim’s young and beautiful widow enjoys summer sun in the nude (with her lover), and finds nothing embarrassing when the inspector arrives to ask questions, and Beck has sex with a young colleague, but no strings attached. I can’t say if it’s Sweden, 1969, or if Sjöwall and Wahlöö meant something political by it. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 64 | https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/crime-thriller/scandi-crime-novels | en | The most gripping Nordic noir books crime and thriller fans shouldn’t miss | [
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] | 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00 | Dark thrillers full of bleak landscapes and brutal crimes, Nordic noir books are loved by crime and thriller fans. Here’s some of the best Nordic crime fiction. | en | /favicon-32x32.png?v=9c2bc0e2f951cbe5968e6633f2334d66 | https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/crime-thriller/scandi-crime-novels | From one of the best Nordic noir writers comes an ominous story about history repeating itself, forcing Detective Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti to confront a grave truth.
A lecturer is found dead at Lund University, at the bottom of a cliff. Suspicions arise when it is discovered that a student from Uppsala University died in the same way, at the same spot, decades ago. Slowly, the story of six students in 1960s Uppsala is revealed, including a trip through Eastern Europe that would change everything for them.
The fourth novel in Håkan Nesser’s quintet about Inspector Barbarotti, The Lonely Ones is full of Nesser's trademark suspense and intrigue.
Part Scandi noir, part domestic drama, this intelligent psychological thriller is told from three points of view, father, mother and daughter. Both family relationships and morals are tested when Stella, daughter of pastor Adam and lawyer Ulrika, is accused of the murder of a much older man. How far will Adam and Ulrika go to protect their only child? And what do they really believe?
Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder – and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family.
He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.
Sarah Lund is looking forward to her last day as a detective with the Copenhagen Police Department before moving to Sweden. But everything changes when nineteen-year-old student, Nanna Birk Larsen, is found raped and brutally murdered in the woods outside the city. Lund's plans to relocate are put on hold as she leads the investigation along with fellow detective Jan Meyer.
While Nanna's family struggles to cope with their loss, local politician, Troels Hartmann, is in the middle of an election campaign to become the new mayor of Copenhagen. When links between City Hall and the murder suddenly come to light, the case takes an entirely different turn. Over the course of twenty days, suspect upon suspect emerges as violence and political intrigue cast their shadows over the hunt for the killer . . .
Discover all the books in The Killing series
Detectives Pia Kirchoff and Oliver von Bodenstein arrive at the scene of a strange accident on a rainy November day – a woman has fallen from a bridge and onto the motorway below, and it seems she may have been pushed.
The hunt for clues leads them to a small town near Frankfurt and the home of Rita Cramer, the victim. But eleven years earlier, two girls vanished without trace from the same village, leading to the imprisonment of Rita's son Tobias. As he returns to the village to clear his name, events from the past appear to repeat themselves . . .
The first book in the Bodenstein & Kirchoff crime series, Snow White Must Die is the international bestseller from Nele Nauhaus.
Set against Iceland's volcanic hinterlands, four thirty-somethings from Reykjavik – the reckless hedonist Egill; the recovering alcoholic Hrafin; and their partners Anna and Vigdis – embark on an ambitious camping trip, their jeep packed with supplies.
Victims of the financial crisis, the purpose of the trip is to heal both professional and personal wounds, but the desolate landscape forces the group to reflect on the shattered lives they've left behind in the city. As their jeep hurtles through the barren land, an impenetrable fog descends, causing them to suddenly crash into a rural farmhouse.
Seeking refuge from the storm, the group discover that the isolated dwelling is inhabited by a mysterious elderly couple who inexplicably barricade themselves inside every night. As past tensions within the group rise to the surface, the merciless weather blocks every attempt at escape, forcing them to ask difficult questions: who has been butchering animals near the house? What happened to the abandoned village nearby where bones lie strewn across the ground? And most importantly, will they ever return home?
A suspenseful story from international crime-thriller sensation Camilla Läckberg, The Ice Princess follows Erica Falck as she returns to her childhood home – the tiny, remote village of Fjällbacka, Sweden – following the death of her parents.
Having only just arrived, Erica encounters another tragedy: the suicide of her childhood best friend, Alex. A beautiful woman who had it all, Erica is bewildered as to why Alex would take her own life, until she teams up with police detective Patrik Hedström. As the two delve deeper into the mysteries' of Alex's childhood, their friendly flirtation gives way to powerful attraction, just as it becomes clear that a deadly secret is at stake.
The first novel in the acclaimed Martin Beck mystery series is renowned as a masterpiece, from crime writing duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.
Martin Beck is hunting for a murderer. When a young woman's body is pulled from Sweden's picturesque Lake Vattern, Beck opens an investigation into the identities of both murderer and victim. Three months later, all Beck has is a name – Roseanna. As Beck's list of suspects gets shorter, his obsession with the murderer and his psychopathology begins to deepen . . .
1987. Verlangan, a former cop turned private detective is hired by a woman to follow her husband Jaan 'G' Hennan. A few days later, his client is found dead at the bottom of an empty swimming pool.
Maardam Police, led by Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, investigate the case. Van Veeteren has encountered Jaan 'G' Hennan before and knows only too well the man's dark capabilities. As more information emerges about G's shadowy past, the Chief Inspector becomes more desperate than ever to convict him. But G has a solid alibi – and no one else can be found in relation to the crime.
2002. Fifteen years have passed and the G File remains the one case former Chief Inspector Van Veeteren has never been able to solve. But when Verlangan's daughter reports the private detective missing, Van Veeteren returns to Maardam CID once more. For all Verlangan left behind was a cryptic note; and a telephone message in which he claimed to have finally discovered the proof of G's murderous past . . .
Discover all the books in the Van Veeteren series
Louise Rick, a rookie homicide detective from Copenhagen, becomes entangled in a complex series of murder investigations. Assigned first to the strangling of a young woman in a park, she quickly becomes involved in another case, one that her best friend and journalist Camilla is extremely close to. Despite Louise trying to keep her friend away from the case, Camilla's never been one to miss out on a scoop – but has she gone too far this time?
Now an internationally bestselling series, Louise Rick's debut in The Midnight Witness launched Sara Blaedel's incredible career. | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 82 | https://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2022/01/20/the-martin-beck-series-2-and-3-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-nordicfinds-sweden/ | en | The Martin Beck Series #2 and #3 – Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö | [
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] | null | [] | 2022-01-20T00:00:00 | I bought the 10 book set in 2009 from the sadly defunct Book People. Starting reading with book 4 (the most famous, The Laughing Policeman) when Maj Sjöwall visited the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2013, waited until 2019 to actually start reading and reviewing the series in order. In my review of Roseanna I stated… | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/59fb7a4ba24c2aff31da10fbf91b80162ee0c3399eb94fced77a5d6dc2b260da?s=32 | Lizzy's Literary Life (Volume One) | https://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2022/01/20/the-martin-beck-series-2-and-3-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-nordicfinds-sweden/ | I bought the 10 book set in 2009 from the sadly defunct Book People. Starting reading with book 4 (the most famous, The Laughing Policeman) when Maj Sjöwall visited the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2013, waited until 2019 to actually start reading and reviewing the series in order. In my review of Roseanna I stated I wouldn’t wait another decade until I reviewed the next. I’ve kept my word – it’s been 3 years. I don’t know why these books wait so long for me to pick them up. Police procedurals which inspired the great Henning Mankell to created Kurt Wallander, written in the mid-1960s before technology made information accessible at the push of a button, and mobile phones made everyone available all of the time …
I picked book 2, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966 trans. Joan Tate) for Annabel’s #NordicFinds (Sweden Week) because I like cold books in the winter months. So it was a bit of a surprise to find myself transported to a hot summery Budapest. Not complaining, I love Budapest, especially in the heat of summer, so wandering the streets with Martin Beck was most enjoyable. Wandering being the opportune word …. Martin Beck finds himself alone in Budapest searching for a missing Swedish journalist. The operation is hush, hush because the authorities, seeking to avoid a diplomatic incident, want the man found before the story hits the Swedish newspapers. (Which given the man’s profession, it could do at any moment.) So Beck is sent out alone, to stay in the hotel the man disappeared from. The only other clue he has is that there is a female in the mix …
It is a case of getting nowhere fast, until he is approached by Vilmos Szluka of the Hungarian police. Now this being the 1960s with Hungary a firmly Communist state, Beck is suspicious, particularly as he feels he has been under surveillance from the moment he arrived. However, turns out it’s not the Hungarian police he needs to be fearful of …
Well, it wouldn’t do for two left-wing authors to show communist authorities in a bad light, would it? In fact, they show them to be a model of efficiency – frightening efficiency, in fact. Pivotal in saving Beck’s life and helping him uncover a drugs ring he found but wasn’t looking for! As for the missing journalist … Beck’s own team back in Sweden are key to solving that mystery; the point being that solving crime takes cooperation and team work. Beck may be the boss but he’s not a genius, and without the others, he really would be wandering the streets of Budapest, lost, clueless and utterly ineffective.
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke is my first 5* read of 2022 – it’s probably a solid 4* but I awarded the fifth star for two reasons: the vicarious sightseeing of Budapest and the terrific play on words of the title. I can think of multiple ways in which it can be interpreted, but I’m not telling! Anyway, I enjoyed it so much, I immediately picked up book number 3.
The Man on The Balcony (1967, trans. Alan Blair) is firmly set in a Stockholm under double threat. Firstly there’s the mugger, callous and brutal, and then there’s the serial killer, who assaults and kills small girls. The novel is dealing with serious issues, but the authors exercise restraint with their depiction of the crimes. Only one mugging is shown in real time. It is shocking. It suffices. The assaults on the girls are never shown, only the aftermath with much empathy extended to the bereaved mothers, and the poor police officers who have to watch over the broken corpses and break the tragic news.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s objective was to show the true face of policing: long hours, hard work, the emotional toll on both victims of crime and the police themselves. They do so in matter of fact but powerful prose. Despite Beck’s team’s dedication, manually sifting through hundreds of tip-offs, catching both culprits depends in a large measure on lucky breaks. Normally I wouldn’t like these kind of convenient plot twists, but how often do we hear of small and not-so-small coincidences cracking cases wide open?
In addition to the realism of the police procedural, these novels are filled with astute and profound human psychology. Martin Beck isn’t, at this point, the typical divorced inspector with alcohol problems, and I have no idea if that is where he is heading (so don’t tell me). However, the growing estrangement between himself and his wife is clear: her dissatisfaction at being left alone for long periods; his choosing to leave her that way. (He could have turned down the assignment to Budapest, but he didn’t.) In The Man on The Balcony, the wife of one of a newly-married colleagues is pregnant, and the contrast between the two marriages is made apparent when the men return home exhausted. It doesn’t bode well for Beck, and I’ll find out soon what happens next. I’ve decided this is the series I’ll be finishing in 2022, a cool 13 years after I purchased it! | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 74 | https://mysteryofbooks.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/rosenna-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | en | Rosenna : By Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo | [
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] | null | [] | 2013-06-13T00:00:00 | David Davidar, when he was the editor of Penguin India, used to write a weekly column in the Sunday magazine of 'The Hindu', recommending a book or an author. It was here that I first heard of Per Wahloo & Maj Sjowall and their book titled 'Laughing Policeman'. Fortunately I was able to get this… | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | Infrequent Chronicles | https://mysteryofbooks.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/rosenna-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | David Davidar, when he was the editor of Penguin India, used to write a weekly column in the Sunday magazine of ‘The Hindu’, recommending a book or an author. It was here that I first heard of Per Wahloo & Maj Sjowall and their book titled ‘Laughing Policeman’. Fortunately I was able to get this book here. I read it and began searching for their other books and did not rest till I go all the ten they wrote.
‘Roseanna’ was the first book that this husband wife pair wrote. A body of a young girl is discovered when one of the lakes in Sweden in dredged. The girl is naked and has apparently been murdered. The local police have no clue either about the identity of the girl nor about the time of the murder. Inspector Beck, who appears in all the books, from headquarters is summoned to take up this mysterious case. How Inspector Beck and his colleagues go about solving the case forms the main story of this novel.
Crime in real world is a complex web involving the victim, the perpetrator, law enforcing agencies and the society at large. It is this intricate interaction which Sjowall and Wahloo set out to capture. The focus is not on putting forth a puzzle which needs to be solved by scientific thinking. Neither is the focus on the protagonist, his / her idiosyncrasies, the brilliance of their deduction. Instead in most of their novels it is the victim, who, though no longer alive, drives the investigation. In “Rosenna’ the dead girl is constantly on the conscience of Inspector Beck and his colleague. An unstated feeling of guilt engulfs them of not being able to protect a helpless young girl. The only path to redemption is to find and punish the person responsible for the crime.
The process of unraveling a crime is a boring one, in most cases. The police rarely have the ‘eureka’ moments. They follow up every clue, question hundreds of people, encounter dead ends regularly and have to deal with both mounting criticism and mounting work. The crime is solved by piecing together small clues and by relentless followup. Here is where the policeman’s sense of justice and his / her conscience comes to fore, for without that the drudgery would be unbearable and many cases would remain unsolved. Sjowall and Wahloo bring the whole police investigation to life by building a very credible cast of characters, each of whom has their own ideas, ideologies and idiosyncrasies.
The more important dilemma that the police face in the novel is about the all-pervading presence of doubt. While it is a tough task to bind the clues together and zoom in on the criminal, the tougher part is to be sure that the person actually committed the crime. This dilemma is brought to the fore in a very effective fashion in ‘Rosenna’. The police try to solve this problem in an unorthodox way which is questionable and which almost leads to a tragedy.
Sjowall and Wahloo, who are considered to the god parents of Scandinavian crime writing, go beyond the genre of crime writing to give us an amazing portrait of the Swedish society. Their novels are as much about social criticism as they are about crime. ‘Rosenna’ explores the inner demons of the perpetrator and how these demons consume him when he interacts with the modern society. The inability to let go of primitive prejudices and the need to correct what is seen as wrong from the perpetrator’s view, fuel the debate within us on the nature of human beings. Sjowall and Wahloo were communists and it is this prism that gives their books a very balanced feel. While their politics makes them didactic in some of their book, in their best books like ‘Rosenna’ it is their politics which gives the book a human touch. It is this politics which ensures that we do not feel elated that the crime has been solved but rather question our own nature. Instead of the applause that is generally heard when the curtain falls, in ‘Rosenna’ we hear a deep silence.
Sjowall and Wahloo’s prose is fairly straightforward with a very wry sense of humor. They invoke the gloomy Scandinavian atmosphere with just a few brush strokes and also transport us into the heart of Sweden effortlessly. The melancholic Inspector Beck, with his own personal problems, has become the role model for almost all the Scandinavian detectives to follow, be it the heroes of Indridasson or Hakkan Naseer or Henin Mankell. In this archetype developed by Sjowall and Wahloo, the policeman solves a case, not just because it is his duty, but because in a profession which constantly calls upon him to watch the results of inhuman activity, solving the crime is the only way he can keep himself human. This archetype has served Scandinavian crime fiction well and many of the current successful authors owe a debt of gratitude to Sjowall and Wahloo.
There are ten books in the Inspector Beck series, not all of which are equal. The most important ones according to me are: ‘Rosenna’, ‘Laughing Policeman’, ‘Man on the Balcony’. The ‘lighter’ books in this series are ‘Terrorists’ and ‘Man who went up in Smoke’ while the ‘Locked Room’ is one which has a slightly different tone and style from the other novels. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 23 | https://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2022/01/20/the-martin-beck-series-2-and-3-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-nordicfinds-sweden/ | en | The Martin Beck Series #2 and #3 – Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö | [
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] | null | [] | 2022-01-20T00:00:00 | I bought the 10 book set in 2009 from the sadly defunct Book People. Starting reading with book 4 (the most famous, The Laughing Policeman) when Maj Sjöwall visited the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2013, waited until 2019 to actually start reading and reviewing the series in order. In my review of Roseanna I stated… | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/59fb7a4ba24c2aff31da10fbf91b80162ee0c3399eb94fced77a5d6dc2b260da?s=32 | Lizzy's Literary Life (Volume One) | https://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2022/01/20/the-martin-beck-series-2-and-3-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-nordicfinds-sweden/ | I bought the 10 book set in 2009 from the sadly defunct Book People. Starting reading with book 4 (the most famous, The Laughing Policeman) when Maj Sjöwall visited the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2013, waited until 2019 to actually start reading and reviewing the series in order. In my review of Roseanna I stated I wouldn’t wait another decade until I reviewed the next. I’ve kept my word – it’s been 3 years. I don’t know why these books wait so long for me to pick them up. Police procedurals which inspired the great Henning Mankell to created Kurt Wallander, written in the mid-1960s before technology made information accessible at the push of a button, and mobile phones made everyone available all of the time …
I picked book 2, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966 trans. Joan Tate) for Annabel’s #NordicFinds (Sweden Week) because I like cold books in the winter months. So it was a bit of a surprise to find myself transported to a hot summery Budapest. Not complaining, I love Budapest, especially in the heat of summer, so wandering the streets with Martin Beck was most enjoyable. Wandering being the opportune word …. Martin Beck finds himself alone in Budapest searching for a missing Swedish journalist. The operation is hush, hush because the authorities, seeking to avoid a diplomatic incident, want the man found before the story hits the Swedish newspapers. (Which given the man’s profession, it could do at any moment.) So Beck is sent out alone, to stay in the hotel the man disappeared from. The only other clue he has is that there is a female in the mix …
It is a case of getting nowhere fast, until he is approached by Vilmos Szluka of the Hungarian police. Now this being the 1960s with Hungary a firmly Communist state, Beck is suspicious, particularly as he feels he has been under surveillance from the moment he arrived. However, turns out it’s not the Hungarian police he needs to be fearful of …
Well, it wouldn’t do for two left-wing authors to show communist authorities in a bad light, would it? In fact, they show them to be a model of efficiency – frightening efficiency, in fact. Pivotal in saving Beck’s life and helping him uncover a drugs ring he found but wasn’t looking for! As for the missing journalist … Beck’s own team back in Sweden are key to solving that mystery; the point being that solving crime takes cooperation and team work. Beck may be the boss but he’s not a genius, and without the others, he really would be wandering the streets of Budapest, lost, clueless and utterly ineffective.
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke is my first 5* read of 2022 – it’s probably a solid 4* but I awarded the fifth star for two reasons: the vicarious sightseeing of Budapest and the terrific play on words of the title. I can think of multiple ways in which it can be interpreted, but I’m not telling! Anyway, I enjoyed it so much, I immediately picked up book number 3.
The Man on The Balcony (1967, trans. Alan Blair) is firmly set in a Stockholm under double threat. Firstly there’s the mugger, callous and brutal, and then there’s the serial killer, who assaults and kills small girls. The novel is dealing with serious issues, but the authors exercise restraint with their depiction of the crimes. Only one mugging is shown in real time. It is shocking. It suffices. The assaults on the girls are never shown, only the aftermath with much empathy extended to the bereaved mothers, and the poor police officers who have to watch over the broken corpses and break the tragic news.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s objective was to show the true face of policing: long hours, hard work, the emotional toll on both victims of crime and the police themselves. They do so in matter of fact but powerful prose. Despite Beck’s team’s dedication, manually sifting through hundreds of tip-offs, catching both culprits depends in a large measure on lucky breaks. Normally I wouldn’t like these kind of convenient plot twists, but how often do we hear of small and not-so-small coincidences cracking cases wide open?
In addition to the realism of the police procedural, these novels are filled with astute and profound human psychology. Martin Beck isn’t, at this point, the typical divorced inspector with alcohol problems, and I have no idea if that is where he is heading (so don’t tell me). However, the growing estrangement between himself and his wife is clear: her dissatisfaction at being left alone for long periods; his choosing to leave her that way. (He could have turned down the assignment to Budapest, but he didn’t.) In The Man on The Balcony, the wife of one of a newly-married colleagues is pregnant, and the contrast between the two marriages is made apparent when the men return home exhausted. It doesn’t bode well for Beck, and I’ll find out soon what happens next. I’ve decided this is the series I’ll be finishing in 2022, a cool 13 years after I purchased it! | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 80 | https://malwarwick-98471.medium.com/the-best-nordic-noir-mysteries-and-thrillers-1a829a730a14 | en | The best Nordic noir mysteries and thrillers | [
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"Mal Warwick"
] | 2019-05-02T14:07:36.347000+00:00 | Nordic noir (or Scandinavian noir) is best known to the US reading public through the work of the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson. The trilogy posthumously launched in 2005 with the publication of… | en | https://miro.medium.com/v2/5d8de952517e8160e40ef9841c781cdc14a5db313057fa3c3de41c6f5b494b19 | Medium | https://malwarwick-98471.medium.com/the-best-nordic-noir-mysteries-and-thrillers-1a829a730a14 | Nordic noir (or Scandinavian noir) is best known to the US reading public through the work of the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson. The trilogy posthumously launched in 2005 with the publication of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (titled Men Who Hate Women in the original Swedish) sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. But the three novels of The Girl trilogy comprise just one of many excellent Nordic noir series, representing a tradition established decades earlier. Millions of copies of those series have also been sold around the world. Below I’ve listed what I believe to be the best Nordic noir series. They’re listed in chronological order of publication of the first novel in each series. That date is followed by the country of origin and the name of the series’s protagonist.
The genre also includes a number of notable standalone novels. The most prominent of these are Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Danish author Peter Høeg (1992) and The Crow Girl (2016) by the Swedish duo who write under the name Erik Axl Sund. In fact, The Crow Girl was published as a trilogy in the original Swedish edition. (My review of The Crow Girl is at Pedophiles, serial murder, and the Holocaust in a Swedish psychological thriller.)
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (1965) — Sweden: Martin Beck
Nordic noir is universally regarded as originating in the ten police procedurals Sjöwall and Wahlöö published from 1965 to 1975. The novels nominally center on the life and work of Stockholm police detective Martin Beck but frame him as one member of the homicide commission of the Swedish national police. Forty-eight films have been based on the books (most of them for television). The Swedish couple, both Leftists, laid out the whole series from the outset. Their purpose was to dramatize the economic and political challenges facing Swedish society, thus setting the tone for many of the Scandinavian noir series that followed in later years. My review of Roseanna, the excellent first novel in the series, is at Today’s Scandinavian detective fiction started here.
Henning Mankell (1991) — Sweden: Kurt Wallander
In nine novels, a novella, and a book of short stories, the late Henning Mankell explored the troubled life of Inspector Kurt Wallander in Ystad, a small medieval town on Sweden’s southern coast. Wallander is an alcoholic and prone to deep depression. The shocking murders he investigates bring to the surface the harsh social problems of contemporary Swedish society, especially the racism directed at African and Middle Eastern refugees. Mankell divided his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where he lived during half of each year as the artistic director of Teatro Avenida. He was an outspoken Left-Wing activist. Mankell was a prolific writer who produced a book of essays, eight children’s books, four original screenplays, and eighteen adult novels in addition to the Wallender series. You’ll find my review of The Troubled Man, the final volume in the Kurt Wallender series, at Farewell Kurt Wallender, we’re sad to see you go.
Jo Nesbø (1997) — Norway: Harry Hole
The bestselling author of Nordic Noir writing today is the Norwegian phenomenon, Jo Nesbø. A former economist and reporter, Nesbø is the vocalist and songwriter for a Norwegian rock band as well as the man behind Oslo detective Inspector Harry Hole. Between 1997 and 2018, Nesbø published eleven Harry Hole thrillers and twelve other novels (five of them for children). Harry Hole is an alcoholic and sometime drug addict who frequently collides with his superiors and colleagues. His investigations usually take place in Norway, but the novels also carry him to such far-flung locales as Australia, Hong Kong, and the Republic of the Congo. My review of The Snowman, the superb seventh entry in the series, is at Harry Hole investigates a two-decade-long string of serial murders.
Camilla Läckberg (2003) — Sweden: Patrik Hedström and Erica Falck
Camilla Läckberg’s crime thrillers are set in her hometown, Fjällbacka, a small summer resort on Sweden’s west coast, not far from the Norwegian border to the north. The locale offers the opportunity of introducing a parade of new characters who don’t live there year-round, thus allowing Läckberg to avoid having to find an implausible number of culprits among the few hundred local people. Her books have been translated into at least forty languages in 60 countries; she is reputed to be the bestselling author writing in Swedish. Her stories center around the evolving relationship of detective Patrik Hedström and true-crime writer Erica Falck. I reviewed one of the Fjällbacka novels, The Drowning, at Another solid series of Scandinavian thrillers.
Stieg Larsson (2005) — Sweden: Lisbet Salander and Kalle Blomkvist
Upon his shocking death in 2004 at the age of fifty, Stieg Larsson left behind three novels in the Millennium Trilogy along with with notes indicating his plan to write seven additional books in the series. (My review of The Girl Who Played with Fire, the second novel in the series, is at Lisbeth Salander stars again in an engrossing murder mystery.) Legal disputes about the disposition of Larsson’s estate were tied up in Swedish courts for several years. Eventually, in 2015, a fourth novel featuring Lisbet Salander and Kalle Blomkvist (The Girl in the Spider’s Web) appeared in 2015, written by Swedish crime writer David Lagercrantz. A fifth (The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye) appeared in 2017. (I’ve reviewed both of those novels as well. You’ll find them at More than 10 years after Stieg Larsson’s death, Lisbeth Salander returns! and Stieg Larsson’s “girl” is back: the Millennium series continues, respectively.)
Jussi Adler-Olsen (2007) — Denmark: Department Q
Humor is rare in Nordic noir but it surfaces with some frequency in the Department Q series written by Jussi Adler-Olsen. Detective Inspector Carl Mørck is a virtual outcast in the Copenhagen police. He has a way of alienating almost everyone else on the force. To isolate him, his bosses have assigned him to the basement to run a new, cold-case unit called Department Q and dumped two misfits into his lap as his “assistants.” Both prove to be brilliant if unconventional detectives in their own right. Their interaction with Mørck is often very, very funny. But there’s nothing amusing about the gruesome serial murder cases that Department Q investigates. Check out my review of the chilling fifth book in the series, The Marco Effect, at Child soldiers, bank fraud, and eccentric police in a Danish thriller.
Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis (2008) — Denmark: Nina Borg
Most of the best Scandinavian noir series feature police investigators. Not so the four novels in the disappointingly short series centered on neurotic Danish Red Cross nurse Nina Borg. When I interviewed the coauthors at the Bay Area Book Festival in 2016, it appeared to me that the two women had little interest in continuing their collaboration. However, I hope I was wrong. Borg is one of the most compelling protagonists I’ve encountered in Nordic noir, and the crime investigations in which she becomes involved invariably bring to light a fascinating and complex backstory set far from Denmark. The series includes stories grounded in such countries as Hungary, Ukraine, and the Philippines. My review of The Considerate Killer, the fourth and (so far) final volume in the Nina Borg series, is at An outstanding Danish thriller.
I’ve also read books by several other widely recognized authors of Scandinavian noir that did not move me to read their full series. Those included Sara Blaedel of Denmark (the Louise Rick series), Yrsa Sigurdardottir of Iceland (Thóra Gudmundsdóttir series), Arnaldur Indridason (Inspector Erlandur), Vidar Sundstøl (Minnesota Trilogy), and Jørgen Brekke (Odd Singsaker).
For additional reading
You might also enjoy my posts:
Top 10 mystery and thriller series;
20 excellent standalone mysteries and thrillers; and
20 outstanding detective series from around the world.
For an abundance of great mystery stories, go to Top 20 suspenseful detective novels (plus 200 more). And if you’re looking for exciting historical novels, check out Top 10 historical mysteries and thrillers reviewed here (plus 100 others). | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 35 | https://dorsetbookdetective.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/the-top-five-best-martin-beck-novels-to-give-you-a-glimpse-of-the-founding-father-of-scandinavian-crime-fiction/ | en | The Top Five Best Martin Beck Novels To Give You A Glimpse Of The Founding-Father of Scandinavian Crime Fiction | [
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] | null | [] | 2019-01-29T00:00:00 | As I explore the upcoming novels of 2019 and the treats in store for the coming year I cannot help but noticing the changing trends in the literary market. A few years ago Scandinavian Crime Fiction was all the rage: today, British and American authors dominate the genre, with a number of Scandinavian authors among… | en | The Dorset Book Detective | https://dorsetbookdetective.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/the-top-five-best-martin-beck-novels-to-give-you-a-glimpse-of-the-founding-father-of-scandinavian-crime-fiction/ | As I explore the upcoming novels of 2019 and the treats in store for the coming year I cannot help but noticing the changing trends in the literary market. A few years ago Scandinavian Crime Fiction was all the rage: today, British and American authors dominate the genre, with a number of Scandinavian authors among the few to be published in English and noted by the UK’s bookselling community.
This seems a shame, but I was heartened to see that some fondness for Scandinavian Crime Fiction remains, with fabled writers such as Jo Nesbo continuing to make their mark. As the New Year begins and the weather is freezing I have been re-reading some Scandinavian Crime Fiction classics, which bought me back to some of my old favourites.
Among these is the founding father of Scandinavian Crime Fiction, a Stockholm based detective named Martin Beck, the creation of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Their works spanned ten novels, each of which forms a chapter of his life. Dialogue plays a large part in each book, with whole chapters often dedicated to discussions between either Beck and his colleagues or his suspects. The way in which Beck interacts with the world around him and tries to find order in the chaos of the horrific crimes he investigates is similar to that of Maigret, Georges Simenon’s renowned Parisian inspector, and as such he’d make a great read for anyone who’s a fan of Simenon’s pipe-smoking, dour detective.
Additionally, for those who made it a New Years Resolution to check out a new series or revisit the beginnings of a genre, Martin Beck will be perfect. Whilst I appreciate that the ten novels are meant to be read in sequence, I personally very rarely follow this, and as such I feel some are simply better than others and worth reading first. If you like them you could always buy all ten and read them in sequence later!
5. Murder at the Savoy: The direct translation for this novel’s title is actually Police, Police, Mashed Potatoes!, which is part of the reason why I like it so much. It was also one of the first Martin Beck novels I ever read, and I am rather fond of it as a result. It is one of the more adventurous books in the series, following the investigation into the murder of a powerful businessman and ruthless arms dealer who is shot in a packed restaurant. With many enemies to sift through in order to find his killer Beck and his team have their work cut out, but the culprit turns out to be one of the least vicious and dastardly of all of the victim’s numerous unscrupulous associates, making for a great twist.
4. The Abominable Man: When a brutal and spiteful policeman is murdered in hospital Beck and his colleagues must explore the man’s past in order to understand how he came to be killed in such a violent and messy way. The ending is a great example of the authors’ chillingly brutal violent scenes, which are few and far between but are brilliantly choreographed to have the reader on tenterhooks throughout.
3. The Laughing Policeman: A classic case of a set of murders used to conceal one true killing, the novel centres around Beck’s hunt for the person who killed a colleague as part of a mass shooting. Having been shot on a bus Detective Åke Stenström’s death is treated as part of a mass shooting until Beck uncovers that he was in fact unofficially investigating a cold case in his spare time. An award-winning novel, this is one of the most renowned in the series and was even adapted into a comic book a few years ago.
2. Cop Killer: The return of a killer he previously convicted brings Martin Beck face-to-face with his past as he seeks to look beyond the obvious and find the true killer, whose identity is intrinsically linked to the murder of a policeman in an incident which is initially believed to be unrelated. A complicated yet less plodding mystery than others in the series, this is a great one to start with despite being 9th in the series. | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 60 | https://www.metacriticjournal.com/article/154/nature-aesthetics-space-in-contemporary-scandinavian-literature | en | Nature Aesthetics. Space in Contemporary Scandinavian Literature | [
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"Ovio Olaru"
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Abstract:
This paper attempts to undertake a geo-literary analysis of contemporary Scandinavian literature, departing from the pastoral nature representations of 19th century literary awakening and lingering on recent Scandinavian crime fiction, as this subgenre represents the Scandinavian peninsula’s latest contribution to World Literature and a “temporary sub-centre” (Mads Rosendahl Thomsen) of provisional international interest. Transcending both the idyllical natural setting of romanticism and the estrangement of modernism, Scandinavian literature succeeds in re-establishing the rural as predilect locus of narrative unfolding. The paper argues that the rural mise-en-scene is symptomatic for a broader ideological background, as it best reflects the ecological ethos that cuts across the peninsula’s history, from the nationalistic discourse of nature to the criticism directed against the dismantling of social-democracy under the pressure of neoliberalism.
Keywords: literary geography, Scandinavian literature, crime fiction, rural space, World Literature
Recommended citation: Olaru, Ovio. “Nature Aesthetics. Space in Contemporary Scandinavian Literature.” Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory 6.1 (2020):
For formatted text, please download as pdf (upper right).
The Scandinavian space has long been the object of foreign fascination, regardless if it acted as mere background for Norse mythology or if it represented the picturesque setting where the modern welfare-state mythology unfolded in all its chic IKEA glory. An instrumental element for the understanding of Scandinavian literature in its proper context is the employment of specifically Nordic topoi, the exoticism of which has become a staple of Nordic aesthetics. Frigid landscapes, elegant lines, the impression of clear-cut, uncompromising civility and good taste: a spatial utopia where the natural landscape, barely touched by human intervention, compliments the anthropomorphic landscape, whose “atmospheric architecture” (Böhme, Aesthetics) mimics and blends into the fjordscape (Austad and Hauge 372-400), with its forests, valleys, farmhouses and crystal-clear streams.
Nature and the natural setting were the crucial elements of 19th century Scandinavian literary discourse. For Norway in particular, the emphasis on the natural element proved to be fundamental in the creation of national specificity, as the country had ended a nearly 400-year period of Danish occupation and had signed its first official Constitution in 1814, thus setting off its literary rebirth with Henrik Wergeland’s nationalistic poetry, Peter Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe’s Folkeeventyr/ Folk Tales and, not least, with the emergence of ‘The Great Four’, namely Henrik Ibsen, Alexander Kielland, Jonas Lie and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Whereas the romantic rendition strategically focused on Scandinavian regional specificity, reviving Viking mythology and portraying farm culture, the realist and naturalist directions unsurprisingly prioritized the only considerable urban agglomerations of 19th century Scandinavia: Stockholm (in August Strindberg’s Röda Rummet/The Red Room), Copenhagen (in the Nobel Prize–winning Danish author Henrik Pontoppidan’s Lykke-Per/Lucky Per) and Christiania (in Hamsun’s Sult/ Hunger). This particular shift is in no way different from other transitions from romanticism to realism and naturalism in other major European literatures. Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, taking place, for the most part, in a generic Norwegian landscape, transitions to the unspecified urban milieu of A Doll’s House, in much the same way Chateaubriand’s Voyage en Amérique or Novalis’ Hymnen an die Nachtgive way to the Paris of Emile Zola’s The Ladies' Paradise. Yet the absence of proper feudal relations in Scandinavian history, as well as a greatly delayed industrialization (Swenson 513–544), coupled with a strong social-democratic tradition that prevented the exploitation of the working classes from taking place to the extent that it did in late 19th century Great Britain, France, or the German Principalities (Cipolla), made it so that the Nordic countries lacked naturalistic works such as Gerhart Hauptmann’s Die Weber/ The Weavers or Zola’s La Terre/ Earth. It is because of this that the portrayal of nature is free from naturalistic elements, as the imagery associated with the rural has never been reminiscent of class struggle, poverty, isolation, and obscurantism, but has always remained within the confines of the pastoral.
On the contrary, for a considerable amount time, the Nordic countries have embarked on a conscious and large-scale project of mending inequality through putting in place a comprehensive, humane welfare system rooted in late 19th century social democracy, borrowing elements of Lutheran dogma (Petersen 1-27), but not altogether estranged from radical leftist tendencies. The issues addressed during the period of Det moderne gennembrud/ The Modern Breakthrough (Brandes) (mostly referring to Denmark, by far the most influential of the three at that time, but extending to emerging Norway and Sweden as well, which have adopted the term, transforming it into Det moderne gjennombrudd in Norway and Det moderna genombrottet in Sweden, but retaining its pivotal aim, that of overcoming obsolete Romanticism and „att sætte samfundsproblemer under debatt», «putting social problems up for debate») by Georg Brandes around 1870 lay the foundations for the further developments of Scandinavian literature and culture. This was, from then on, to take a strongly social critical undertone, thoroughly debating contemporary social issues, even if, as was the case with Ibsen’s Doll House, that meant creating discontent with the cultural establishment.
The spatial turn at play in Scandinavian literature can be simplistically resumed to two opposing elements: the centre versus the periphery or a variation of this dichotomy. Symbolic spaces, transitional spaces, Foucauldian heterotopias (Foucault 22-27) or the intricacies of intimate “spaces we love” (Bachelard xxxv) analysed by Gaston Bachelard all fall into these two roughly outlined categories. Within Scandinavian literature, it was always the capital versus the picturesque small town and village, the seemingly borderless great outdoors – otherwise known as villmarka –versus the intimate, familiar, or – later, during modernism – claustrophobic urban setting. “The spacious sunlight of a Western, or the ill-lit claustrophobia of a film noir.” (Moretti 6) Franco Moretti speaks about how 20th century visual culture was dominated by the western and the noir in his Far Country. Historically, the contrast is played between the great, uncharted space of mid to late 19th century West America and the alienating urban agglomeration of Paris, “The Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” as Walter Benjamin would call it in his homonymous essay (Benjamin). The same goes for the alternating spatial imaginaries of Scandinavian literature: August Strindberg’s nature-inspired mysticism transforms into the alienating, corrupt Stockholm mirrored on the walls of the red dining room where the aspiring civil servant Arvid Falk finds refuge among the capital’s intelligentsia in The Red Room. Likewise, Knut Hamsun’s dehumanising landscape of poverty, hunger and voyeurism in Oslo in his 1890 Hunger is preceded by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s pastoral peasant novels published between 1857 and 1868 (Synnøve Solbakken (1857), Arne (1858), En glad Gut (A Happy Boy) in 1860, and Fiskerjentene (The Fisher Girls) in 1868). Henrik Pontoppidan’s Lucky Per is preceded by his Det forjættede Land/Emanuel, children of the Soil, published in three parts between 1891 and 1895.
The rural imagery is kept alive in the absence of a proper rural setting in Jon Fosse’s nynorsk dialect or in Tarjei Vesaas’ The Ice Palace, but transcends its formal function in Sigrid Undsett’s Kristin Lavransdatter, becoming a character of its own. Borrowing Maurice Blanchot’s aphorism, “to write is to surrender to the fascination of time's absence” (Blanchot 29), but Undset’s attention to detail and respect for historical authenticity in portraying 14th century Norway makes the spatio-temporal component of the book an entity of its own, so specific as to acquire agency, since the novel opens with the prophecy revealed to Kristin in her reflection on the surface of an eerie forest pond and ends with her death in a nunnery by the Black Plague that had reached the land in 1349. Turn-of-the-century Christiania is for Knut Hamsun’s Hunger what Stockholm becomes in Strindberg’s The Red Room and what Copenhagen represents for Henrik Pontoppidan’s Lucky Per: a character, by much the same fashion in which Paris is the second author of Balzac’s Human Comedy, Dublin is mirrored in Leopold Bloom’s every step in Ulysses and Venice is the fatalistic agent behind the narrator’s demise in Death in Venice. Franco Moretti proves it quite literally in his Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900, as well as in Graphs, Maps, and Trees: characters are often overshadowed by the powerful presence of the spaces they inhabit.
Even the most urban novelists such as Lars Saabye Christensen, depicting – throughout his entire career – life in the state capital of Norway, Oslo, resorts to many elements pertaining to pastoral imagery: not only is Oslo not a proper example of urban agglomeration, as the population density is quite low, the city is also a landscape of idyllic suburbia, as parks and recreational green spaces abound and as most of the city’s families live in houses; moreover, Lars Saabye Christensen’s narrator Barnum, from the 2001 Halvbroren/ The Half Brother, usually depicts the city through a thick nostalgic lens, “musealizating” (Lübbe) it, transforming it into an object of nostalgic fetishism for a space belonging rather to memory than geo-temporally definable. Christensen proves the “expansive historicism of our contemporary culture, a cultural present gripped with an unprecedented obsession with the past” (Huyssen 31), but he is not alone. Kim Leine’s 2012 Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden/ The Prophets of Eternal Fjord re-enacts with naturalistic accuracy the Danish missionary movement in Greenland, departing from the same barren and icy landscape described in Peter Høeg’s 1992 Frøken Smillas Fornemmelse for Sne/Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, which portrays, within a crime fiction story, the contemporary remnants of Danish colonialism in Greenland, as well as the remains of Danish welfare infrastructure. The death of Isaiah, the son of Smilla’s alcoholic neighbour, on account of him being chased off a rooftop during a snowy winter night is reminiscent of Hanne Ørstavik’s 1997 Kjærlighet/Love, set likewise during a dark winter night in the far North of Norway, or her 2000 novel Tiden det tar/The Time it Takes, where the cold and isolation act as metaphors for familial estrangement. All these novels, however, are preceded by Tarjei Vesaas’ 1963 Is-Slottet/ The Ice Palace, set in an unspecified northern village in Norway, depicting, from its very first paragraph, the outside as a cold, snowy, dark, inhospitable place, yet conserving the heterotopia of the Ice Palace itself, a thoroughly frozen cascade that acts as the novel’s central metaphor.
Scandinavian literature has retained its inherent pastoralism throughout its history, not least because of a deeply engrained preoccupation with healthy living and a strong relationship to nature, brought about by a marked eco-socialist education stressing the importance of civic duties, social cohesion, and respect for the environment. Nature writing – and natural settings, implicitly – is unsurprising in Norway, Sweden, Finland or Denmark, since the countries abound in undisturbed natural landscapes and a clear distinction between the rural and the urban is virtually non-existent due to an historically uniform economic development throughout their provinces. The underlying ecologism of Marxist theory claims that “it is capitalism which ardently defies the inherited separation of nature and society” (Smith 7). If so, the Scandinavian perception of space must be a pre-capitalist one or, following ecocritical interpretations, a post-capitalist one (Hennig, Jonasson, and Degerman), as they seem to have developed “‘a mature environmental aesthetics’” going “beyond the closed circuit of pastoral and antipastoral to achieve a vision of an integrated natural world that includes the human” (Gifford 148).
The triumph of the Scandinavian economic middle way, the high levels of subjective well-being recorded in the Nordic countries, the unprecedented levels of trust in the government and in fellow citizens (Rothstein 450), which have been a Nordic staple during much of Scandinavia’s post-war history (Hilson), have, however, slowly begun to subside, as private pressures in the economy have slowly eroded the welfare state and demasked its presumed bureaucratization, its suffocating paternalism, its lack of proficiency and overall failure in catering to the needs of the lower classes. Perhaps the most significant transformation that has taken place in Scandinavia regards not only the partial or total privatization of state-owned enterprises, but also the erosion of social cohesion, regarded by many as one of the most important factors behind the success of Nordic politics and as a significant component of regional specificity (Tsarouhas). This, in turn, has given rise to the strong emergence of a specifically Nordic crime fiction wave, better known under the name of Scandinavian Noir, which employs space in two ideologically opposing, yet very recognisable manners: the critical and the marketable, best summarized through Folkhemsnostalgin and Scandimania, respectively.
In the armchair tradition of crime fiction, emphasis was put on the murder scene: on scene in general, as the allure of intelligent entertainment armchair narratives provided made it necessary that every piece of furniture, every element of spatial nature mentioned en passant play a role in the decoding of the story. A loose button, an unorderly shirt collar, a book on the mantelpiece: not only is space not confined to geographical or even spatial cues per se, as the narrative is constructed in nonlinear fashion around a seemingly impenetrable murder scene, on which the subsequent narrative progression falls back, but it is an ideological statement, a relic of the Aristocratic conserved within the conventions of a bourgeois genre. More than a simple order of things displaced by murder, space in armchair detective novels is a world-order disturbed by a social phenomenon altogether foreign to it. Armchair detectives are, within the crime fiction genre, the equivalent of the mentally insane Christian Buddenbrook or typhus-stricken Hanno in The Buddenbrooks or Baron de Charlus being blackmailed by his servant lovers in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: the swan song of 19th century high bourgeoisie, confronted with the concreteness of a world just outside its borders.
However, in the hardboiled tradition that came to embody said world and that followed the Golden Age of armchair detectives, the ideology of space reflected the ideological shift of modernism itself: space became quintessentially urban, as Raymond Chandler set his private eye, Philip Marlowe, in Los Angeles, and as Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op and Sam Spade worked in San Francisco: the “mean streets” became the predilect locus for the archetypical figure of American exceptionalism, a generic “tough guy” (Abbott) for whom no challenge could be too great, a novelistic enclave abounding in “simple plots, the range and richness of formulaic metaphors” (Bercovitch 358).
In the police procedural subgenre that gained prominence after the hardboiled tradition, the urban space maintains its importance, as illustrated by Ed Mcbain’s 87th Precinct novels, set in the city of Isola, a fictionalized version of New York, or by Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret, from Paris. The metropolitan areas depicted show the tedium of police work in all its unspectacular glory, much like Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s 10 instalments of Roman om ett brott/ Novel about a crime do, combining the unfeigned brutality of rising criminality in Stockholm’s neighbourhoods with the bureaucratization and rigid hierarchy of the welfare state. The crime fiction duo is responsible for giving voice to a crucial sentiment cutting across the majority of Scandinavian crime fiction written in their wake: folkhemsnostalgin, designating the nostalgia after the Swedish – and Scandinavian through a generous extension – people’s home, a yearning after a corroded welfare state whose universal policies have not only created the long-term Scandinavian prosperity, but also generated, for a brief two-decades span after the Second World War, the promising image of a universalizable middle way between the two ideological poles of the Cold War. Departing from the idea that the welfare state has become a local rendition of international capitalism and that it ceased to cater to the needs of its own population, Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Roman om ett brott is placed, for the most part, in a notably urbanized, alienated Stockholm, comprised mainly of old, neglected and oftentimes uninhabitable apartment blocks, and populated by typologies of urban decay: pensioners living in extreme poverty, abandoned by the state, unemployed youngsters, alcoholics, drug users, and prostitutes. The entire setting is reminiscent of the noir aesthetic of Fritz Lang’s 1931 M, as the ten instalments of the book are as much a crime fiction novel as an anti-capitalist political statement. All throughout the books, capitalism is equated to moral degradation, alienation, and violence, regardless of whether we consider Roseanna, the young and promiscuous American woman whose murder opens the series, the murder spree taking place in an inner city bus, investigated by Martin Beck, or the underwhelming assassination of the Swedish prime-minister in the last book, Terroristerna/ The Terrorists, by a very young and very naïve woman disappointed by the state. In the series’ particular case, the urban setting is set against the backdrop of a yearned-for rural retreat, which materializes solely when Beck has to solve cases outside of Stockholm, a seldom occurrence. “The link between the supposed real and its fantasy representation was mainly woven by maps” (Westphal144), and the books abound in maps, as every investigation, home visit or route taken by patrolling “snutar” is closely observed and documented by means of street names and recognizable Stockholm landmarks. In part owing to a narrative strategy consciously employed by the two authors in socialist realist manner and part owing to the realist genre convention, the highly detailed description of Stockholm pushes the folkhemmet further away, as even reclusive and seemingly intangible rural settings become murder scenes, in Roseanna as well as in Polismördaren/Cop Killer, where the small town of Anderslöv offers a glimpse into a rural Scandinavia which is no longer rural in the proper sense, but which helps many Scandinavian Noir narrative voices (Håkan Nesser’s Van Veeteren, Camilla Läckberg’s Erika Falck or Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander, living out his alcoholism in the Swedish small town of Ystad) establish an emotional, nostalgia-laden bond to a socio-political system which has but almost entirely vanished. “Seemingly, this pastoral ideal extends all the way back to Eden, where each occasion for nostalgic longing is but another way to bemoan the present status quo” (Tally87): precisely this naïve conservatism lies at the heart of folkhemsnostalgin and transforms the initial wave of Scandinavian Noir authors, up until the 2004 publication of Stieg Larsson’s first instalment in the Millenium series, into representatives of an anti-reactionary return to the values that had established the modern Nordic welfare mythology, indeed, those that had turned it into an international political brand since as early as 1936 (Childs). Moreover, the employment of space continues the social-critical project of ‘The modern Breakthrough’ by inventing – making use of the genre’s conventions and inherent exaggerations – criminal worlds, which it then attempts to dismantle, showing glimpses of Scandinavian society’s presumed invisible underbelly – regardless of whether it is Sweden’s immigration policy in Henning Mankell’s 1991 Mördare utan ansikte/Faceless Killers, where a crime in an isolated farmhouse in Skåne by a killer presumed to be of foreign descent spurns a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment in the region, or in Karin Fossum’s 2000 Elskede Poona/Calling Out to You, where a recently emigrated Indian woman is killed in mysterious circumstances, or the networks of organized crime uncovered by Kurt Wallander in Mankell’s 1995 Villospår/Sidetracked.
Space as a site for critique usually entails either portraying the transformation of pastoral settings into crime scenes due to a general increase in criminality in countries where it has been traditionally low, an increase attributable to the weakening of the welfare state, or the transformation of otherwise peaceful urban milieus into alienating, materialistic metropoles or capitals of international crime.
The opposing stance refers to the employment of Scandinavian landmarks and recognizable tropes in a form of cultural tourism. Much like the interest in Scandinavian literature briefly kindled transnationally in the second half of the 19th century, as Ibsen’s plays were staged all throughout Europe and as Georg Brandes announced ‘the modern breakthrough’, or as Hans Christian Andersen gained the popularity that was to boost him among the top ten translated authors of all time (Talar xvi), Scandinavian crime fiction has once again become, to borrow Mads Rosendahl Thomsen’s expression, the “temporary sub-centre” (Thomsen 35) of international attention. A sub-centre inasmuch as it cannot threaten the canonical hegemony – not least because it belongs to a genre that has been long frowned upon as light entertainment –, the interest in the recent wave of Nordic crime writers is temporary to the extent that the modern book market is volatile and profit-driven, following international readership trends which, in turn, have determined authors to attempt to cater to mainstream tastes and to renounce their uncompromising aesthetic autonomy; in this way, literary enclaves such as Scandinavian Noir fall out of fashion as swiftly as they gained their popularity in the first place, since the genre itself is exhausted by the very positive feedback loop it sets in motion. Crucial for the whole process of this internationalization is the creation of a “Scandimania” (Thomson and Nielsen 237-268) by means of a carefully staged marketing scheme engaging different elements of Nordic aesthetics, such as fjords, gloomy weather, endless forests, modern architecture, and isolated farmhouses amounting to a ‘mixture of bleak naturalism, disconsolate locations and morose detectives’(Creeber 21–35), but also elements pertaining to the perceived image of Scandinavian social-democracy: bureaucratization, hierarchy in the police force, and a carefully enacted procedure of crime-solving respected by nearly every novel.
The opposite of cultural tourism resumes itself to presenting the exotic as commonplace occurrence or omitting it altogether, as if its presence was natural, indeed, as if the author’s very Weltanschauung would not include it on account of it being too mundane. In this sense, the specifically Nordic elements become visible only as they are emphasized strategically in the attempt to turn them into a selling point. Borrowing the concept of “born translated” from Matthew Kirschenbaum, but changing its deeper connotations, I argue that some novels, besides being published in several languages simultaneously, are actually written specifically in order to be translated as soon as possible (Walkowitz). The usual practice of literary agents negotiating translations on behalf of the superstar authors they represent makes it so that, more often than not, translation rights are sold way before the very books are written. Even if written for translation in the hopes of acquiring an international reach and attention, Scandinavian Noir novels still retain their Nordic touch, in the sense that they extensively make use of Nordic tropes such as names, cultural traditions, Scandinavian social cues, poorly disguised hints of a specifically Scandinavian social system, with its inherent and implicit rules, and immediately recognizable Scandinavian concepts such as hygge – the ultimate Scandinavian spatial fetishism – or fika. They are, at a smaller scale, name-dropping with the aim of conserving a false Nordic exoticism about countries that are, in fact, not much different from the rest of Western Europe. In this way, the process of the novels’ international dissemination follows what I have called the cosmopolitan circuits of translation, comprised mainly of first-world countries, for whose readerships these references are being devised in the first place: cosmopolitan, educated, middle-class readerships that have to be appeased through recognizable, slightly exotic, but not altogether undecipherable tropes. “Buying the book, a reader becomes part of an international community. This perception adds to the book’s attraction” (Parks).
Alongside the commodification of Nordic imagery, the other predilect symbolic space employed as selling point for Scandinavian Noir novels is the state. There are two elements at play here. On the one hand, the genre is transforming agents of the state into charismatic, rebellious, troubled, idiosyncratic, or promiscuous figures meant to humanize the police force and indirectly cultivate readers’ sympathies for the all-protective and all-inclusive state itself. On the other hand, the state is, as Max Weber discusses in his Politics as a Vocation lecture, “regarded as the sole source of the "right" to use violence” (Weber 33). Therefore, the novels oftentimes depict its trusted hand, the police force, as being abusive, incompetent, corrupt or wanting, in order to provide a platform for fashionable anti-state critique, shared mostly among the more progressive, liberally inclined segments of the cosmopolitan readership:
In the wake of the radicalization of the genre in the 1960s and 1970s by writers like Chester Himes, Jean-Patrick Manchette, and Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, combined with a growing belief in the capacities of the crime novel to confront the ills of the system, certain novels offered more explicit critiques of state corruption and the surrender of the public ‘good’ to private interests (Pepper and Schmid 5).
In conclusion, regardless if we are talking about the touristic gaze of “Norientalism” (Hauge 237-255) deeply rooted in 19th century travelogues and the commodification of tourism (Sondrup, Sandberg, DuBois, and Ringgaard 481), or about an artificial protest against the neoliberal overtake through the lingering of a folkhems-nostalgic sentiment and the emphasis of Nordic cultural exceptionalism, when we look at a historic cross section of Scandinavian literary tradition, one thing is clear: in Scandinavian culture (and implicitly also in the whole modern history of Scandinavian literature), the spatial tropes pertaining to the rural, the pastoral, and the natural, compose, alongside the literary subject, an “ecological nature-aesthetics” (Böhme, Naturästhetik). Within this understanding of space, man – and all his literary renditions: the detective, the urban voyeur, the historical figure, and the mythical hero – is organically linked to the space he inhabits. The Scandinavian representation of space has never been really affected by economically legitimated geoengineering attempts thanks to a constant preoccupation with environmentalism so deeply engrained in Scandinavian culture as to become unnegotiated cultural praxis most clearly visible in the field of literary representation.
References:
Abbott, Megan E. The Street Was Mine. White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Austad, Ingvild, Hauge, Leif. “The «Fjordscape» of Inner Sogn, Western Norway.” Nordic Landscapes. Region and Belonging on the Northern Edge of Europe.Jones, edited by Olwig Michael and Kenneth R, University of Minnesota Press, 2008: 372-400.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press, 2004.
Benjamin, Walter. The Writer of Modern Life. Essays on Charles Baudelaire. Harvard University Press, 2006.
Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Rites of Assent. Routledge, 1993: 358.
Blanchot, Maurice. The Space of Literature. Transl. by Ann Smock. University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
Böhme, Gernot. Für eine ökologische Naturästhetik. Suhrkamp, 1989.
Böhme, Gernot. The Aesthetics of Atmospheres. Routledge, 2017.
Brandes, Georg. Hovedstrømninger i det 19de aarhundredes litteratur. Emigrantlitteraturen, second revised edition. Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, 1877.
Childs, Marquis William. Sweden: The Middle Way. Yale University Press, 1936.
Cipolla, Carlo M. (ed.). The Fontana Economic History of Europe. The Emergence of Industrial Societies. Part 1. Fontana/Collins, 1973.
Creeber, Glen. “Killing Us Softly: Investigating the Aesthetics, Philosophy and Influence of Nordic Noir Television.” Journal of Popular Television 3(1)/ 2015: 21–35.
Foucault, Michel. “Des Espaces Autres (Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias).” Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, no. 5 (October 1984): 46–49; trans. by Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring, 1986): 22–27.
Gifford, Terry. Pastoral. Routledge, 1999.
Hauge, Hans. "Det grønlandske spøgelse: Peter Høegs Smilla." Spring: Tidsskrift for Dansk Litteratur 22/2004: 237-255.
Hennig, Reinhard, et al. Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment: Ecocritical Approaches to Northern European Literatures and Cultures. Lexington Books, 2018.
Hilson, Mary. The Nordic Model. Scandinavia Since 1945. London: Reaktion Books, 2008.
Huyssen, Andreas. "Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia." Public Culture 12, no. 1, 2000: 21-38.
Kirschenbaum, Matthew. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Cambridge, MIT Press, 2008.
Lübbe, Hermann. Zeit-Verhältnisse: Zur Kulturphilosophie des Fortschritts. Styria Verlag, 1983.
Moretti, Franco. Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900. Verso, 1998.
Moretti, Franco. Far Country. Scenes from American culture. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2019.
Parks, Tim. “The Dull New Global Novel.” The New York Review of Books, February 9, 2010, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2010/02/09/the-dull-new-global-novel [10.05.2020].
Pepper, Andrew, and David Schmid (eds.). Globalization and the State in Contemporary Crime Fiction. A World of Crime. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Petersen, Jørn Henrik. “Martin Luther and the Danish Welfare State.” Lutheran Quarterly, Volume 32, Number 1, Spring 2018: 1-27.
Rothstein, Bo. “Happiness and the Welfare State.” Social Research: An International Quarterly, Volume 77, Number 2, Summer 2010: 441-468.
Saarela, Tauno. "Communism in Scandinavia." Twentieth Century Communism, no. 8, 2015: 89-107.
Sjøli, Hans Petter. “Maoism In Norway and how the AKP(m–l) made Norway more Norwegian.” Scandinavian Journal of History, 33:4, 2008: 478-490, DOI: 10.1080/03468750802519982.
Smith, Neil. Uneven Development. Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space, 3rd edition, The University of Georgia Press, 2008.
Sondrup, Steven P., et al. Nordic Literature. A comparative history. Volume 1: spatial nodes. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017
Swenson, Peter. “Bringing Capital Back In, or Social Democracy Reconsidered: Employer Power, Cross-Class Alliances, and Centralization of Industrial Relations in Denmark and Sweden.” World Politics, 43(04)/ 1991: 513–544, DOI: 10.2307/2010535.
Talar, Maria. “Denmark’s Perfect Wizard. The Wonder of Wonders.” The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, edited by Maria Tartar, Norton. 2008, xvi., cited in Sanders, Karin. “A Man of the World: Hans Christian Andersen.” Danish Literature as World Literature, edited by Dan Ringgaard and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen (eds.), Bloomsbury Academic, 2017: 91-114.
Tally, Robert T. Spatiality. Routledge, 2012: 87.
Thomsen, Mads Rosendahl. Mapping World Literature. International canonization and transnational literatures. Bloomsbury Academic, 2009: 35.
Thomson, C. Claire, Stougaard-Nielsen, Jakob. “‘A faithful, attentive, tireless following’: Cultural Mobility, Crime Fiction and Television Drama.” Danish Literature as World Literature, edited by Dan Ringgaard and Thomsen, Mads Rosendahl, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017: 237-268.
Tsarouhas, Dmitris. Social Democracy in Sweden. The Threat from a Globalized World. Tauris Academic Studies, 2008.
Upton, Anthony. The Communist Parties of Scandinavia and Finland. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973.
Walkowitz, Rebecca L. Born Translated. The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature. Columbia University Press, 2015.
Weber, Max. The Vocation Lectures, Edited and with an Introduction by David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, Trans. by Rodney Livingstone. Hackett Publishing Company, 2004.
Westphal, Bertrand. The Plausible World. A Geocritical Approach to Space, Place, and Maps. Trans. by Amy D. Wells. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. | |||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 96 | https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/07/27/stieg-larsson-and-the-writers-who-influenced-him | en | Stieg Larsson and the Writers Who Influenced Him | https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_97,w_174,x_0,y_0/dpr_2.0/c_limit,w_740/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1493072140/articles/2010/07/27/stieg-larsson-and-the-writers-who-influenced-him/weinman-crime-ficiton_116012_zyxgoq | https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_97,w_174,x_0,y_0/dpr_2.0/c_limit,w_740/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1493072140/articles/2010/07/27/stieg-larsson-and-the-writers-who-influenced-him/weinman-crime-ficiton_116012_zyxgoq | [
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] | 2010-07-27T00:00:00 | Before The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels, a Swedish couple wrote a series of detective novels (featuring an abused woman) that had an eerie influence on Larsson. Sarah Weinman on the original Scandinavian crime sensation. | en | data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAIAAACQkWg2AAABPUlEQVQoz6WSv6rCMBTGOymCIL6BizqIgvgHBRdxcPYJxNkHEDd1EhUclE6uPoKzu4OggoKP4CC3JqZNbJqbGKk3XVq4IcPJB7/DOV8+DdbrP6GQvEYk8kgm8WLBKFX0aBTkcni5ZIxp/M3cQyk9n2GthnVd0V8vejjAcpms13+A+53ZtqD2e5DPu7pzu/FGgtpsnq3WF4CNhtXviwpjIxZzdZDJ4NlMNDoeQamkAKjTkbUc3QXMdyN6OoFCIRBgDQZyVFip+APcAHq98oLoOmq3/YHPQQhWq9Zo5A/Y260wSu6QSgXbodd7ozb/2WAudbuu/g/g2Wzi8VhUpmnE48pIw6EMCA+V5nWDj7rbgWLxqyP0CRpfOptVAULk75DVyhvKy4XnF8/nmifeIJ3G0ylzHEUPhx+JBJ5MuFG/5/Ynabxw9yEAAAAASUVORK5CYII= | The Daily Beast | https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/07/27/stieg-larsson-and-the-writers-who-influenced-him | The global phenomenon that is Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has been nothing short of awe-inspiring—all the more so since the author has been dead for almost six years. Starting with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Larsson's thrillers have sold more than 40 million copies to date, and here in the U.S., the Swedish author's books are the first novels-in-translation to top bestseller lists in recent memory. No wonder the media's looking for the next big Scandinavian thriller writer to anoint—and if that doesn't work, perhaps some other country will produce the next hot commercial property.
One more cruel irony links Sjöwall and Wahlöö with Larsson: Because Sjöwall and Wahlöö never married, and he never formally adopted her daughter, she hasn’t earned any royalties from the books.
But before Stieg, before Henning Mankell, even before the so-called Scandinavian crime wave first took hold in mystery-community circles years ago and exploded over the last 12 months (helped immeasurably by the movies starring Noomi Rapace as the ass-kicking, ever-taciturn hacker heroine Lisbeth Salander—and a forthcoming American remake helmed by David Fincher), there was one singular team of common-law-married journalists who shaped that very crime wave with a 10-book arc—and also changed the world of crime fiction forever.
Like Larsson, this couple, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, set out to unearth and expose the darker undercurrents of a supposedly placid Swedish society. Like Larsson, they made clear their sympathies with the disenfranchised and let their leftist political leanings show in plain and pointed strokes. Their narrative methods are different, but their influence upon Larsson, and the genre as a whole, produces downright eerie parallels.
Before embarking on what became The Story of Crime, Per Wahlöö was a noted crime reporter and novelist in his own right, while Maj Sjöwall, a decade younger, was a seasoned journalist but novice fiction writer. At night, after their children were asleep, they carefully planned out and executed what in hindsight is extraordinary: 10 police procedurals that are just as much about crime investigation as they are about its detective, Martin Beck, and about Swedish society in a very tumultuous time, completed right before Wahlöö's untimely 1975 death of cancer, at age 48. Their debut Roseanna (1965) was a wonderful surprise when I first read it a couple of years ago because the prose was so assured, not a word was wasted, and as Mankell points out in the introduction to the reissued edition, it's one of the first crime novels where time itself plays a major role.
By that he means, and I soon discovered, that the pacing is languid and perfectly in keeping with real police procedure. The titular murder victim in question is unidentified for months, and her killer not apprehended for many more months afterward. In middle age and of middling height, Beck is the antithesis of a superhero. He doesn't charm anyone, is prone to indecision about his personal life, and has depressive tendencies. But what makes him an outstanding detective is his quiet doggedness, and his ability to circle again and again on the most minute details until the pearl of a clue is given up like the proverbial oyster.
And over the course of all 10 books, Sjöwall and Wahlöö keep time as close to then-current events. The far-off Vietnam War provokes passionate conversation. Computers are introduced, somewhat reluctantly for Beck and his policing compatriots, to offer the illusion of a centralized force. Fashions change as Martin ditches more formal wear for the more casual fare favored in the late 1960s. And Martin transforms from unhappily married father of two into a more content, divorced bachelor tentatively exploring new romance with a more free-spirited social worker.
Above all, the books are about violence, and about the failures of a capitalist society to prevent the seeds from flowering into deadly plants—sound familiar? With scalpel-like precision, Sjöwall and Wahlöö examine a spate of horrors that aren't supposed to strike a peaceful burg like Stockholm: serial child killings ( The Man on the Balcony), mass murder on a bus ( The Laughing Policeman), which won an Edgar Award and is arguably the best known of the series), the murder of a policeman with unsavory secrets ( The Abominable Man), and in The Terrorists, the last and most overtly political of the novels, an eerily prescient series of crimes against political figures, homegrown and foreign.
Taken as a whole, The Story of Crime set the mold for how crime fiction needed to develop in a more socially progressive time. While Sjöwall and Wahlöö took some cues from American mystery novels, most obviously the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain (though the duo wouldn't admit this particular influence for years), mostly they worked in their own stubborn vacuum, convinced their way of storytelling was the true one. As a 2009 Guardian profile of Sjöwall, now 75, pointed out, we are so accustomed to the now-clichéd depressed detective prone to drink that it's easy to forget that Beck was the prototype—and that his freshness makes many of his literary descendants seem trite.
The end of the arc struck the most overt notes with respect to Sjöwall and Wahlöö's political leanings (the final word of the series, after all, is "Marx") and The Terrorists, in particular, is a near-effortless bridge point between their chief concerns and those that play out in contemporary Scandinavian crime fiction—especially Stieg Larsson's novels. The bullheaded actions of the Security Police (Säpo) could easily give way to the rogue group dubbed the “Zalachenko Club” that, according to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, would have begun only a year after The Terrorists was published. Martin Beck's world-weary demeanor is tested by authority figures more concerned with actions smacking of latter-day security theater and the absence of his best friend and former partner Kollberg, recently resigned when his leftist leanings no longer fit the law-and-order bill.
But the earliest seeds for Larsson's fictional pursuits strike the clearest note with Rebecka Lind, a young woman ill at ease in the world, neglected and abused by the system and by men closest to her, whose initial alleged criminal actions are both unwitting and grossly misinterpreted such that later misdeeds are shocking and sadly inevitable. "For a pure-hearted thinking person," says Lind's lawyer at one point, "a system such as ours must be incomprehensible and hostile."
Lind found a way to fight and was punished, a sober reminder that justice doesn't prevail. Salander, her kindred spirit, possesses many of the same traits and faces similar abuses by the system, is redeemed as an avenging-angel type, more superheroine than heroine. Larsson's treatment of Salander feels like a direct response to Sjöwall and Wahlöö's more understated, frustration-borne treatment of reality. (The film version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo even presented an ironic in-joke, casting Peter Haber—who has portrayed Martin Beck on Swedish TV and film for over a decade—in a pivotal, villainous role.)
"Violence has rushed like an avalanche throughout the whole of the Western world over the last 10 years. You can't stop or steer that avalanche on your own. It just increases. That's not your fault." Those words seem as if they could have come straight from one of the Millenium novels had they continued to Larsson's planned 10 books—another instance of taking a cue from his crime-writing elders. One more cruel irony links Sjöwall and Wahlöö with Larsson: Because Sjöwall and Wahlöö never married, and he never formally adopted her daughter, she hasn't earned any royalties from the books, which are published globally and have never been out of print in the United States.
Plus: Check out Book Beast, for more news on hot titles and authors and excerpts from the latest books. | ||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 7 | https://www.orderofbooks.com/authors/per-wahloo/ | en | Order of Per Wahloo Books | [
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"Brando"
] | 2013-07-24T04:00:49+00:00 | This is the Order of Per Wahloo Books in both chronological order and publication order. List verified daily and newest books added immediately. | en | /apple-touch-icon-57x57.png | https://www.orderofbooks.com/authors/per-wahloo/ | Per Wahloo (1926-1975) was a Swedish author of crime fiction. He is sometimes referred to as “Peter” in English. Per is best known for his work as one half of the writing team of Sjowall and Wahloo along with common law partner and fellow Marxist Maj Sjowall. Together, they wrote the Martin Beck series. Their novel The Laughing Policeman won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1971. Before becoming an author, Per worked as a crime reporter. He died at age 48 of cancer in Malmo, Sweden.
Per Wahloo made his debut as a novelist in 1962 with The Lorry (aka A Necessary Action). His final novel was The Terrorists, published in 1976, which was co-authored by Sjowall. Below is a list of Per Wahloo’s books in order of when they were originally released:
Publication Order of Inspector Jensen Books
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Publication Order of Martin Beck Books
(with Maj Sjöwall)
Publication Order of Anthologies
Notes: The Martin Beck series was co-authored by Maj Sjowall. The Laughing Policeman was also published as Investigation of Murder. The Lorry was also titled A Necessary Action.
If You Like Per Wahloo Books, You’ll Love…
Jo Nesbo
Asa Larsson
Henning Mankell
Per Wahloo Synopsis: In A Necessary Action by Per Wahloo, Willi Mohr is a former soldier in the German army, a starving artist and a drifter. He has been arrested and interrogated about the time he recently spent in Spain, including the deaths of a Norwegian couple he shared a house with. He soon realizes that he himself has implicated himself in something much bigger than he is. | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 37 | https://www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781526176455/9781526176455.00022.xml | en | Who is the man on the roof? | [
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"Roy Stafford"
] | 2024-05-28T00:00:00 | Some 1970s audiences in the UK might have known the name Ingmar Bergman, almost synonymous with the idea of a dark and twisted Swedish art film. But Bergman did not make films with many thrills or with much concern about contemporary politics. However, there is a direct link during the 1970s to the modern idea of Nordic Noir and it concerns a pair of Swedish writers who conceived a new kind of police hero in the 1960s, one who would become the character who did not just catch the bad guys but went about the job in a way that exposed political problems. And this character, a ‘revolutionary’ in terms of crime fiction, would not only survive and thrive in his contemporary world of crime fiction but would also act as a direct inspiration for many of the writers and filmmakers who produced works of Nordic Noir from 1990 onwards. This chapter explores the film adaptation of one of the novels featuring this ‘political detective’, Martin Beck. | en | /fileasset/fileasset/Hexagon.png | manchesterhive | https://www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781526176455/9781526176455.00022.xml | You are not authenticated to view the full text of this chapter or article.
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7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 19 | https://theperiodicfable.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/sjowall-and-wahloos-great-martin-beck-series/ | en | Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Great Martin Beck Series | [
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"Joe Linton"
] | 2011-03-10T00:00:00 | In the stress of work for the upcoming April 10th 2011 CicLAvia event, I've been looking for something easy to read - the literary equivalent of comfort food. So I've starting to re-read the series of ten Martin Beck police novels, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. These are a slightly different genre than other P. D. James and… | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/753731f678ac55d269993b45ec3138226386edc69bfbf433a93c7ffbaf547b95?s=32 | THE PERIODIC FABLE | https://theperiodicfable.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/sjowall-and-wahloos-great-martin-beck-series/ | Kollberg felt slightly sick at the thought of the task ahead of him. It was disagreeable at least. He had been forced into similar tasks before, but now, in the case of a child, the ordeal was worse than ever. If only Martin had been here, he thought; he’s much better at this sort of thing than I am. Then he remember how depressed Martin Beck had always seemed in situations like this, and followed up the train of thought: hah, it’s just as hard for everyone, whoever has to do it.
The apartment house where the dead girl had lived was obliquely opposite Vanadis Park, in the block between Surbrunnsgatan and Frejgatan. The elevator was out of order and he had to walk up the five flights. He stood still for a moment and got his breath before ringing the doorbell.
The woman opened the door almost at once. She was dressed in a brown cotton housecoat and sandals. Her fair hair was tousled, as if she had been pushing her fingers through it over and over again. When she saw Kollberg her face fell with disappointment, then her expression hovered between hope and fear.
Kollberg showed his identity card and she gave him a desperate, inquiring look.
“May I come in?”
The woman opened the door wide and stepped back.
“Haven’t you found her?” she said.
Kollberg walked in without answering. The apartment seemed to consist of two rooms. The outer one contained a bed, bookshelves, desk, TV set, chest of drawers and two armchairs, one on each side of a low teak table. The bed was made, presumably no one had slept in it that night. On the blue bedspread was a suitcase, open, and beside it lay piles of neatly folded clothes. A couple of newly ironed cotton dresses hung over the lid of the suitcase. The door of the inner room was open; Kollberg caught sight of a blue-painted bookshelf with books and toys. On top sat a white teddy bear.
“Do you mind if we sit down?” Kollberg asked, and sat in one of the armchairs.
The woman remained standing and said:
“What has happened? Have you found her?”
Kollberg saw the dread and panic in her eyes and tried to keep quite calm.
“Yes” he said. “Please sit down, Mrs. Carlsson. Where is your husband?”
She sat in the armchair opposite Kollberg.
“I have no husband. We’re divorced. Where’s Eva? What has happened?”
“Mrs. Carlsson, I’m terribly sorry to tell you this. Your daughter is dead.”
The woman stared at him.
“No,” she said. “No.”
Kollberg got up and went over to her.
“Have you no one who can be with you? Your parents?”
The woman shook her head.
“It’s not true,” she said.
Kollberg put his hand on her shoulder.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Carlsson,” he said lamely.
“But how? We were going to the country…”
“We’re not sure yet,” Kollberg replied. “We think that she … that she’s been the victim of …”
“Killed? Murdered?”
Kollberg nodded.
The woman shut her eyes and sat stiff and still. Then she opened her eyes and shook her head.
“Not Eva,” she said. “It’s not Eva. You haven’t … you’ve made a mistake.”
“No,” Kollberg said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Mrs. Carlsson. Isn’t there anyone I can call up? Someone I can ask to come here? Your parents or someone?”
“No, no, not them. I don’t want anyone here.”
“Your ex-husband?”
“He’s living in Malmö, I think.”
Her face was ashen and her eyes were hollow. Kollberg saw that she had not yet grasped what had happened, that she had put up a mental barrier which would not allow the truth past it. He had seen the same reaction before and knew that when she could no longer resist, she would collapse.
“Who is your doctor, Mrs. Carlsson?” Kollberg asked.
“Doctor Ström. We were there on Wednesday. Eva had had a tummy ache for several days and we were going to the country I thought I’d better …”
She broke off and looked at the doorway into the other room.
“Eva’s never sick as a rule. And she soon got over this tummy ache. The doctor thought it was a touch of the gastric influenza.”
She sat silent for a moment. Then she said, so softly that Kollberg could hardly catch the words:
“She’s all right again now.”
Kollberg looked at her, feeling desperate and idiotic. He did not know what to say or do. She was sitting with her face turned towards the open door into her daughter’s room. He was trying frantically to think of something to say when she suddenly got up and called her daughter’s name in a loud, shrill voice. Then she ran into the other room. Kollberg followed her.
The room was bright and nicely furnished. In one corner stood a red-painted box full of toys and at the foot of the narrow bed was an old-fashioned dollhouse. A pile of schoolbooks lay on the desk.
The woman was sitting on the edge of the bed, her elbows propped on her knees and face buried in her hands. She rocked to and fro and Kollberg could not hear whether she was crying or not.
He looked at her for a moment, then went out into the hall where he had seen the telephone. An address book lay beside it and in it, sure enough, he found Doctor Ström’s number.
The doctor listened while Kollberg explained the situation and promised to come within five minutes.
Kollberg went back to the woman, who was sitting as he had left her. She was making no sound. He sat down beside her and waited. At first he wondered whether he dared touch her, but after a while he put his arm cautiously around her shoulders. She seemed unaware of his presence.
They sat like this until the silence was broken by the doctor’s ring at the door. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 55 | https://thebookdecoder.com/series-in-order-martin-beck-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | en | Series in Order: Martin Beck by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö | [
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] | null | [] | 2023-12-11T02:36:10+00:00 | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's Martin Beck series in order | en | The Book Decoder | https://thebookdecoder.com/series-in-order-martin-beck-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | The Martin Beck series is a collection of ten police procedural novels written by Swedish authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö during the 1960s and 1970s. The series follows the protagonist, Martin Beck, a police inspector in Stockholm, Sweden.
The series is renowned for its extensive character and setting development throughout the books. The authors plotted and researched each book together, then wrote alternate chapters simultaneously. This careful planning resulted in a series that covers ten years in the life of Martin Beck.
The series became international bestsellers and have sold over 10 million copies. The character of Martin Beck has inspired countless other characters in crime fiction. The books have been adapted into films and television series, further cementing their influence in popular culture.
Martin Beck Mysteries in Order | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 57 | https://www.4thestate.co.uk/products/the-martin-beck-series-books-14-maj-sjowallper-wahloo-9780007503247/ | en | The Martin Beck Series: Books 1–4 | [
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] | null | [] | 2022-11-17T08:07:15+00:00 | Here, in one eBook volume, are the first four books in the hugely acclaimed Martin Beck series – novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime fiction and influenced writers from Stieg Larsson to Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell to Lars Kepplar. | en | 4th Estate | https://www.4thestate.co.uk/products/the-martin-beck-series-books-14-maj-sjowallper-wahloo-9780007503247/ | Here, in one eBook volume, are the first four books in the hugely acclaimed Martin Beck series – novels that shaped the future of Scandinavian crime fiction and influenced writers from Stieg Larsson to Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell to Lars Kepplar.
The first four novels in the Martin Beck series, available in one eBook volume.
‘Roseanna’: On a July afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from a lake in southern Sweden. Raped and murdered, she is naked, unmarked and carries no sign of her identity. As Detective Inspector Martin Beck slowly begins to make the connections that will bring her identity to light, he uncovers a series of crimes further reaching than he ever would have imagined and a killer far more dangerous. How much will Beck be prepared to risk to catch him?
‘The Man Who Went Up in Smoke’: 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.
‘The Man on the Balcony’: Someone is killing young girls in the once-peaceful parks of Stockholm – killing them after having his own way with them. The people of Stockholm are tense and fearful. Police Superintendent Martin Beck has two witnesses: a cold-blooded mugger who won’t say much and a three-year-old boy who can’t say much. The dedicated work of the police seems to be leading nowhere, and with each passing day the likelihood of another murder grows. But then Beck remembers someone – or something – he overheard.
‘The Laughing Policeman’: On a cold and rainy Stockholm night, nine bus riders are gunned down by an unknown assassin. The press, anxious for an explanation for the seemingly random crime, quickly dubs him a madman. But Martin Beck of the Homicide Squad suspects otherwise: this apparently motiveless killer has managed to target one of Beck’s best detectives – and he, surely, would not have been riding that lethal bus without a reason. | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 58 | https://www.criminalelement.com/the-laughing-policeman-edgars/ | en | Revisiting The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö | [
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"Abby Endler"
] | 2019-05-03T18:00:52+00:00 | Join Abby Endler for a look back at The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö—the Edgar Award winner in 1971 for Best Novel! | en | Criminal Element | https://www.criminalelement.com/the-laughing-policeman-edgars/ | For a Scandinavian crime fiction devotee like yours truly, no author’s legacy looms larger than that of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, whose Martin Beck books are largely considered the launching point for the Nordic Noir sub-genre. Writing in the 1960s and 1970s, husband and wife duo Sjöwall and Wahlöö broke new ground in the crime genre. Following melancholic detective Martin Beck of the Swedish police force, Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s series not only delved deep into the lives and psyches of its characters, but it also delivered an equally up-close-and-personal examination of Swedish society—the good, the bad, and the ugly. The social consciousness of the Martin Beck books became a hallmark of the series, and, subsequently, of an entire genre. The legacy of this husband and wife duo cannot be overstated, and as a reader passionate about this genre—both its history and its current state—I was thrilled to have the opportunity to read and review Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Edgar Award-winning novel The Laughing Policeman, Book 4 in the acclaimed Martin Beck series, for Criminal Element’s Edgar Award series. Originally published in Sweden in 1968, and subsequently translated into English in 1970, The Laughing Policeman is a clever and brooding procedural—a story steeped in its era, yet accessible and engaging to the modern reader, too.
See Our Revisiting the Edgar Awards Series!
In The Laughing Policeman, a mass murder on public transportation leads to the unexpected resurfacing of a cold case—and to the tragic death of one of the police department’s own. It’s a rainy night in Sweden, and detective Martin Beck is wrapping up a visit with a friend (and avoiding being called in to help contain a group protesting the Vietnam War) when a gruesome crime occurs. A gunman has opened fire on a city bus, killing eight passengers and severely wounding another. To make matters worse, one of the deceased is a young, up-and-coming police officer—a man with a bright career ahead of him and a fiancé at home waiting for his safe return. Martin Beck and his team are called to investigate the brutal crime. But the circumstances surrounding their deceased colleague’s presence on the bus are puzzling. What business did he have on this city bus late at night? Why was he carrying his service weapon? And why was his fiancé under the impression that he had been working long hours, when work had, in reality, been slow? The deeper Martin digs into this gruesome crime, the more he begins to suspect that the mass murder was a cover-up for a very targeted hit on his colleague’s life—one with ties to a cold case that his colleague may have been tied up in.
No one writes atmosphere and gloom quite like Scandinavian crime writers. From page one of The Laughing Policeman, readers will find themselves wrapped up in the melancholy atmosphere of Martin Beck’s world. The city, the weather, and even Martin himself seem weighed down by a certain heaviness of existence that seeps into this book’s every page. This is a somber story, and everything from its pacing to its characters’ inner lives tends to reflect this quality. However, the authors are experts at keeping an almost clinical detachment from the gloom that could otherwise overtake this mystery; they balance emotion with procedure, always airing on the side of restraint when it comes to their characters’ emotional lives. There are flashes of humanity and raw emotion here—particularly involving the deceased police officer’s fiancé, and one truly heartbreaking scene early on in our mystery where Martin fears that his good friend may be the police officer murdered on the bus—but the majority of this story is geared towards a measured consideration of the circumstances in which our characters find themselves. There’s nothing flashy about the way Sjöwall and Wahlöö write—they simply drop readers into a rainy night in the heart of Sweden, and unfurl a story that is spare and unfussy, even while grappling with tragedy.
At the heart of The Laughing Policeman is a superb police procedural. I will forewarn you: if you’re not a fan of slow-burning, layered, detail-oriented procedurals, you may wish to turn back now! This book very likely won’t work for you. If, however, you appreciate the meticulous plotting and clever imagination that goes into writing a no-frills detective story (which I know I do!), you will find Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s work superb. The Laughing Policeman primarily centers around the day-to-day work of Martin and his team as they painstakingly investigate the mass murder on the city bus, and ultimately turn their attention to the activities of their now-deceased colleague prior to his death. It involves an extensive cast of characters, and a heavily layered plot—one that demands close attention be paid in order to keep plot threads and characters straight. It is, in other words, a classic procedural—and a superbly plotted one at that, as it relies on the deductive skills of its characters, rather than flashy “twists” or out-of-thin-air technological discoveries, to solve its central mystery. As a reader accustomed to modern mysteries, it’s striking to read a book that doesn’t rely on 21st Century forensic science or technology to solve its central crime—and I have to say, it was a true breath of fresh air. Without the bells and whistles of modern technology, this crime novel felt pared down to its most essential parts: a team of detectives working together, using their experience and intelligence to solve a layered mystery. The Laughing Policeman felt tied to reality in this realm, too: the police officers we meet aren’t “superhuman” characters, but rather ordinary individuals doing their best at their jobs. If you’re craving some realism in your next crime read, you’ll find this element of The Laughing Policeman right up your alley.
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are two of the “greats” of the Scandinavian crime fiction genre, and their masterful procedural The Laughing Policeman is proof of exactly why. Their restraint and precision shine through in this story, delivering the kind of clever puzzle that will perfectly suit the reader looking for a classic mystery to cozy up with over the weekend. As an added bonus, readers of modern Scandinavian crime fiction will relish the story’s rich atmosphere and melancholy characters. Though there certainly are components of this story that feel distinctly tied to its era, the perennial appeal of this book can be found in its impeccable plotting and compelling central mystery. An intelligent procedural with a social consciousness, The Laughing Policeman withstands the test of time.
Notes from the 1971 Edgar Awards:
The other nominees for Best Novel were Shaun Herron for The Hound and the Fox and the Harper, Donald E. Westlake for The Hot Rock, Patricia Moyes for Many Deadly Returns, Margaret Millar for Beyond this Point are Monsters, and Pat Stadley for Autumn of a Hunter.
The Edgar for Best Motion Picture went to Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, and the award for Best Television Episode went to Berlin Affair which aired as NBC’s Movie of the Week.
Best First Novel went to Lawrence Sanders for The Anderson Tapes. He beat out Tony Hillerman’s The Blessing Way, Sidney Sheldon’s The Naked Face, Stanley Cohen’s Taking Gary Feldman, and J.E. Brown’s Incident at 125th Street.
Other notable 1970 wins include Maragret Finn Brown, who won Best Short Story for “In the Forrests of Riga the Beasts are Very Wild Indeed.” Dan J. Marlowe’s Flashpoint won Best Paperback Original, and John Rowe Townsend received Best Juvenile for The Intruder.
The 1971 Grand Master was Mignon C. Eberhart.
The Raven Award was presented to Judith Crist for Reader of the Year.
* * *
Join us again next Friday when Pritpaul Bains takes us through a memorable game of cat and mouse in 1972’s well-known The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. See you then! | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 41 | https://northernlightsreading.com/2014/09/24/review-the-laughing-policeman-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | en | Review: “The Laughing Policeman” by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö | [
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] | 2014-09-24T00:00:00 | The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, trans. Alan Blair, Random House, 1970. My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Martin Beck series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö changed the scope of detective fiction in Sweden, adding social criticism (of the 1960s and early 1970s, when these novels were written) to the… | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | Northern Lights Reading Project | https://northernlightsreading.com/2014/09/24/review-the-laughing-policeman-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, trans. Alan Blair, Random House, 1970.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Martin Beck series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö changed the scope of detective fiction in Sweden, adding social criticism (of the 1960s and early 1970s, when these novels were written) to the puzzle-solving aspect. According to Henning Mankell, creator of Inspector Kurt Wallander, the Sjöwall and Wahlöö books inaugurated “Nordic Noir” and paved the way for his own series and for the celebrated crime novels of Stieg Larsson. In The Laughing Policeman, a big, red double-decker bus halts at the end of its line, and all its passengers are dead, gunned down by an unknown assailant. Among them is Åke Stenström, a young policeman, whose mysterious activities become the focus of the investigation. Readers must wait for the last page, the last sentence, to discover who laughed and why.
This is my first Martin Beck novel, but the fourth in the series. I know I will be going back to read all 10 of them. The writing is superb, and the best thing about them is that Martin Beck, a quick-witted, deep-thinking man with a chronic cough and a frayed marriage, is not the only memorable detective! The whole homicide squad makes an appearance and each does his unique part to solve the case. Sten Lennart Kollberg stands out in this one–the chapter where he interviews Åsa Torell, Stenström’s widow, was the most riveting. He and Beck are close friends, in the rather uneasy way that men in difficult jobs can sometimes have.
Over the years they [Beck and Kollberg] had become more and more dependent on each other in their work. They were a good complement to one another and they had learned to understand each other’s thoughts and feelings without wasting words. When Kollberg got married eighteen months ago and moved to Skärmarbrink they had come closer together geographically and had taken to meeting in their spare time.
Quite recently Kollberg had said, in one of his rare moments of depression, “If you weren’t there, God only knows whether I’d stay on the force.” (Chap. 5, p. 19)
I am exploring the whole Nordic Noir phenomenon, and I’m glad I have begun with this superb example. I will probably go back and start at the beginning with Roseanna. If you have another favorite in the series, please leave a comment to let me know!
Related post:
Nordic Noir and life at the extremes
Related link: | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 14 | https://cannonballread.com/2021/10/martin-beck-book-series-xoxoxoe/ | en | Classic Swedish Noir | [
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] | 2021-10-14T14:20:54-04:00 | In 1965 writing partners (and partners in real life) Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö embarked on a quest - to write and publish ten novels in ten years featuring Stockholm's Martin Beck. The novels, police procedurals, were structured as not only mysteries, but reflections and commentary on modern Swedis | en | /wp-content/uploads/fbrfg/apple-touch-icon.png?v=LbGql0amRN | Cannonball Read 16 | https://cannonballread.com/2021/10/martin-beck-book-series-xoxoxoe/ | In 1965 writing partners (and partners in real life) Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö embarked on a quest – to write and publish ten novels in ten years featuring Stockholm’s Martin Beck. The novels, police procedurals, were structured as not only mysteries, but reflections and commentary on modern Swedish society. The duo wore alternating chapters – but since I haven’t read any of their individual works I couldn’t;t guess who wrote which chapter in any given novel. The books are cohesive and follow policeman Martin Beck as he progresses through the ranks of the Swedish national police.
Although these books were written decades ago many of the issues and crimes depicted by Sjöwall and Wahlöö sound eerily familiar – violence against women and children, serial killers, terrorism. Their top detective Beck is an interesting character. We follow him through the ten years as his marriage implodes and he becomes more and more disillusioned with the growing militarism of the police and his superiors’ endless bureaucracy (and incompetence). But Beck doesn’t work alone. Equally interesting are his colleagues Lennart Kollberg and Gunvald Larsson and female detective Åsa Torell and Rhea Nielsen. I listened to these books on Audible and was grateful for the reader to pronounce all of the Swedish place names, but also surprised at the pronunciation of some of the characters names. If I had been reading it in paperback or Kindle I never would have guessed that Kollberg is pronounced Kahl-bree-yah in Sweden.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö are considered the origin and of modern Scandi-noir. They have influenced a great many writers, such as Henning Mankell (Wallander), Stieg Larsson (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) and Jo Nesbø (The Snowman). I enjoyed all of the books and came to care about Beck and his compatriots. Not only was reading the series doable, it satisfied my completist mentality. I really enjoyed a glimpse into the swinging ’60s and ’70s Sweden. Maybe not so free-thinking as I might have thought. My favorites were probably The Man on the Balcony, The Laughing Policeman, The Abominable Man and The Locked Room, although I recommend checking out the entire series. Although I appreciate the authors’ discipline, I wish there were more Beck novels. Apparently there are a ton of movie and television adaptations of the books and the characters, although so far I haven’t found any on any of my streaming services.
The books, in the order they were published (and how I read them) are as follows:
Roseanna (1965) – In this first novel of the series Martin Beck must determine the identity of the corpse of a young woman found in a canal. The solving of the case requires long-term and meticulous research and sometimes a little luck.
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966) – Beck is sent to Budapest to find a missing journalist. Sixties Eastern Europe is an interesting backdrop and the reader gets to know more an=bout Beck’s home life and his quirks and attitudes.
The Man on the Balcony (1967) – The series takes a dark turn as Beck & Co. try to track down a serial pedophile/murder. Two bumbling cops, Kristiansson and Kvant, are introduced, as well as detective Gunvald Larsson to provide some subtle and wry comic relief.
The Laughing Policeman (1968) Maybe the most well-known of the series, this was adapted into a Hollywood movie starring Walter Matthau (which I haven’t been able to find streaming anywhere) and also won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1971. The opening, and the main crime to be investigated is stunning – on a snowy night a gunman, wielding a sub-machine gun, boards a commuter bus and systematically kills everyone aboard and then disappears. One of the passengers happens to be Beck’s young colleague detective Åke Stenström.
The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969) – Gunvald Larsson is about to replace a fellow cop on a routine surveillance assignment when the building they are observing goes up in flames. He singlehandedly rescues many of the residents, but Beck must determine the cause and more importantly, the why of the conflagration.
Murder at the Savoy (1970) – During a fancy banquet at Stockholm’s Savoy Hotel a gunman walks in, shoots a man in the head and walks out. No one in the crowded room can offer much information on his identity. How will Beck track him down?
The Abominable Man (1971) – A former policeman is killed while in the hospital. Beck must not only track down the culprit but the motive. One of the most exciting books of the series, this involves a city-wide manhunt and a crazed sniper holding the city hostage.
The Locked Room (1972) – This book involves two separate crime investigations – a series of bank robberies (which was apparently a big problem in Sweden in the ’70s) and Beck trying to solve a classic locked room mystery.
Cop Killer (1974) – This book has a callback to first novel Roseanna as Beck investigates the disappearance of a young woman in southern Sweden.
The Terrorists (1975) – Beck and his team are tasked to protect a very unpopular U.S. senator on his visit to Sweden. The novel follows Beck and his team as well as the terrorist cell that is planning to disrupt the visit. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 16 | https://cannonballread.com/2021/10/martin-beck-book-series-xoxoxoe/ | en | Classic Swedish Noir | [
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] | 2021-10-14T14:20:54-04:00 | In 1965 writing partners (and partners in real life) Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö embarked on a quest - to write and publish ten novels in ten years featuring Stockholm's Martin Beck. The novels, police procedurals, were structured as not only mysteries, but reflections and commentary on modern Swedis | en | /wp-content/uploads/fbrfg/apple-touch-icon.png?v=LbGql0amRN | Cannonball Read 16 | https://cannonballread.com/2021/10/martin-beck-book-series-xoxoxoe/ | In 1965 writing partners (and partners in real life) Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö embarked on a quest – to write and publish ten novels in ten years featuring Stockholm’s Martin Beck. The novels, police procedurals, were structured as not only mysteries, but reflections and commentary on modern Swedish society. The duo wore alternating chapters – but since I haven’t read any of their individual works I couldn’t;t guess who wrote which chapter in any given novel. The books are cohesive and follow policeman Martin Beck as he progresses through the ranks of the Swedish national police.
Although these books were written decades ago many of the issues and crimes depicted by Sjöwall and Wahlöö sound eerily familiar – violence against women and children, serial killers, terrorism. Their top detective Beck is an interesting character. We follow him through the ten years as his marriage implodes and he becomes more and more disillusioned with the growing militarism of the police and his superiors’ endless bureaucracy (and incompetence). But Beck doesn’t work alone. Equally interesting are his colleagues Lennart Kollberg and Gunvald Larsson and female detective Åsa Torell and Rhea Nielsen. I listened to these books on Audible and was grateful for the reader to pronounce all of the Swedish place names, but also surprised at the pronunciation of some of the characters names. If I had been reading it in paperback or Kindle I never would have guessed that Kollberg is pronounced Kahl-bree-yah in Sweden.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö are considered the origin and of modern Scandi-noir. They have influenced a great many writers, such as Henning Mankell (Wallander), Stieg Larsson (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) and Jo Nesbø (The Snowman). I enjoyed all of the books and came to care about Beck and his compatriots. Not only was reading the series doable, it satisfied my completist mentality. I really enjoyed a glimpse into the swinging ’60s and ’70s Sweden. Maybe not so free-thinking as I might have thought. My favorites were probably The Man on the Balcony, The Laughing Policeman, The Abominable Man and The Locked Room, although I recommend checking out the entire series. Although I appreciate the authors’ discipline, I wish there were more Beck novels. Apparently there are a ton of movie and television adaptations of the books and the characters, although so far I haven’t found any on any of my streaming services.
The books, in the order they were published (and how I read them) are as follows:
Roseanna (1965) – In this first novel of the series Martin Beck must determine the identity of the corpse of a young woman found in a canal. The solving of the case requires long-term and meticulous research and sometimes a little luck.
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966) – Beck is sent to Budapest to find a missing journalist. Sixties Eastern Europe is an interesting backdrop and the reader gets to know more an=bout Beck’s home life and his quirks and attitudes.
The Man on the Balcony (1967) – The series takes a dark turn as Beck & Co. try to track down a serial pedophile/murder. Two bumbling cops, Kristiansson and Kvant, are introduced, as well as detective Gunvald Larsson to provide some subtle and wry comic relief.
The Laughing Policeman (1968) Maybe the most well-known of the series, this was adapted into a Hollywood movie starring Walter Matthau (which I haven’t been able to find streaming anywhere) and also won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1971. The opening, and the main crime to be investigated is stunning – on a snowy night a gunman, wielding a sub-machine gun, boards a commuter bus and systematically kills everyone aboard and then disappears. One of the passengers happens to be Beck’s young colleague detective Åke Stenström.
The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969) – Gunvald Larsson is about to replace a fellow cop on a routine surveillance assignment when the building they are observing goes up in flames. He singlehandedly rescues many of the residents, but Beck must determine the cause and more importantly, the why of the conflagration.
Murder at the Savoy (1970) – During a fancy banquet at Stockholm’s Savoy Hotel a gunman walks in, shoots a man in the head and walks out. No one in the crowded room can offer much information on his identity. How will Beck track him down?
The Abominable Man (1971) – A former policeman is killed while in the hospital. Beck must not only track down the culprit but the motive. One of the most exciting books of the series, this involves a city-wide manhunt and a crazed sniper holding the city hostage.
The Locked Room (1972) – This book involves two separate crime investigations – a series of bank robberies (which was apparently a big problem in Sweden in the ’70s) and Beck trying to solve a classic locked room mystery.
Cop Killer (1974) – This book has a callback to first novel Roseanna as Beck investigates the disappearance of a young woman in southern Sweden.
The Terrorists (1975) – Beck and his team are tasked to protect a very unpopular U.S. senator on his visit to Sweden. The novel follows Beck and his team as well as the terrorist cell that is planning to disrupt the visit. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 5 | https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/234596/per-wahloo | en | Per Wahlöö | [
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] | [] | [] | [
""
] | null | [] | 2022-04-28T09:08:00+00:00 | Born in 1926, Per Wahlöö was a Swedish writer and journalist who, alongside his own novels, collaborated with his wife, Maj Sjöwall, on the bestselling Martin Beck crime series which are credited as inspiring writers as varied as Agatha Christie, Henning Mankell and Jonathan Franzen. In 1971 the fourth novel in the series, The Laughing Policeman, won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Per Wahlöö died in 1975. | en | /apple-touch-icon.png | https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/234596/per-wahloo | The Martin Beck books are widely acknowledged as some of the most influential detective novels ever written. Written by Swedish husband and wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö between 1965-1975, the ten-book series set a gold standard for all subsequent Scandanavian crime fiction. Long before Kurt Wallander or Harry Hole, Beck was the original flawed policeman, working with a motley collection of colleagues to uncover the cruelty and injustice lurking beneath the surface of Sweden's seemingly liberal, democratic society.
This complete collection includes:
Roseanna (1965) - translated by Lois Roth and dramatised by Jennifer Howarth
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966) - translated by Joan Tate and dramatised by Katie Hims
The Man on the Balcony (1967) - translated by Alan Blair and dramatised by Katie Hims
The Laughing Policeman (1968) - translated by Alan Blair and dramatised by Jennifer Howarth
The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969) - translated by Joan Tate and dramatised by Katie Hims
Murder at the Savoy (1970) - translated by Amy and Ken Knoespel and dramatised by Jennifer Howarth
The Abominable Man (1971) - translated by Thomas Teal and dramatised by Katie Hims
The Locked Room (1972) - translated by Alan Blair and dramatised by Jennifer Howarth
Cop Killer (1974) - translated by Thomas Teal and dramatised by Jennifer Howarth
The Terrorists (1975) - translated by Joan Tate and dramatised by Katie Hims | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 97 | http://irresistibletargets.blogspot.com/2011/12/per-wahloos-steel-spring.html | en | IRRESISTIBLE TARGETS: PER WAHLOO'S STEEL SPRING | http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Mxlf1fqwgwY/Tv7y-MODLHI/AAAAAAAAC8I/jGBq-kTk2ug/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/steel%2Bspring.jpeg | http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Mxlf1fqwgwY/Tv7y-MODLHI/AAAAAAAAC8I/jGBq-kTk2ug/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/steel%2Bspring.jpeg | [
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"Michael Carlson"
] | null | A blog covering arts, politics, sports, life, death and poetry.
Additional material from my broadcasting and journalism. | http://irresistibletargets.blogspot.com/favicon.ico | http://irresistibletargets.blogspot.com/2011/12/per-wahloos-steel-spring.html | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 95 | https://www.criminalelement.com/mwa-best-novel-nominees-edgar-awards-handicapping-published-2011-thrillers-detectives-japan-norway-england-scotland-jordan-foster/ | en | The Best Novel Nominees, or How To Handicap the 2011 Edgars | [
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] | null | [
"Jordan Foster"
] | 2012-04-24T14:30:00+00:00 | For the first time in recent memory (read: more than a decade), none of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award nominees for Best Novel have ever been nominated before. On April 26th, one of them will be announced from the stage at New York’s Grand Hyatt Hotel and take a first walk with this… | en | Criminal Element | https://www.criminalelement.com/mwa-best-novel-nominees-edgar-awards-handicapping-published-2011-thrillers-detectives-japan-norway-england-scotland-jordan-foster/ | For the first time in recent memory (read: more than a decade), none of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award nominees for Best Novel have ever been nominated before. On April 26th, one of them will be announced from the stage at New York’s Grand Hyatt Hotel and take a first walk with this bust of Edgar Allan Poe. (Of course, some nominees may have practiced the victory walk in private, substituting a water bottle for Poe’s lovely ceramic visage.)
The last year a first-time nominee won the Best Novel prize was back in 2007, when Jason Goodwin’s The Janissary Tree took home the prize. 2007 was also a good year for other first-timers, with four of the six nominees logging their first nomination. This year’s crop of nominees is widely varied, but I like to think of them as a five-volume set of How-To manuals:
Volume One) How to Clean Up Your Home Town
by Quinn Colson, recently retired U.S. Army Ranger from Ace Atkins’s aptly titled The Ranger.
Subsections include “Mississippi Law 101, Or Welcome to Hill Country,” “If You Think That Suicide is Really a Murder, You’re Probably Right,” and “Good-bye Meth Dealers.”
Volume Two) How to Avoid (and Solve) a Carjacking
by Detective Inspector Jack Caffery from Mo Hayder’s Gone.
Helpful chapters to bookmark include “If You Never Take Your Child in a Car, He or She Can’t Get Snatched,” “Taunts from Nutters Will Not be Tolerated,” and, in a special section written by Sergeant Phoebe “Flea” Marley, “Leave the Police Diving to the Bloody Police, That’s Why it’s Called Police Diving.”
Volume Three) How to Get Away with Murder
by Yasuko Hanaoka from Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X.
Don’t skip key sections like “Choosing the Best Neighbor to Dispose of Your Spouse’s Remains,” and “Do You Want a Cat or Do You Want to Play Cat-and-Mouse with a Detective: Weighing the Pros and Cons.”
Volume Four) How to Survive a Norwegian Train Wreck
by Hanne Wilhelmsen, retired police detective from Anne Holt’s 1222.
Important sections for alpine adventuring include “Derailment 101: Handy Tips for Staying Alive When Your Train Hops the Tracks,” “Finding the Killer in a Snowed-In Lodge: A Process of Elimination That Goes Faster as More Bodies Appear,” and “No One Said Being Friendly Was a Job Requirement.”
Volume Five) How to Tough it Out in Prison
by Bernie Gunther, German private eye circa 1954 in Philip Kerr’s Field Gray.
Sections to smuggle into the Big House should include “Meyer Lansky: An Annotated Biography,” “Meditating Through the Pain: Guantánamo and You,” and “Home Sweet Nothing: War Flashbacks.”
Whomever wins, this year’s list is one of the most internationally diverse in recent memory. We’ve got an American (Ace Atkins), a Brit (Mo Hayder), a Japanese (Keigo Higashino), a Norwegian (Anne Holt), and a Scot (Philip Kerr). It’s the Edgar Olympics!
The Americans tend to dominate the nominations, and over the past five years, the good ol’ U.S. of A. has won the past four years running. (Not to put any star-spangled pressure on Ace Atkins to continue the tradition.) Mo Hayder could celebrate the five-year anniversary of fellow Brit Jason Goodwin’s 2007 win by claiming another win for H.R.M Queen Elizabeth. A win for Higashino would be the first ever for a Japanese. (Natsuo Kirino’s Out was nominated in 2004, but lost to Ian Rankin’s Resurrection Men, which was also the last time a Scot won the prize.)
Should Anne Holt win, she’d be the first Norwegian winner, though Jo Nesbø’s Nemesis was nominated in 2010. And despite the recent Scandinavian and Nordic crime fiction explosion, no Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, or Icelandic author has ever won the Edgar for Best Novel since Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s The Laughing Policeman in 1971, and few of the big names have been nominated. No Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, Camilla Läckberg, or even that guy named Stieg.
Like American writers, men have also tended to dominate the Best Novel field. Based on the history, there’s a 60 percent chance the winner will be a man. In the past ten years, a woman (S.J. Rozan in 2003 for Winter and Night) has won the Edgar once. That’s in 53 nominated authors, with between four and six nominated books each year, over the past decade. Twenty of the nominees have been women, with 38 percent of the nominated books and 10 percent of the wins, versus the men’s 62 percent of the nominated books and 90 percent of the Edgars.
If I were the kind of person who bet on these sorts of things, the pure statistical odds are in favor of an American male to take home the statue, which points to Ace Atkins. I could inch further out on my imaginary, gambling limb and predict The Ranger will be named Best Novel. But I prefer to bet on sure things, so I’ll put my money on a first-time author walking away with a Best Novel Edgar come Thursday night.
Jordan Foster grew up in a mystery bookstore in Portland, Oregon. She has a MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia University, which she’s slowly paying off by writing about crime fiction for Publishers Weekly and Bookish. She’s back in Portland, where it’s nice and rainy and there are endless places to stash bodies. She tweets @jordanfoster13. | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 36 | https://theviewfromthebluehouse.blogspot.com/2010/05/review-of-roseanna-by-maj-sjowall-and.html | en | The View from the Blue House: Review of Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (Vintage Crime, translated 1967, published in Swedish in 1965) | [
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"Rob Kitchin",
"View my complete profile"
] | null | The body of a young woman is dredged from a canal on the inland waterways of Sweden, roughly halfway between Stockholm and Gothenburg. The ... | https://theviewfromthebluehouse.blogspot.com/favicon.ico | https://theviewfromthebluehouse.blogspot.com/2010/05/review-of-roseanna-by-maj-sjowall-and.html | |||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 0 | https://crimereads.com/maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-a-crime-readers-guide-to-the-classics/ | en | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics | [
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"Neil Nyren"
] | 2021-01-22T09:10:46+00:00 | “One of the most authentic, gripping, and profound collection of police procedurals ever accomplished.” – Michael Connelly Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were pioneers. First of all, they virtually cre… | en | CrimeReads | https://crimereads.com/maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo-a-crime-readers-guide-to-the-classics/ | “One of the most authentic, gripping, and profound collection of police procedurals ever accomplished.” – Michael Connelly
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Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were pioneers. First of all, they virtually created Scandinavian noir, and all the giants who followed them happily admit it. Second, with Ed McBain, they revolutionized the police procedural, emphasizing the squad as a whole, people who sometimes argued and fought and failed again and again, but who ultimately complemented one another as a team: “normal people with normal lots, normal thoughts, problems, and pleasures, people who are not larger than life, though not any smaller either,” in the words of Jo Nesbø
Third, and just as important, they took those normal people and used their cases as a way to shine a light on the world as it really is. Any reader of crime fiction today knows that the genre not only entertains, but often acts as a mirror to society; crime does not exist in a vacuum, the books say, it grows out of our systemic flaws. Sjöwall and Wahlöö blazed that trail.
All of that was accomplished with a minimum of preaching (well…usually); a remarkable gift for plotting; lean, propulsive prose that could hit like a gut punch; and bursts of humor that erupted when you least expected it, from sly, dark wit to outright slapstick.
They wrote ten books in all, one a year from 1965 to 1975, but they envisioned them not as individual volumes, but as one long story, thirty chapters each, a three-hundred-chapter saga called “The Story of a Crime.” In it, they tackled pedophilia, serial killers, suicide, drug-smuggling, pornography, arms-dealing, and madness; their characters aged, married, divorced, retired; died; and the country of Sweden itself, as they saw it, veered more and more to the right, the cracks in its “social utopia” growing ever wider, its institutions more geared to the well-off.
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At the books’ heart are the men (only men at that time, though a key woman officer is introduced later) of the National Homicide Squad. The central figure is Martin Beck, whom we see progress from first deputy inspector to detective superintendent to chief. He is dyspeptic and dogged; his stomach is bad; and his marriage disintegrating—it is moribund even in the first book, Roseanna (1965), and during the series we see him move from his bedroom to the living room couch to an apartment of his own. He is intelligent, but no super-detective; systematic, but open to sudden inspiration; solitary, but able to talk easily to people; quiet, but with an excellent sense of humor, which he often uses to mock himself:
“Martin Beck, the born detective and famous observer, constantly occupied making useless observations and storing them away for future use. Doesn’t even have bats in his belfry—they wouldn’t get in for all the crap in the way” (The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, 1966).
Also among Martin Beck’s qualities (and the narrator always refers to him as “Martin Beck,” never “Martin,” never “Beck,” unless it’s in dialogue): his good memory; his obstinacy, which is occasionally mule-like; and his capacity for logical thought. Another is that he usually finds the time for everything that has anything to do with a case, even if this means following up on small details that later turn out to be of no significance—because sometimes they are significant. In one case, a two-week-old overheard phone call proves key; in another, the mention of a lost toy; in a third, a sheet of paper overlooked on a desk; in a fourth, a shared name in separate cases which suddenly tie the two together.
Beck also sometimes gets, well, “feelings”—a sense of danger, that something is about to happen. His colleagues call it his intuition, but he hates that word. “Police work is built on realism, routine, stubbornness and system,” he says in The Abominable Man (1971). “Intuition has no place in practical police work. Intuition is not even a quality, any more than astrology or phrenology are sciences. And still it was there, however reluctant he was to admit it.”
Beck is a policeman’s policeman, through and through. That doesn’t mean that he’s happy with the way the police force has been going lately. In 1965, the old local police system in Sweden was utterly changed—nationalized into “a centrally directed, paramilitary force with frightening technical resources” (The Terrorists, 1975). It also significantly coarsened the kind of man recruited into the ranks. As his colleague Lennart Kollberg tells him, “There are lots of good cops around. Dumb guys who are good cops. Inflexible, limited, tough, self-satisfied types who are all good cops. It would be better if there were a few more good guys who were cops” (The Fire Engine That Disappeared, 1969).
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Kollberg is not only his colleague, but his best friend, a former paratrooper with a sarcastic manner who refuses to carry a gun after, as a young cop, he accidentally shot and killed a fellow policeman. “Imaginative, systematic, and implacably logical” (Murder at the Savoy, 1970), Kollberg has worked with Beck so long that they know each other’s thoughts without talking. There is no one Beck trusts more, and it is reciprocated: “If you weren’t there, God only knows whether I’d stay on the force,” he tells Beck in The Laughing Policeman (1968). Ultimately, even that is not enough. In the second to last novel, Cop Killer (1974), citing the way the police force has changed, he writes a letter of resignation, and in the last book, The Terrorists, the final words are his: “The trouble with you, Martin, is just that you’ve got the wrong job. At the wrong time. In the wrong part of the world. In the wrong system.”
Kollberg’s antagonist on the force is Gunvald Larsson, a bull of a man, lacking in social niceties, impatient with human weakness, and capable of striking terror in criminals and subordinates alike. He is not popular among his colleagues, but when a house explodes in the early pages of The Fire Engine That Disappeared, it is Larsson who singlehandedly saves the lives of eight people: “Blood-stained, soot-streaked, drenched with sweat and his clothes torn, he stood among the hysterical, shocked, screaming, unconscious, weeping and dying people. As if on a battlefield.”
The only colleague that Larsson actually gets along with, even vacations with, though no one knows why, is Einar Rönn, “a mediocre policeman with mediocre imagination and a mediocre sense of humor” (The Man on the Balcony, 1967). He is a very calm person, however, and hard-working, with a simple, straightforward attitude and “no talent for creating problems and difficulties which did not exist” (The Laughing Policeman), which makes him a valuable member of the team.
Another calming detective with his own unique abilities is Fredrik Melander. The veteran of hundreds of difficult cases, he is a very modest man, even dull, who never gets a brilliant idea but does have a remarkable capacity for always being in the toilet when anyone wants to get hold of him. What makes him singularly valuable, though, is his legendary memory: “In the course of a few minutes, Melander could sort out everything of importance he’d ever heard, seen or read about some particular person or some particular subject and then present it clearly and lucidly in narrative form. There wasn’t a computer in the world that could do the same” (The Abominable Man).
Other colleagues come and go, grow, mature, transfer, retire. They even die: Åke Stenström, the youngest on the squad, is murdered in The Laughing Policeman, causing his widow, Åsa Torell, to pick up the torch and become a police officer herself, to notable effect in the later books (and a one-night stand with Beck himself). So does Kurt Kvant. Kvant and Karl Kristiansson are two spectacularly, often hilariously, inept patrolmen—“Kvant almost always reported whatever he happened to see and hear, but he managed to see and hear exceedingly little, Kristiansson was more an out-and-out slacker who simply ignored everything that might cause complications or unnecessary trouble” (The Abominable Man)—who, despite mucking up any crime scene they’re at, manage to be on the spot for some of the most dramatic events and set pieces in the series. Kvant dies in one of them, only to be replaced by Kenneth Kvastmo, just as inept, though a bit more gung-ho.
And then there are the squad’s superiors, always to be viewed with exasperation or dismay: Chief Superintendent Evald Hammar, an inveterate slinger of cliches and truisms, is counting the days until his retirement “and regarded every serious crime of violence as persecution of himself personally” (The Fire Engine That Disappeared); the man who replaces him, Stig Malm, is even worse—rigid, officious, ignorant of practical police work, his rise due solely to political powers-that-be, to whom he is invariably obsequious, even when they kick him in the teeth; and worst of all, the unnamed National Commissioner of Police, a preening speechifyer whose bright ideas, especially those involving excessive force, inevitably end in disaster and fatalities.
The crimes that face all these policemen, both good and bad, range from the smallest—drunks, break-ins, petty larceny—to monumental—mass murder, serial murder, and political assassination. It is here that Sjöwall and Wahlöö demonstrate their plotting prowess in several different ways:
A book begins with a small, eccentric moment that leaps into something much bigger, as when a comedy of bureaucratic buck-passing over the dredging of a canal in Roseanna turns into a worldwide hunt for a sadistic killer;
A storyline that is clearly going in one direction suddenly veers off into something else entirely, catching the reader on the back foot—in The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, Beck is sent to Hungary to search for a missing journalist, but that becomes a plot about international drug-smuggling, and that becomes…well, I won’t tell you.
A book begins slowly, agonizingly, adding small detail upon small detail, building tension as the notes become more and more discordant, and you know that something dreadful is in store and that it is only a matter of time before things explode. The Man on the Balcony is a masterful example of this. For several pages in the very first scene, we’re with a man on his balcony looking out over the city in the early morning: “The man was nondescript and he was dressed in a white shirt with no tie, unpressed brown gabardine trousers, gray socks and black shoes. His hair was thin and brushed straight back, he had a big nose and gray-blue eyes.” The man is smoking—ten butts are already in a saucer—we see street sweepers, pedestrians, a police car glide silently past, there’s the tinkle of a shop window breaking, then running footsteps. A lone figure walks in the distance, perhaps a policeman. An ambulance goes by. Then the door of an apartment building opens, and a little girl comes out. The man on the balcony stands quite still and watches her until she turns the corner, then he drinks a glass of water, sits down, and lights another cigarette.Oh, you know this is going to be bad, don’t you? And it is.
The book opens with exactly the opposite, a shocking set piece and tour de force of mayhem, which then leads into many complicated directions. In The Fire Engine That Disappeared, that would be the exploding house and Larsson’s extraordinary heroism. In The Laughing Policeman, it is the discovery of a busful of machine-gunned passengers.
Two entirely different cases intertwine, seeming to have nothing to do with one another—until they do. In The Locked Room (1972), a task force is trying, not always competently, to solve a rash of bank robberies, while Beck, recovering from a near-fatal wound, is given an abandoned case to keep him occupied, that of a badly decomposed corpse found in a room locked and bolted from the inside. The man died of a gunshot wound, but there is no gun. Watching Beck slowly work out such a classic puzzle during the course of the book is a pure delight. Finding out how it intersects with the other plotline will make you break out into a grin—Sjöwall and Wahlöö have gotten you again.
All of this Sjöwall and Wahlöö limn with impeccable prose—direct, evocative, and effective:
Beck contemplating the details of a case:
“Unpleasant. Very unpleasant. Singularly unpleasant. Damned unpleasant. Blasted unpleasant. Almost painfully so” (The Man Who Went Up in Smoke).
Beck encountering an unlikely counterpart:
“He was a rather young, corpulent man, dressed in a houndstooth-checked suit of modern, youthful cut, a striped shirt, yellow shoes and socks of the same fierce color. His hair was wavy and shiny; he also had an upturned mustache, no doubt waxed and prepared with a mustache form. The man was leaning nonchalantly on the reception desk. He had a flower in his buttonhole and was carrying a copy of Esquire magazine rolled up under his arm.
“He looked like a model out of a discotheque advertisement…
“The secret police were on the scene.” (Murder at the Savoy)
Gunvald Larsson observing anti-assassination security techniques in an unnamed Latin American country:
“The motorcade was moving very quickly. The first of the Security Service cars was already below the balcony. The security expert smiled at Gunvald Larsson, nodded assuring and began to fold up his papers.
“At that moment, the ground opened, almost directly beneath the bulletproof Cadillac.
“The pressure waves flung both men backward, but if Gunvald Larsson was nothing else, he was strong. He grabbed the balustrade with both hands and looked upward.
“The roadway had opened like a volcano from which smoking pillars of fire were rising to a height of a hundred and fifty feet. Atop the flaming pillars were diverse objects. The most prominent were the rear section of the bulletproof Cadillac, an overturned black cab with a blue line along its side, half a horse with black and yellow plumes in the band round its forehead, a leg in a black boot and green uniform material, and an arm with a long cigar between the fingers” (The Terrorists).
And throughout, Sjöwall and Wahlöö keep an unwavering eye on why they created “The Story of a Crime” in the first place—to hold up the crime novel as a mirror to society. Here are only two examples, and they are scorching:
“Stockholm has one of the highest suicide rates in the world—something everyone carefully avoids talking about or which, when put on the spot, they attempt to conceal by means of variously manipulated and untruthful statistics. For some years now, however, not even members of the government had dared to say this aloud or in public, perhaps from the feeling that, in spite of everything, people tend to rely more on the evidence of their own eyes than on political explanations. And if, after all, this should turn out not to be so, it only made the matter still more embarrassing. For the fact of the matter is that the so-called Welfare State abounds with sick, poor, and lonely people, living at best on dog food, who are left uncared for until they waste away and die in their rat-hole apartments. No, this was nothing for the public” (The Locked Room).
From a young woman lost in the cracks, who has committed one last desperate act. “It’s terrible to live in a world where people just tell lies to each other. How can someone who’s a scoundrel and traitor be allowed to make decisions for a whole country? Because that’s what he was. A rotten traitor. Not that I think that whoever takes his place will be any better—I’m not that stupid. But I’d like to show them, all of them who sit there governing and deciding, that they can’t go on cheating people forever. I think lots of people know perfectly well they’re being cheated and betrayed, but most people are too scared or too comfortable to say anything. It doesn’t help to protest or complain, either, because the people in power don’t pay any attention….That’s why I shot him” (The Terrorists).
Phew. So who were Sjöwall and Wahlöö and how did this all come about?
***
Maj Sjöwall was born in Stockholm in 1935. Her father was the manager of a Swedish hotel chain, and she grew up in a top-floor hotel room with round-the-clock room service, a life that she early on came to see as unnaturally privileged. “When I was eleven, I realized that I did not have to live the life my mother had,” she later recalled. The marriage was chilly, and her children unhappy—“I was rather tough. You get tough when you grow up unloved. I had an attitude. I was rather wild.”
At the age of 21, she discovered she was pregnant by a man who had already left her. Refusing the abortion her father insisted on, she accepted the proposal of a family friend twenty years older: “He was nice. I wasn’t very much in love with him, but I admired him.” That did not last. She married again, to another older man—“I think I had a father complex”—who wanted to move her to the suburbs and have more children and—that didn’t work out, either.
Meanwhile, she was making a name for herself as a journalist, art director, and translator for several publications when, a single mother with a six-year-old daughter, she met Per Wahlöö.
Wahlöö, nine years older, was well-known as a journalist covering criminal and social issues, and a committed Marxist, deeply involved in radical political causes, activities that resulted in his being deported from Franco’s Spain (which he no doubt regarded as a badge of honor). He’d also written television and radio plays, as well as several novels dealing with abuses of power and the dark side of society when, working at a magazine in 1962, he met a woman working at another magazine by the same publisher.
The attraction was immediate. “There was a place in town where all the journalists used to go,” she said. “We all went to the same pubs. Then Per and I started to like each other very much, so we started going to other pubs to avoid our friends and be on our own.” He was married, and neither liked the idea of cheating on his wife, but within a year, Per had left her and moved in with Maj and her daughter. Their first son was born nine months later.
It was at one of those pubs that they came up with the idea for the books. They both liked Simenon and Hammett, and realized they could use crime novels to illuminate society from their own point of view. Ten novels, they agreed, thirty chapters each. The first plot came to them on a canal trip from Stockholm to Gothenburg. “There was an American woman on the boat, beautiful, with dark hair, always standing alone,” Sjöwall said. “I caught Per looking at her. ‘Why don’t we start the book by killing this woman?’ I said.”
Seven months of research followed, mapping out the geography, the streets, the distances; taking hundreds of pictures—an accumulation of authentic detail that would characterize every one of their books. “If you read of Martin Beck taking off on a certain flight,” Sjöwall said, “there was that flight, at that time, with those same weather conditions.”
They worked at night, after the children were in bed, at opposite ends of a table in their study, writing in longhand from ten or eleven pm until the children woke up. They had a detailed synopsis in front of them—“If Per started with chapter one, I would write chapter two at the same time”—and the next night they edited and typed the other’s work. “We never talked about the story when we were writing it,” said Sjöwall. “The only things we said were, ‘Pass me the cigarettes’ and ‘It’s your turn to make some tea.’” (“I don’t see how you do it,” an American mystery writer told Wahlöö. “My wife and I can’t even collaborate on boiling an egg.”).
They were very conscious of the style. They didn’t want anything that sounded too much like him or like her—just something that would fit the books and their characters and that would appeal to a large audience.
When the first book, Roseanna, was done, Wahlöö took it to his publisher, telling him, “This is by a friend of mine and I just want to hear what you think.” The publisher wasn’t fooled, liked the book, and struck a deal for all ten of the projected series.
The reviews were mixed for Roseanna. It was considered a bit dark and brutal—“Little old ladies took the books back to the shop,” said Sjöwall, “complaining that they were too awful, too realistic”—and the sales were modest, mainly to young left-wing students. It wasn’t really until the fourth book, The Laughing Policeman, won the Edgar Award for best novel, that the market started to wake up. It was about that time, too, that a review compared them to Ed McBain. In fact, they had never heard of McBain before, but they read some of his books, loved them, and urged their publisher to buy the Swedish rights. He did—and asked if they’d like to do the translations. They ended up translating a dozen of the 87th Precinct novels.
They never got rich from their books. “Back then, no one had an agent,” said Sjöwall, and the royalties were small. “We always had money problems. Sometimes I would lie awake at night wondering how to pay the rent.” Eventually, subsidiary rights—foreign and movie/TV deals—would come in, but most of it was too late for Per Wahlöö.
In 1971, he complained of a swelling, then his doctors said his lungs were filled with water, and eventually they realized his pancreas had burst. He was in and out of hospitals all the time, gradually getting thinner and thinner. In 1975, they rented a bungalow in Malaga, and Wahlöö wrote feverishly on what would become the last book, The Terrorists, doing most of the writing while Sjöwall acted as editor. “Sometimes he would just fall off the chair because he couldn’t write any more. In the morning, the words would be illegible.”
They came home from Spain in March, the book was sent to the printer, and Wahlöö died in June, from a morphine overdose: “Either on purpose or because, you know if it didn’t work he took one more, if that didn’t work he’d take another one. He fell into a coma and never came round.”
He was 48, they had been together 13 years, and never married—“We said, well, obviously marriage is not the thing for us,” she said. “We just knew we really loved each other and loved not having the papers to prove it”—although, apparently, their early publishers billed them as a husband-and-wife team on the book jackets of their English-language editions, to avoid upsetting the sensibilities of those perhaps less liberated than the Swedes.
After Wahlöö’s death, Sjöwall admitted she got “kind of wild for a while. With guys, with pubs,” and then settled down with the kids for a “more bohemian” life. She didn’t mind not having money: “Better free than rich.”
Despite offers to continue the Martin Beck books, she never did, though she did try a couple of other collaborative ventures and happily continued her translations, this time of Robert B Parker’s Spenser series.
She died at the age of 84, on April 29, 2020, in her home on Ven, a small island off the southwestern coast of Sweden. She had no regrets. “This is a part of my life that I didn’t expect,” she said. “I never thought the books would last all my life, or that I’d still be thinking about them after all this time. I think Per would be amazed. I always think of him when we get a prize, or when I have to talk in public. I always think, Per would have loved this.”
At Crimefest 2015 in England, she was the guest of honor, interviewed by Lee Child. When she entered the room, she received a standing ovation.
___________________________________
The Essential Sjöwall and Wahlöö
___________________________________
With any prolific author, readers are likely to have their own particular favorites, which may not be the same as anyone else’s. Your list is likely to be just as good as mine—but here are the ones I recommend.
Roseanna (1965)
“They found the corpse on the eighth of July just after three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Most crimes are a mystery in the beginning,” says the Public Prosecutor at a press conference three days later, but this crime will remain a mystery for far longer than that. The woman’s body lying in the dredger’s bucket is naked, with no jewelry, no identifying characteristics.
“We brought her up eight days ago,” says the local policeman to First Detective Inspector Martin Beck. “We haven’t learned a thing since then. We don’t know who she is, we don’t know the scene of the crime, and we have no suspects. We haven’t found a single thing that could have any real connection with her.”
As the months pass, that’s exactly where things remain, until a chance observation by Beck leads to the first real clue, and then another, and then—to the real enormity of the task in front of them. She was tossed off a tourist boat: “Eighty-five people, one of whom was presumably guilty, and the rest of whom were possible witnesses, each had their small pieces that might fit into the great jigsaw puzzle. Eighty-five people, spread over four different continents. Just to locate them was a Herculean task. He didn’t dare think about the process of getting testimony from all of them and collecting the reports and going through them.”
Yet that is what Beck and his colleagues do, the trail stretching from Ankara to Durban to Copenhagen to Lincoln, Nebraska, the agonizingly slow pace finally quickening, then racing frantically, as it becomes clear who the murderer is—and the drastic measures that will have to be taken to stop him.
The climax to the book is breathtaking, and it shakes Beck to the core. Years later, it will still haunt him. It’ll shake you, too.
The Laughing Policeman (1968)
Stockholm, curtains of rain coming down, and 400 policemen occupied in keeping Vietnam protestors from the American embassy: “The police were equipped with tear gas bombs, pistols, whips, batons, cars, motorcycles, shortwave radios, battery megaphones, riot dogs, and hysterical horses. The demonstrators were armed with a letter and cardboard signs.”
And in another part of the city, somebody boards a red double-decker bus and machine-guns all the passengers.
There is no discernible motive. There is no connection between any of the people on the bus. For weeks, the squad tracks down each victim’s family, friends, and associates, looking for any clues, but always circling back to one victim in particular: a young, ambitious, up-and-coming detective in their own squad named Åke Stenström. Why was he on that bus so late at night? Why was he carrying his service weapon? Why did his fiancé insist that he had been working very long hours, when in fact crime had been slow? Why did Stenström have photos of nude women in his office desk?
And what did all this have to do with a sixteen-year-old cold case, one of the most notorious unsolved murders in Stockholm’s history?
The answers, when they come, will only cause more death. It is a superb police procedural, full of atmosphere, brilliant plotting, and memorable characters, down to the smallest bit players.
The Terrorists (1975)
“Gunvald Larsson ducked as a mass of flammable objects began to rain down on him. He was just thinking about his new suit when something struck him in the chest with great force and hurled him backward onto the marble tiles of the balcony….
“[He] got to his feet, found himself not seriously hurt and looked about to see what it was that had knocked him down. The object lay at his feet. It had a bull neck and a puffy face, and strangely enough, the black enamel steel-framed glasses were still on….
“[He] looked down at his suit. It was ruined. ‘Goddammit,’ he said.
“Then he looked down at the head lying at his feet. ‘Maybe I ought to take it home,’ he said to himself. ‘As a souvenir.’”
International terrorists are at the core of the series’ final volume, and a bad bunch they are, a professional group who work for hire all over the world, the politics irrelevant, their methods carefully planned and varied. It is to guard against their targeting an important U.S. Senator’s visit to Stockholm that Larsson has been sent to Latin America and had his suit ruined, and things will continue to go against plan all the way through the book, not least of all when the self-regarding Eric Möller, head of the Security Police, takes a list prepared by Larsson headed CS, for “Clod Squad,” consisting of those officers who should be allowed nowhere near the assassination detail, and, mistaking it to mean “Commando Section,” places exactly those officers in the most sensitive positions possible.
This is, however, not the only case of importance facing the Homicide Squad. Another concerns the murder of a prominent pornographic film maker, whose favorite m.o. is to get girls hooked on drugs before press-ganging them into his movies. A third case concerns a naïve young woman who thought she could get money from a bank just by going into any one of them and asking for it, which sets off a chain reaction of event that ends up with her on trial for armed robbery. Thanks to a capable court-appointed lawyer and the help of Martin Beck, she is set free, only to tumble quickly down the rabbit hole of the social welfare system, to cataclysmic and tragic effect.
Who are the terrorists in the book? They are everywhere, destroying the innocent and the guilty alike.
A towering achievement, and a fitting end to an extraordinary series.
___________________________________
Movie and Television Bonus
___________________________________
All of the Martin Beck books have been made into movies, some more than once, mostly in Swedish, but also Danish and Hungarian (starring Derek Jacobi!). They also served as a basis for a Swedish television series that ran for a remarkable 18 years, some of which ran on the BBC in 2015, with subtitles. All ten books also received radio dramatizations on BBC Radio 4 in 2012-2013.
The only English language film ever made was The Laughing Policeman in 1973. It was set in San Francisco and starred Walter Matthau as “Jake Martin” and Bruce Dern as “Leo Larson.” It’s a gritty movie, appropriately gloomy, and is, one might say, “loosely adapted” from the book, though some of the bones remain: the bus massacre, the dead detective, the cold case.
Whenever one of my authors got a movie deal, I always told them just to cash the check, but that if, against all the odds, it actually got made, they should just go to the theater, buy some popcorn, and pretend it was made from someone else’s book entirely. If Sjöwall and Wahlöö ever saw this one, I hope they followed that advice.
___________________________________
Book Bonus
___________________________________
As noted before, after Wahlöö’s death, Sjöwall twice collaborated with other writers on books: in 1989, with Bjarne Nielsen, on Dansk Intermezzo, and in 1990, with Dutch writer Tomas Ross, on The Woman Who Resembled Greta Garbo. The latter was about a visiting governmental minister who turns on a porn movie in his Stockholm hotel, and sees his own daughter. To my knowledge, neither book made much of a splash.
Per Wahlöö wrote eight other, most of them novels before he started with Sjöwall: The Chief (1959), The Wind and Rain (1961), A Necessary Action (1962), The Assignment (1963), Murder on the Thirty-First Floor (1963), No Roses Grow on Odenplan (1964), The Generals (1965), and The Steel Spring (1968). These were mainly suspense novels, sometimes set in the near future, about coups, assassinations, social malaise, and politics, and some of them are still available today in English translations.
___________________________________
American Crime Bonus
___________________________________
Fredrik Melander perusing the report on the bus massacre:
“’We have no Swedish precedents….Unlike us, the American psychologists have no lack of material to write on. The compendium here mentions the Boston strangler; Speck, who murdered eight nurses in Chicago; Whitman, who killed sixteen persons from a tower and wounded many more; Unruh, who rushed out onto a street in New Jersey and shot thirteen people dead in twelve minutes; and one or two more whom you’ve probably read about before.’
“’Mass murder seems to be an American specialty,’ Gunvald Larsson said….
“’I read somewhere that out of every thousand Americans, one or two are potential murderers,’ Kollberg said. ‘Though don’t ask me how they arrived at that conclusion.’
“’Market research,’ Gunvald Larsson said. ‘It’s another American specialty. They go around from house to house asking people if they could imagine themselves committing a mass murder. Two in a thousand say, ‘Oh yes, that would be nice.’”
The Laughing Policeman
Three policemen puzzle over the small caliber of the bullet used to kill industrialist Viktor Palmgren:
“’A .22,’ Melander said thoughtfully. ‘That seems strange….Who the hell tries to kill somebody with a .22?’
“Martin Beck cleared his throat….’In America it’s almost considered proof that the gunman is a real craftsman,’ he said. ‘A kind of snobbishness. It shows the murderer is a real pro and doesn’t bother to use more than what’s absolutely necessary.’
“’Malmö isn’t Chicago,’ Mansson said laconically.
“’Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy with an Iver Johnson .22,’ said Skacke, who was hanging around in the background.
“’That’s right,’ Martin Beck said, ‘but he was desperate and emptied the whole magazine. Fired like crazy all over the place.’
“’He was an amateur, anyway,’ Skacke said.”
___________________________________
Title Bonus
___________________________________
In Murder at the Savoy, the above Viktor Palmgren is shot in the back of the head while speaking to some dinner companions, and falls face first into his dinner, comprised of “crenelated mashed potatoes around an exquisite fish casserole a la Frans Suell.”
Happening to look at the copyright page, I noticed that the Swedish title of the book was Polis, Polis, Potatismos! Surely, that couldn’t be…I thought, and put it into Google Translate.
Sure enough, the original title of Book Six of “The Story of a Crime” was: Police, Police, Mashed Potatoes!
___________________________________
A Policeman’s Lot Bonus
___________________________________
“Being a policeman is not a profession. And it’s not a vocation, either. It’s a curse.”
Sjöwall and Wahlöö, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke
“Why the hell would anyone ever choose police work as his profession, he wondered.”
Ed McBain, ‘Til Death
“When constabulary duty’s to be done, to be done,
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.” | |||||
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] | 2014-11-05T00:00:00 | We set our clocks back an hour on the weekend. Whle I concede that it'ss nice to have it lighter in the morning, I never feel that makes up for how dark it gets in the afternoon, which tends to be my low energy time anyway. In any case, this plus our first flurries of the season makes… | en | Novel Readings | https://rohanmaitzen.com/2014/11/05/this-week-in-my-classes-falling-back/ | We set our clocks back an hour on the weekend. Whle I concede that it’ss nice to have it lighter in the morning, I never feel that makes up for how dark it gets in the afternoon, which tends to be my low energy time anyway. In any case, this plus our first flurries of the season makes it impossible for me to keep pretending winter isn’t setting in. I can hardly express what a drag this is on my spirits. Winter increases my stress levels exponentially — mostly because I hate driving in snow and ice. In fact, if I could configure my life so that I never had to get behind the wheel of a car between December and April, I might not mind winter at all. Well, OK, I would still not be a fan of the freezing-rain-sleet-snow mix Halifax specializes in, but it would not fray my nerves or ruin my plans in the same way. On the bright side, I do have a sabbatical next term, which somewhat relieves the pressure, and at this point the worst still lies ahead. In the meantime, we’re not done with the fall term yet.
I think things are going reasonably well in both my classes right now. In Mystery and Detective Fiction we’ve just finished working through Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s The Terrorists, which provoked quite a lot of discussion this time around. As always, I’ve been meditating on how to change up the reading list for the course’s next incarnation; I think The Terrorists is a keeper, precisely because it gives us a lot to talk about. It is, arguably, somewhat tendentious — I’ve been wondering if I should hold the authors’ Marxism in reserve next time (rather than emphasizing it in my opening lecture) and let the novel’s politics reveal themselves inductively. I don’t find the novel too doctrinaire to be humanly interesting and dramatic, though: I think Sjöwall and Wahlöö successfully walk the line between the picture and the diagram, with Martin Beck himself especially standing between us and a narrow didacticism. Rhea may have a portrait of Mao on her wall, but Beck remains committed to (if ambivalent about) the flawed system he polices. Today we started Ian Rankin’s Knots and Crosses — time for my annual comment that I’d love to try one of his longer, richer novels, except that this one (like The Terrorists) is always really good for discussion, and always gets singled out in student evaluations as a general favorite.
In 19th-Century Fiction we’ve moved on to Jude the Obscure. Jude is usually the last novel I cover in the Dickens-to-Hardy class, so it feels odd that it isn’t this time: we’re following it up with The Odd Women. I made room for Gissing by skipping sensation fiction for the first time I can remember in this course. I kind of miss it, because it’s a lot of fun (I usually assign either Lady Audley’s Secret or The Woman in White), but I’m anticipating a good response to The Odd Women. Jude seems to have perked people up, too, which might seem perverse, considering how grim it is, but depression has its own agonistic charms, and the novel also moves much more quickly, and is expressed much more bluntly, than Middlemarch (which, to my delight, thrilled a handful of students but also clearly daunted or deterred a fair number of them). One of the things we talked about today was Hardy’s emphasis on buildings and architecture. The novel is so intensely tactile and visual that I thought it might be nice to put some pictures in our minds’ eyes, so I put together a simple slide show, including these photos from my own one and only (so far) visit to Oxford.
The pulpit at St. Mary’s isn’t, strictly speaking, a Jude landmark, but Newman is one of the ghostly presences Jude communes with on his first night in the city, and I was surprised how moved I was to see where he had preached. The Martyrs’ Cross, of course, is where Sue and Jude first meet — or, more precisely, where Jude first suggests they meet, only to have Sue call out, as they approach it, “I am not going to meet you just there, for the first time in my life!” Jude is definitely not one of my favorite novels, but it is a favorite of mine to teach, because however heavy-handed I find it (and however annoying I find Sue), it is also passionate and occasionally profound, including in the challenge it issues to the more conventional morality of our other readings. Reading it right after Middlemarch also really brings out continuities: they share interests in aspiration and vocation, in hopes crushed, in loves that press against convention, in learning and religion and compassion for flawed, suffering humanity. Middlemarch may seem melancholy in its treatment of these themes, but put Jude up against it and suddenly Eliot’s meliorism seems downright buoyant!
Even though Jude is not our last book, it’s astonishing to realize how close we already are to the end of term: it seems to be rushing past. At the same time, it has felt like a particularly effortful term to me. I can’t remember ever feeling quite so tired after each class meeting: I come back to my office and have to just sit still for a while before I can gather up the energy for my next task. Am I getting old? Well, yes, of course I am … but I hope that the real culprit is the tendinitis that has kept me from my running routine for months now. I am just gradually getting back into a modified exercise program. One reason I have to sit down after class, though, is that standing and pacing (as I inevitably do during lecture and discussion) seems to be about the worst thing for my aches and pains! I’ve been very frustrated that even after diligently following all my physiotherapist’s instructions I am not significantly better and more mobile! I’m cautiously optimistic at this point. I never ran very far or very fast at the best of times, but I would like to get back at least to where I was. I miss the psychological benefits as much as the physical ones. Here’s hoping! | |||||
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] | null | [] | null | Born in 1926, Per Wahlöö was a Swedish writer and journalist who, alongside his own novels, collaborated with his wife, Maj Sjöwall, on... | en | PenguinRandomhouse.com | https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/32244/per-wahloo/ | Born in 1926, Per Wahlöö was a Swedish writer and journalist who, alongside his own novels, collaborated with his wife, Maj Sjöwall, on the bestselling Martin Beck crime series, which is credited as inspiring writers as varied as Agatha Christie, Henning Mankell, and Jonathan Franzen. In 1971 the fourth novel in the series, The Laughing Policeman, won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Per Wahlöö died in 1975. | |||
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] | null | [] | null | Page description | en | /favicon.ico | https://www.mywebsite.com/page | The Edgars, as they are more often called, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America, and honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film and theater published or produced in the past year. The only Swedish writers to have ever won an Edgar are Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö in 1971 for “The Laughing Policeman.” We called to congratulate Alvtegen and to ask her what got her started in writing crime novels in the first place.
Congratulations on the nomination — how does it feel?
“It feels great! I’m really excited. I’ve bought a beautiful gown for the banquet, which will be held in New York on April 30.”
How many books have you written?
“I’ve written 5 books, I’m currently working on my 6th, and I've been translated into 27 languages.”
Why did you start writing?
“There are many authors in my family. Astrid Lindgren was my old aunt, for instance, so I grew up with people who were all good at telling stories. And I was pretty good at writing in school, too, I just never thought I had enough talent to get published. Then my brother died suddenly in an accident in 1993, and I got very depressed; I had to take time off from work to treat my depression, and it was during that time, when I was in therapy that a story suddenly came to me. I didn’t really know then that I was writing a book. It felt as if I got access to a new room within myself, when I discovered writing.”
What does a normal working day look like?
“Well, it takes about a year for me to think up a story, and then it takes another year for me to write it. My first book, 'Guilt,' I wrote in two months, but since then I keep raising the bar for myself. When I’m in my writing phase, I begin my day with a long walk with the dog, then I start writing at around 11:30 or noon and write for seven hours. I write and edit at the same time, and I never have any deadlines. Sometimes minor characters grow to become bigger, that’s when my subconscious takes over the creative process. Nothing can compete with the feeling that I’ve done something great when I write. Not even good reviews.”
Why do you think Swedish thrillers are so successful internationally?
“Sjöwall/Wahlöö began that trend, and I think their books took away the label that it somehow wasn’t ‘fine’ to write thrillers. After Sjöwall/Wahlöö, established writers felt that it was all right to write thrillers. I also believe Swedish thrillers aren’t just thrillers, they are rich novels that happen to have a riddle in them. They deal with things human and personal that we all can relate to.”
Who do you read?
“Well, while I write I cannot read novels, I just read biographies or technical books. I don’t really read thrillers, although of course I’ve read Sjöwall/Wahlöö and Agatha Christie. But I suppose the book that I read when I first started writing, which was Peter Høeg’s 'Smilla’s Sense of Snow' determined the genre of my books.”
What’s important for you when you write?
“Psychology. I’ve read a lot of psychology, because I’m interested in the darker sides of others and myself. The more I know about myself, the less condescending I am of others. My depression taught me a lot.”
Where do you get your inspiration?
“That all depends. For instance, the character Sibylla in my book ‘Missing’ came one morning as I was waiting at a subway station. This barefoot homeless woman came up to me, begging for money. Most people turned away from her, as we do when homeless people come to us, but there was such dignity about this woman. I started to think about her and wondered how she ended up like that — so lonely that nobody was there for her. She became Sibylla, who is also my favorite character in all the books I’ve written. My Edgar nomination is therefore also for this homeless woman, wherever she is today.” | |||||
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] | null | [] | null | BBC Radio 4 begins a fascinating season of programmes this month featuring a 15-part examination by Mark Lawson of European crime fiction. | en | https://www.bbc.com/bbc.com/mediacentre/latestnews/2012/foreign-bodies/ | In Foreign Bodies: A History Of Modern Europe Through Literary Detectives, (tx from 22nd October) Lawson investigates the tensions and trends of Europe since the Second World War by focusing on some of the celebrated investigators from European fiction, and their creators.
The series accompanies dramatizations of all the Martin Beck novels, starring actor Stephen Mackintosh in the title role. Written by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö the novels are widely acknowledged as some of the most important and influential crime fiction ever written.
The authors paved the way for subsequent generations of crime writers to illustrate society and its most dysfunctional elements through crime and criminal investigations, future fallible heroes - Kurt Wallander and John Rebus to name but two - making the best fist they can of their own lives, whilst trying to tackle the violence and crime around them.
Gwyneth Williams, Controller BBC Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra, said: “This Autumn we explore the mood and mores of European cities in the company of eccentric detectives. And what better way to take a Radio 4 journey through Europe than to travel with the likes of Martin Beck, Inspector Rogas, Pepe Carvalho, Kemal Kayanka.
"The best of these books capture the times and the flavour of a nation and leave you with a character that lingers and a taste of the local cuisine. Presenter Mark Lawson knows his crime writing so don’t miss his Foreign Bodies – the killer Radio 4 narrative history of Europe.
"And at the heart of the series we bring you a complete dramatization of the little-known but hugely respected Martin Beck books by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö - all ten of them. These are the stories that inspired the Scandinavian explosion of crime writing we have seen in recent years and are referenced by many eminent writers such as Ian Rankin. Stephen Mackintosh plays Martin Beck and he is sure to hook you in.”
In crime fiction, everyday details become crucial clues: the way people dress and speak, the cars they drive, the jobs they have, the meals they eat. And the motivations of the criminals often turn on guilty secrets: how wealth was created, who slept with who, or a character’s role during the war. The intricate story of a place and a time is often explained in more detail in detective novels than in more literary fiction or newspapers, both of which can take contemporary information for granted.
In Foreign Bodies, Mark Lawson focuses on some of the most celebrated investigators - everyone from popular modern protagonists including Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander; Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole; and Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano; through Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus; Lynda La Plante’s DCI Jane Tennison; and Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck; back to a Belgian created by an Englishwoman and a French cop created by a Belgian - Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret.
Through the framework of cases investigated by these fictional European police heroes and heroines, Foreign Bodies pursues the shadows of the Second World War and the Cold War, conflicts between the politics of the left and right, the rise of nationalist sentiments and the pressures caused by economic crises and migration. Among the writers helping Lawson with his inquiries into their characters are: Jo Nesbø, Andrea Camilleri, PD James, Henning Mankell, Liza Marklund, Ian Rankin and Lynda La Plante.
The ten Martin Beck detective novels featuring Detective Inspector Martin Beck and his colleagues in the National Police Homicide Department in Stockholm will air in two parts. The dramatizations of the first five novels will start on October 27th, 2012 with the second five airing in Spring 2013. The radio dramas are written by Katie Hims and Jennifer Howarth, and directed by Mary Peate and Sara Davies.
In addition to Stephen Mackintosh the cast includes Neil Pearson as his friend and colleague Lennart Kollberg, Ralph Ineson as Gunvald Larsson and Adrian Scarborough as Frederick Melander. There are two narrators of the dramas, Lesley Sharp and Nicholas Gleaves - one male and one female reflecting the writing partnership of the novels.
Accompanying the dramas and Mark’s series, Radio 4 Extra will broadcast a reading, in five parts, of The Judge and His Hangman in October. Originally published as a novella in 1950 by Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt, it explores the themes of guilt and responsibility following the Second World War, and shows protagonist Inspector Bärlach finding his own solution to bringing a career criminal to justice.
Note to Editors
The 15-part series Foreign Bodies: A History Of Modern Europe Through Literary Detectives will be broadcast on Radio 4 over three weeks, at 1.45pm from Monday 22 October to Friday 9 November.
The Martin Beck series was written between 1965-1975, and set a gold standard for all subsequent Scandinavian crime fiction, and much crime fiction in Britain and America written since. Challenging the long-standing convention of the lone genius detective, Sjöwall and Wahlöö created in Martin Beck the prototype of the all-too human policeman working with a motley collection of similarly flawed colleagues.
The crimes they tackled in Stockholm and elsewhere in Sweden often followed the news agenda of the 1960s: paedophilia, serial killers, suicide, drugs smuggling. They were written to provide a deliberate critique of what the authors saw as a democratic society in crisis: their aim was to write a Decalogue, subtitled The Story of a Crime, in which they successfully constructed an incisive and realistic portrait of Sweden in the mid-Sixties.
Although it was a country then deemed to be alluringly liberal, Sjöwall and Wahlöö perceived it to be a stifling and directionless place where crimes were solved by painstaking police investigation, led by the dogged and sympathetic Martin Beck.
The Judge and His Hangman was originally broadcast in October 1984 from a translation by Cyrus Brooks. It was read by Bernard Hepton and abridged by Neville Teller.
Radio 4 online will support the series and drama:
Mark Lawson’s 15-part series Foreign Bodies will be made available as a download as well as being stacked, enabling all episodes to be available on demand for seven days after the broadcast final episode.
The Martin Beck dramas will be stacked and available on demand for seven days after the final drama is broadcast.
Character information
Crime writers interview collection – a selection of archive interviews from Radio 4’s weekday arts and cultural programme, Front Row.
Crime novel enthusiasts can join the conversation on twitter at #bbcforeignbodies | ||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 18 | https://murder-mayhem.com/mystery-books-more-than-one-author | en | Partners in Crime: These Mystery Authors Teamed Up for Double the Intrigue | [
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] | 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00 | Writing is generally a solitary business—however, a few mystery novelists have eased the loneliness by teaming up in creative partnerships. | en | https://orion-uploads.openroadmedia.com/7-favicon.ico | murder-mayhem.com | https://murder-mayhem.com/mystery-books-more-than-one-author | In Edwardian Britain marriage in the upper tiers of society was often more business than romance and that seems to have been the case for London intellectuals, George (G.D.H) and Margaret Cole. Economist George preferred the company of men, his wife immersed herself in left-wing causes. Despite their differences, the pair seem to have gotten along very well.
During the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, the couple collaborated in writing 28 murder mysteries and four collections of short stories—most featuring Scotland Yard detective Harry Wilson. By all accounts, it was George who came up with the plots and Margaret who did the actual writing. Detective stories were always more of a hobby than a calling for the Coles and after 1948’s The Toys of Death they gave it up to focus on politics. Though Margaret would later dismiss the novels as “competent, but no more”, the couple were good enough mystery writers to join the British crime writing elite as founder members of The Detection Club.
When it came to mystery stories British doctor and medical scientist Robert Eustace (the pen name of Eustace Barton) was a literary bed-hopper. He co-wrote eleven detective novels with one of Ireland’s pioneering female authors L.T Meade and also teamed up with actor-novelist Gertrude Warden to produce The Stolen Pearl in 1903. After writing a number of books of his own, he then joined another female crime writer, the celebrated Dorothy L. Sayers.
In 1930 Eustace supplied the plot and scientific and medical detail for the great mystery novelist’s The Documents in the Case, which features forensic analyst Sir James Lubbock and a murder involving poisonous mushrooms. Sayers was dissatisfied with the result and blamed herself saying, “I wish I could have done more with the brilliant plot”. It was the only time Sayers worked in tandem with anyone.
Founded in London in 1930 the Detection Club was a Who’s Who of British mystery writers with members including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K Chesterton, Baroness Orczy, and R. Austin Freeman.
Aside from attending meetings and dinners the members of the Detection Club also collaborated in producing two mystery novellas, Behind the Screen (1930) and The Scoop (1931), and a novel, The Floating Admiral (1932). All three publications were written as a round-robin with the authors each contributing a chapter. Serialized in the BBC magazine The Listener and broadcast on the radio, the collaborations were a huge commercial success. The profits went towards buying the club a permanent home in London.
Related: 9 British Mystery Books That Even the Most Dedicated Sleuths Haven’t Read
The hugely popular mystery writer Ellery Queen was actually two cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan (aka Frederic Dannay) and Emmanuel Lepofsky (pen name Manfred Bennington Lee). The pair came together in 1929 and would carry on producing novels, stories, screenplays, editing magazines, compiling anthologies, and even designing jigsaw puzzles until Lee’s death in 1971.
To add an extra layer, Ellery Queen was not only the author of the stories, but also also the detective in them. Labour between the pair was evenly divided. Dannay came up with the plots and the clues and Lee filled them out with descriptive passages and dialogue. Working tirelessly, the cousins, in the words of Margery Allingham, did “more for the detective story than any other two men put together”.
The names of this French crime writing duo of Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud (aka Thomas Narcejac) are not well known outside of their native country, but one of their novels, The Living and the Dead (1954) went on to become one of the most internationally celebrated mystery movies of the all-time—Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The pair began writing crime separately before deciding to work together after striking up a friendship at a Paris book awards dinner in 1948.
Like Dannay and Lee, they each contributed in their own specific way—Boileau coming up with the plots and Narcejac adding the atmosphere and characterization. The pair—credited in France with inventing Gallic noir—were incredibly prolific producing 43 novels. Most of them, like Vertigo, were psychological thrillers—and over 100 short stories (a number featuring the brilliant thief Arsene Lupin) in a career that lasted until Boileau’s death in 1989.
Maj Sjowell and Per Wahloo were the Grandparents of Scandi-noir novelists such as Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell, and Stieg Larsen were a couple of left-wing journalists who lived together in Stockholm. Inspired by reading Ed McBain they set out to create their own Swedish version of the 87th Precinct police procedurals. They succeeded brilliantly.
Featuring the dogged and lugubrious Stockholm detective Martin Beck and his colleagues as they battle crime, fight the idiocy of their government bosses, and suffer through the collapse of their relationships, Sjowell and Wahloo’s 10-book series began with Roseanna in 1965 and ended with The Terrorists which was written when Wahloo had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died in 1975. Sjowell lived until 2020, but despite many, many requests from publishers, she refused to write another Beck novel without her partner. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 2 | https://heloise2nd.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/maj-sjowall-per-wahloo-the-fire-engine-that-disappeared/ | en | Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö: The Fire Engine that Disappeared | http://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/9b/a0/9ba0bd01d76fbf4597769636167444341587343.jpg | http://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/9b/a0/9ba0bd01d76fbf4597769636167444341587343.jpg | [
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"Heloise Merlin"
] | 2014-11-13T00:00:00 | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are not only the grandparents of the Scandinavian crime novel, but there 10-volume series of novels (known in English, somewhat misleadingly as the "Martin Beck" series) pretty much (with some influence from Ed McBains 87th Precinct series) defined the shape of contemporary police procedurals. What the series basically does is to combine social… | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | Heloise Merlin's Weblog | https://heloise2nd.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/maj-sjowall-per-wahloo-the-fire-engine-that-disappeared/ | Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are not only the grandparents of the Scandinavian crime novel, but there 10-volume series of novels (known in English, somewhat misleadingly as the “Martin Beck” series) pretty much (with some influence from Ed McBains 87th Precinct series) defined the shape of contemporary police procedurals.
What the series basically does is to combine social realism with the mystery novel – it takes an unflinching look at Swedish society from the early sixties to the early seventies, a look that becomes increasingly tinged with bitterness as a supposedly welfare state lets go more and more of its promise to build a better future for everyone, and instead continues to privilege the rich and powerful. Which would be very depressing stuff, if it wasn’t made readable, enjoyable even (to some degree at least) by the mystery plot that keeps readers turning the pages even as they are confronted with a sheer endless parade of human misery and mean-spiritedness. Formally considered, this is very 19th century, as Sjöwall / Wahlöö use mystery in very much the same way as Dickens or Zola used melodrama, and I would not be at all surprised if that was a tradition they intentionally decided to place themselves in.
The Fire Engine that Disappeared is the fifth volume in the series, and it continues its general trend to become increasingly focused on the character’s private lives and on giving a picture of Swedish society at the time. There is more space given to the character’s concerns outside of their police job than before, and the narrative is even more de-centralized, Martin Beck becoming almost a minor figure as the novel follows his colleagues Larsson and Kollberg as well as Mansson from Malmö and newcomer Skane. That emphasizes one of the distinguishing features of this series, the utter ordinariness of its protagonists which are not only not outstandingly good-looking or intelligent, but frequently not even particularly good policemen, but just civil servants that do their job without any particular enthusiasm and who get results not so much by brilliant deduction than by luck or sheer dogged persistence.
The latter is particularly ironic if one considers how many of the cases could just as well have occurred in a classical mystery novel. While the puzzle element is not as strong here as in the previous novel, the investigators find themselves confronted by the corpse of someone who apparently committed suicide as well as being murdered. The Fire Engine that Disappeared takes its time in solving the crime, both in that the investigations span several months and in that the novel is not what anyone would call a page-turner. It’s not slow either, however, but moves along at a steady, comfortable speed, giving readers the chance to take in the scenery along that way, as bleak as that proves to be. And it’s precisely this view of the scenery that will likely linger longest with the reader, Sjöwall/Wahlöö’s hard and uncompromising perspective on a welfare state coming apart (a perspective which I’m convinced they developed not in spite of but because of their Marxist views – something I might return to in a post on a later volume) will remain in most readers’ memory even when the details of the crime plot have faded. | ||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 9 | https://rohanmaitzen.com/2011/02/24/maj-sjowall-per-wahloo-the-martin-beck-mysteries/ | en | Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö: The Martin Beck Mysteries | [
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"Rohan Maitzen"
] | 2011-02-24T00:00:00 | My education in Scandinavian crime fiction continues! After I expressed my doubts about Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers, I received some very helpful advice in the comments thread. In particular, Litlove suggested the Wallander books participate in a peculiarly European mood of melancholia (about which, she rightly inferred, I am largely ignorant) and a literary tradition… | en | Novel Readings | https://rohanmaitzen.com/2011/02/24/maj-sjowall-per-wahloo-the-martin-beck-mysteries/ | My education in Scandinavian crime fiction continues! After I expressed my doubts about Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers, I received some very helpful advice in the comments thread. In particular, Litlove suggested the Wallander books participate in a peculiarly European mood of melancholia (about which, she rightly inferred, I am largely ignorant) and a literary tradition of what she, um, invitingly described as “ugly, grinding prose, empty, bleak, futile.” And Dorian, who added the nice term “effaced personality” to our conversation about how Wallander is characterized, noted that Mankell’s series has an important antecedent in the Martin Beck mysteries by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. If I had been reading Mankell solely for pleasure, I might not have felt obligated to do the extra work of adjusting my reading framework to take these contexts into account, even though in principle I agree that good reading requires situating the book appropriately. I was reading Mankell in part as a professional, though, so I felt I did need to try a little harder to understand what he was up to–and boy, am I glad I did, not just as a teacher/scholar but as a reader. Three books into the Martin Beck series, I am thoroughly enjoying them, and I’m already feeling as if I will read Mankell much better (more aptly, more appreciatively) when I turn to The Fifth Woman, which is waiting here on my desk.
Why am I liking the Sjöwall and Wahlöö books so much better than Faceless Killers? One likely answer is that I’ve already fine-tuned my expectations, so that the features they share with Mankell’s first Wallander novel are more familiar and comfortable. Among these I would include the bleak (grinding, empty, futile) atmosphere–including both the literal atmosphere of cold, wet, miserable winter (as Jonathan Franzen says in his introduction to The Laughing Policeman, the “weather inevitably sucks”) but also the moral and emotional atmosphere, which is grim in a resigned, routine way. There’s also the one-damn-thing-after-another plotting characteristic of a police procedural, where every lead has to be laboriously pursued, every interview methodically conducted. No snazzy locked-room mysteries, these, no death-by-icicle or orangutang, no brilliant ratiocination leading up to a triumphant revelation scene. In these books, crime is a sordid business, no matter which side of the law you are on. No wonder everyone drinks so much–or tries to (in the Beck books at least, the more you are looking forward to your aquavit, the more likely it is the phone will ring and tear you away from it).
To some extent, I would say too that the prose in the Sjöwall and Wahlöö books has the same somewhat clunky quality I objected to Faceless Killers. Those of us who know no Swedish (I’m guessing that covers all readers of this blog!) can’t know how far this is an effect of translation, of trying to capture the cadence of another language in English. There are some tics in the Beck books that do suggest that there’s something deliberate about it, something purposefully exotic, if you like. One small detail that stands out for me is the recurrent reference to ‘Martin Beck’ where I would expect the surname alone, e.g. “Martin Beck looked disbelievingly at Kollberg,” 200 pages in. That’s just the tiniest little bit jarring, as you read along; it lets you know you aren’t quite on your home turf. But more generally, I found Faceless Killers flat, whereas I am finding the Beck books dry–in a good way. They are almost as tersely declarative, but there’s a momentum to the language that I enjoy, and also there’s a wonderful streak of humor, sometimes sardonic, other times more flat-out comical (as with the two beat cops Kvant and Kristiansson–“Ask a policeman,” they helpfully tell a confused woman who asks them for directions).
I haven’t yet seen quite the scope of social criticism attributed to Sjöwall and Wahlöö in the prefaces provided to my editions–one by Mankell himself, another by Val McDermid, another, as I mentioned, by Franzen. Franzen calls the series “a ten-volume portrait of a corrupt modern society; Mankell says “the authors had a radical purpose in mind … to use crime and criminal investigations as a mirror of Swedish society.” I have seen enough, though, to believe that the critique already apparent accumulates over the remaining seven books–and especially in The Laughing Policeman (with its anti-Vietnam rallies and its complacently self-interested corporate villain) I can anticipate how it might proceed. Mankell writes that the authors never intended “to write crime stories as entertainment” and he points to Ed McBain as an inspiration for them, someone who showed how to use “crime novels to form the framework for stories containing social criticism.” McDermid highlights the difference between the Beck books and the “golden age” procedurals of the 1930s, set in a world in which “a bent cop is almost unthinkable; an incompetent one only a little less so.” I was actually surprised that none of these discussions mentioned the possible influence of hard-boiled detective novels: to be sure, one point of these is that their protagonist is not part of the official law enforcement system, but someone like Sam Spade moves precisely in a world of near-universal corruption (or, sometimes worse, incompetence) which very much includes the police. I mentioned the noir atmosphere of McBain’s Cop Hater, and I think there’s something of the same perspective–though illuminated by the flickering flourescent lights of bureaucracy, rather than the foggy fitfulness of street lights–in these bleak cop novels.
As for the cases, well, I didn’t like the graphic violence and sensational bursts of action in Faceless Killers. Two of the Beck novels I’ve read so far also turn on quite violent crimes, and particularly in Roseanna, the details are unrelentingly specific. Having read McBain’s comments about facing up to violence while still trying not to be “salacious” about it, I can see a similar principle at work in the Beck books, though I think the authors flirt with danger in the way they linger over the details of the sexual crimes and, especially, seem preoccupied with women’s sexual histories, or with women who are “too” sexually assertive or demanding. There are only rare cases of women who are something other than nagging/disappointed wives at home, or ‘whores’ shading into victims: here too, perhaps, some fruitful consideration might be given to the influence of hard-boiled novels, or perhaps this is just another reflection of the hyper-masculine world of the police. The standout exception is the woman police officer who helps entrap Roseanna’s murderer…but she too ultimately must play the vamp and then becomes a victim, only to be rescued. That the belatedness of the rescuers’ arrival is caused by the same kind of stupid screw-ups that typify the world of the novels more generally adds only a little painful irony to an exploitive situation.
These remain first impressions, but I feel like I’m making progress. I’ve talked fairly often about blogging as a way of thinking in public; it’s also, wonderfully, a way of learning in public. Thanks for your help so far–feel free to keep correcting and supplementing my attempts to come to terms with this material! | |||||
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] | null | [] | null | Buy books online and find book series such as Martin Beck Police Mystery Series written by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall from PenguinRandomHouse.com | en | PenguinRandomhouse.com | https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/MBE/martin-beck-police-mystery-series/ | ||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 19 | https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/per-wahloo/ | en | Book Series In Order | [
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"Graeme"
] | 2017-12-30T16:03:14+00:00 | Complete order of Per Wahloo books in Publication Order and Chronological Order. | //www.bookseriesinorder.com/favicon.png | Book Series in Order | https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/per-wahloo/ | Per Wahloo Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.
Publication Order of Inspector Jensen Books
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Publication Order of Martin Beck Books
with Maj Sjöwall
Publication Order of Anthologies
Per Wahloo is a Swedish author known for his crime fiction novels. Born in 1926 in Kungsbacka Municipality in Halland, he is sometimes known as Peter Wahloo in English. He debuted as a novelist with his first novel, The Lorry, being published in 1962. The book is also known by the title A Necessary Action. He is the son of writer and journalist Waldemar and had one brother.
Per Wahloo’s last novel was The Terrorists, which was released one year after he passed away in 1975 from an unsuccessful pancreatic operation done to try and address his cancer in Malmo, Sweden at the age of 48 (the book was published in 1976). The book was authored with the help of Maj Sjowall, his common-law partner and fellow Marxist for thirteen years. He is buried in the central cemetery’s memorial garden at Malmo Sankt Pauli.
Maj Sjowall wrote the detective/crime fiction Martin Beck series with him and includes a total of ten novels. In 1971, they won the Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America for their book, The Laughing Policeman, which features the police detective working in Stockholm. Many of their Beck books have been filmed. There was a television series that ran in Sweden from 1997 to 2015 that brought the character of Detective Inspector Beck to life starring Peter Haber as Beck. This series was shown in England with English subtitles as well when the BBC purchased it and aired the series in 2015.
Before he was a writer and after finishing school, Per was a crime reporter from 1947 and onwards. Wahloo started in the field and worked in 1949 as a permanent employee of the Evening Post. However, he embraced freelance work in the fifties and was very busy writing film articles and theater reviews for different papers before going to Stockholm to live.
He spent some time traveling all around the world before going back to Sweden and getting back to crime journalism. He was largely done with journalism around 1964, but went on to work for a journal called Tidsignal (Time Signal in English) for five years and served on the editorial board for the journal. His leftist tendency came to influence and define his early novels, which largely focused on power and the right. One example of this is the 1962 novel A Necessary Action and his Dictatorship series.
He is the author of The Chief, The Wind and Rain, A Necessary Action, The Stell Spring, The Assignment, Murder on the Thirty-First Floor, and The Generals. Wahloo is known for being one part of the couple that invented the genre of Nordic noir. He is also credited as an inspiration for the Norweigan writer Jo Nesbo.
The first book in the Martin Beck Series is titled Roseanna. First published in 1965, this is the first book where readers get to meet the Detective Inspector Martin Beck. Part of the Stockholm Homicide Squad, he works diligently to solve cases and catch those who have committed crimes– mainly, murder.
Beck soon is involved in a new case when a young woman turns up dead in Sweden’s Lake Vattern. The detective is assigned to the case, working on it along with the small local police force. However, initially, they have nothing to go on and don’t even know who the woman is, let alone the killer.
Eventually, they find out who the woman is: Roseanna. A free spirit who liked to travel and enjoy life and sex, her life was cut tragically short in a beautiful setting when she was relentlessly strangled to death. Now operating with a cause of death, all that they know is that she was on board a cruise with eighty people.
A little more than three months in, Beck has no idea who the killer is, but the thing that has made him so successful in his career is the fact that Martin Beck obsesses over his cases. It has ruined his marriage– or perhaps his marriage was never destined to last as he married his wife and she slowly became less and less happy. Even though they have two children together, Beck is much more engaged with the cases he covers than his family– that much is certain. Beck creates model ships to pass the time and work through cases.
When the murder turns out to be a rape as well, the case gets personal. Beck aligns with local detective Ahlberg, and they pore over the details of the case together. They communicate frequently, going over the information that they have and trying to figure out how they can get more leads. When they get the help of Detective Kafka from Nebraska, who interviews individuals who were familiar with the victim, the case slowly starts to gain traction.
Beck is a detective that goes with the info he has and his gut too. But as the pieces start to come together, does the killer know that they are on to him– and can they get to him before he finds them first? Read this exciting debut novel in the Martin Beck series to find out!
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke was published in 1996 and is the second book to feature the now-famous Detective Inspector. When Beck is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a prominent Swedish journalist a full two years since his Roseanna case.
Beck’s not on vacation for more than a day and a night before he is rung up and given the case. Alf Matsson disappeared without warning, and the detective inspector must travel to Budapest to try and find the journalist– alive or dead. But Budapest is full of more danger than he may have even realized.
When Beck stumbles into a totally different racket on his journey to find the journalist, he may be risking his life as the dangerous characters of the Hungarian underworld start to be alerted to his presence. The journalist left behind his luggage and key, so it seems like it was a kidnapping of some kind after all.
As the detective tries to retrace the steps of the missing journalist and getting little help from the police, it’s up to Beck to dodge smuggling racket members and find this man once and for all. Read this exciting crime fiction novel to see if Matsson can be found and if Beck can make it out of the country alive! | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 43 | https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6546.Per_Wahl_ | en | Books by Per Wahlöö (Author of Murder on the Thirty | [
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"Maj Sjöwall",
"Per Wahlöö",
"Joan Tate (Translator)",
"Ed McBain",
"Maj Sjöwall (Translator)",
"Per Wahlöö (Translator)",
"Sarah Death (Translator)",
"Lois Roth (Translator)",
"Jan Bogaerts (Translator)",
"Ülev Aaloe (translator"
] | null | Per Wahlöö has 71 books on Goodreads with 130233 ratings. Per Wahlöö’s most popular book is Roseanna (Martin Beck, #1). | https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6546.Per_Wahl_ | Roseanna (Martin Beck, #1)
by
Lois Roth (Translator)
3.78 avg rating — 17,716 ratings — published 1965 — 173 editions
The Laughing Policeman (Martin Beck, #4)
by
3.99 avg rating — 10,170 ratings — published 1967 — 145 editions
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (Martin Beck, #2)
by
Joan Tate (Translator)
3.83 avg rating — 9,159 ratings — published 1966 — 124 editions
The Man on the Balcony (Martin Beck, #3)
by
Alan Blair (Translator)
3.92 avg rating — 7,558 ratings — published 1967 — 126 editions
The Fire Engine That Disappeared (Martin Beck, #5)
by
Joan Tate (Translator)
3.95 avg rating — 5,856 ratings — published 1969 — 102 editions
The Abominable Man (Martin Beck, #7)
by
Thomas Teal (Translator)
4.02 avg rating — 5,698 ratings — published 1971 — 4 editions
The Locked Room (Martin Beck, #8)
by
Michael Connelly (Goodreads Author) (Introduction)
3.94 avg rating — 5,623 ratings — published 1972 — 111 editions
Murder at the Savoy (Martin Beck, #6)
by
Amy Knoespel (Translator),
Ken Knoespel (Translator)
3.87 avg rating — 5,499 ratings — published 1970 — 101 editions
Cop Killer (Martin Beck, #9)
by
Alan Blair (Translator)
4.02 avg rating — 4,252 ratings — published 1974 — 10 editions
The Terrorists (Martin Beck, #10)
by
Joan Tate (Translator)
4.07 avg rating — 3,709 ratings — published 1975 — 98 editions
Hämnden (87th Precinct, #6)
by
Maj Sjöwall (Translator),
Per Wahlöö (Translator)
3.94 avg rating — 2,670 ratings — published 1958 — 58 editions
Handen ( 87th Precinct, #11)
by
Maj Sjöwall (Translator),
Per Wahlöö (Translator)
3.91 avg rating — 2,435 ratings — published 1960 — 62 editions
Hotet
by
Maj Sjöwall (Translator),
Per Wahlöö (Translator)
3.82 avg rating — 2,073 ratings — published 1959 — 66 editions
Hatet (87th Precinct, #9)
by
Maj Sjöwall (Translator),
Per Wahlöö (Translator)
3.92 avg rating — 1,680 ratings — published 1959 — 54 editions
Dråpet (87th Precinct, #18)
by
Maj Sjöwall (Translator),
Per Wahlöö (Translator)
3.86 avg rating — 1,568 ratings — published 1960 — 56 editions
Murder on the Thirty-first Floor (Inspector Jensen #1)
by
Sarah Death (Translator)
3.46 avg rating — 755 ratings — published 1964 — 61 editions
The steel spring
by
Joan Tate (Translator)
3.38 avg rating — 390 ratings — published 1968 — 30 editions
A Necessary Action
by
Joan Tate (Translator)
3.42 avg rating — 146 ratings — published 1962 — 25 editions
The Assignment
by
3.71 avg rating — 77 ratings — published 1963 — 28 editions
The Generals
by
3.48 avg rating — 64 ratings — published 1965 — 13 editions
Het opperhoofd
by
Jan Bogaerts (Translator)
3.56 avg rating — 18 ratings — published 1959 — 8 editions
31. korruse hukk. Mees, kes haihtus nagu suits
by
Ülev Aaloe (translator, afterword),
Tõnis Laanemaa (illustrator)
3.56 avg rating — 18 ratings
Vinden och regnet
by
2.64 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 1965 — 5 editions
Det växer inga rosor på Odenplan
by
2.80 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1964
The Terrorists / Family Fortune / Maigret and the Apparition (Detective Book Club)
by
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating
Зарубежный детектив
by
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating
Von Schiffen und Menschen
by
0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings | |||||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 21 | https://rohanmaitzen.com/2011/02/24/maj-sjowall-per-wahloo-the-martin-beck-mysteries/ | en | Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö: The Martin Beck Mysteries | [
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] | 2011-02-24T00:00:00 | My education in Scandinavian crime fiction continues! After I expressed my doubts about Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers, I received some very helpful advice in the comments thread. In particular, Litlove suggested the Wallander books participate in a peculiarly European mood of melancholia (about which, she rightly inferred, I am largely ignorant) and a literary tradition… | en | Novel Readings | https://rohanmaitzen.com/2011/02/24/maj-sjowall-per-wahloo-the-martin-beck-mysteries/ | My education in Scandinavian crime fiction continues! After I expressed my doubts about Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers, I received some very helpful advice in the comments thread. In particular, Litlove suggested the Wallander books participate in a peculiarly European mood of melancholia (about which, she rightly inferred, I am largely ignorant) and a literary tradition of what she, um, invitingly described as “ugly, grinding prose, empty, bleak, futile.” And Dorian, who added the nice term “effaced personality” to our conversation about how Wallander is characterized, noted that Mankell’s series has an important antecedent in the Martin Beck mysteries by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. If I had been reading Mankell solely for pleasure, I might not have felt obligated to do the extra work of adjusting my reading framework to take these contexts into account, even though in principle I agree that good reading requires situating the book appropriately. I was reading Mankell in part as a professional, though, so I felt I did need to try a little harder to understand what he was up to–and boy, am I glad I did, not just as a teacher/scholar but as a reader. Three books into the Martin Beck series, I am thoroughly enjoying them, and I’m already feeling as if I will read Mankell much better (more aptly, more appreciatively) when I turn to The Fifth Woman, which is waiting here on my desk.
Why am I liking the Sjöwall and Wahlöö books so much better than Faceless Killers? One likely answer is that I’ve already fine-tuned my expectations, so that the features they share with Mankell’s first Wallander novel are more familiar and comfortable. Among these I would include the bleak (grinding, empty, futile) atmosphere–including both the literal atmosphere of cold, wet, miserable winter (as Jonathan Franzen says in his introduction to The Laughing Policeman, the “weather inevitably sucks”) but also the moral and emotional atmosphere, which is grim in a resigned, routine way. There’s also the one-damn-thing-after-another plotting characteristic of a police procedural, where every lead has to be laboriously pursued, every interview methodically conducted. No snazzy locked-room mysteries, these, no death-by-icicle or orangutang, no brilliant ratiocination leading up to a triumphant revelation scene. In these books, crime is a sordid business, no matter which side of the law you are on. No wonder everyone drinks so much–or tries to (in the Beck books at least, the more you are looking forward to your aquavit, the more likely it is the phone will ring and tear you away from it).
To some extent, I would say too that the prose in the Sjöwall and Wahlöö books has the same somewhat clunky quality I objected to Faceless Killers. Those of us who know no Swedish (I’m guessing that covers all readers of this blog!) can’t know how far this is an effect of translation, of trying to capture the cadence of another language in English. There are some tics in the Beck books that do suggest that there’s something deliberate about it, something purposefully exotic, if you like. One small detail that stands out for me is the recurrent reference to ‘Martin Beck’ where I would expect the surname alone, e.g. “Martin Beck looked disbelievingly at Kollberg,” 200 pages in. That’s just the tiniest little bit jarring, as you read along; it lets you know you aren’t quite on your home turf. But more generally, I found Faceless Killers flat, whereas I am finding the Beck books dry–in a good way. They are almost as tersely declarative, but there’s a momentum to the language that I enjoy, and also there’s a wonderful streak of humor, sometimes sardonic, other times more flat-out comical (as with the two beat cops Kvant and Kristiansson–“Ask a policeman,” they helpfully tell a confused woman who asks them for directions).
I haven’t yet seen quite the scope of social criticism attributed to Sjöwall and Wahlöö in the prefaces provided to my editions–one by Mankell himself, another by Val McDermid, another, as I mentioned, by Franzen. Franzen calls the series “a ten-volume portrait of a corrupt modern society; Mankell says “the authors had a radical purpose in mind … to use crime and criminal investigations as a mirror of Swedish society.” I have seen enough, though, to believe that the critique already apparent accumulates over the remaining seven books–and especially in The Laughing Policeman (with its anti-Vietnam rallies and its complacently self-interested corporate villain) I can anticipate how it might proceed. Mankell writes that the authors never intended “to write crime stories as entertainment” and he points to Ed McBain as an inspiration for them, someone who showed how to use “crime novels to form the framework for stories containing social criticism.” McDermid highlights the difference between the Beck books and the “golden age” procedurals of the 1930s, set in a world in which “a bent cop is almost unthinkable; an incompetent one only a little less so.” I was actually surprised that none of these discussions mentioned the possible influence of hard-boiled detective novels: to be sure, one point of these is that their protagonist is not part of the official law enforcement system, but someone like Sam Spade moves precisely in a world of near-universal corruption (or, sometimes worse, incompetence) which very much includes the police. I mentioned the noir atmosphere of McBain’s Cop Hater, and I think there’s something of the same perspective–though illuminated by the flickering flourescent lights of bureaucracy, rather than the foggy fitfulness of street lights–in these bleak cop novels.
As for the cases, well, I didn’t like the graphic violence and sensational bursts of action in Faceless Killers. Two of the Beck novels I’ve read so far also turn on quite violent crimes, and particularly in Roseanna, the details are unrelentingly specific. Having read McBain’s comments about facing up to violence while still trying not to be “salacious” about it, I can see a similar principle at work in the Beck books, though I think the authors flirt with danger in the way they linger over the details of the sexual crimes and, especially, seem preoccupied with women’s sexual histories, or with women who are “too” sexually assertive or demanding. There are only rare cases of women who are something other than nagging/disappointed wives at home, or ‘whores’ shading into victims: here too, perhaps, some fruitful consideration might be given to the influence of hard-boiled novels, or perhaps this is just another reflection of the hyper-masculine world of the police. The standout exception is the woman police officer who helps entrap Roseanna’s murderer…but she too ultimately must play the vamp and then becomes a victim, only to be rescued. That the belatedness of the rescuers’ arrival is caused by the same kind of stupid screw-ups that typify the world of the novels more generally adds only a little painful irony to an exploitive situation.
These remain first impressions, but I feel like I’m making progress. I’ve talked fairly often about blogging as a way of thinking in public; it’s also, wonderfully, a way of learning in public. Thanks for your help so far–feel free to keep correcting and supplementing my attempts to come to terms with this material! | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 1 | https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/32244/per-wahloo/ | en | Penguin Random House | https://images2.penguinrandomhouse.com/cover/9780307744760 | https://images2.penguinrandomhouse.com/cover/9780307744760 | [
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] | null | [] | null | Born in 1926, Per Wahlöö was a Swedish writer and journalist who, alongside his own novels, collaborated with his wife, Maj Sjöwall, on... | en | PenguinRandomhouse.com | https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/32244/per-wahloo/ | Born in 1926, Per Wahlöö was a Swedish writer and journalist who, alongside his own novels, collaborated with his wife, Maj Sjöwall, on the bestselling Martin Beck crime series, which is credited as inspiring writers as varied as Agatha Christie, Henning Mankell, and Jonathan Franzen. In 1971 the fourth novel in the series, The Laughing Policeman, won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Per Wahlöö died in 1975. | |||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 62 | https://mainecrimewriters.com/2011/10/11/were-all-swedish/ | en | We’re All Swedish | http://mainecrimewriters.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/9780307390929-150x150.jpg | http://mainecrimewriters.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/9780307390929-150x150.jpg | [
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] | null | [] | 2011-10-11T00:00:00 | Hi, Gerhard here, creator of the Jack McMorrowsson mystery series. It's about an ex-Göteborgs-Posten reporter exiled to the northern city of Ostersund, where he chases stories and gets involved with a host of nefarious Swedish criminals. Ostersund is a very gray city, where it snows six months a year and everyone drinks strong coffee and… | en | Maine Crime Writers | https://mainecrimewriters.com/2011/10/11/were-all-swedish/ | Hi, Gerhard here, creator of the Jack McMorrowsson mystery series. It’s about an ex-Göteborgs-Posten reporter exiled to the northern city of Ostersund, where he chases stories and gets involved with a host of nefarious Swedish criminals. Ostersund is a very gray city, where it snows six months a year and everyone drinks strong coffee and the police drive sturdy Volvos. If you liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, you’ll love the McMorrowsson novels. As you know, there’s nothing like a Swedish crime novel for topping the bestseller lists.
Just kidding, of course. But I’ve got to say, watching the Stieg Larsson phenomenon over the past few years has had me wishing I’d spent some time in Stockholm. Or at least my protagonists had.
It’s interesting just how fascinated the world is with Swedish crime. This is particularly notable because Sweden really doesn’t have an inordinate amount of criminals. It does have good writers and a tradition of character-driven crime novels where the plot is often secondary to the investigators’ ruminations on life. My kind of books.
As I write this, I’ve turned in my chair to the study bookshelf. There, on the shelf of honor, are books by a couple of writers who may be considered the founders of the tradition, or at least close to it. Beginning in the 1960s, Maj Sjowell and Per Wahloo co-wrote 10 mysteries starring a Swedish cop named Martin Beck. Beck has issues, to say the least. But readers like me found they just delighted in being in his company.
I’ve just reached for The Fire Engine That Disappeared, the fifth in the series. The opening chapter is masterfully done, with lovely sketches of hapless characters, both minor and major, and a riveting lead-up to the event that launches the plot: a massive explosion in a Stockholm apartment. It’s a great book, as are The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, The Laughing Policeman, The Locked Room. They’re brief by Stieg Larsson standards, but like the best of the genre, stay with you for years.
At least they have with me, though sometimes I feel like a bit of a dinosaur. At a book event last week, I was asked what writers were influences on my work. I hesitated before mentioning John D. MacDonald, who was writing before many of the people in the room were born. But then someone came up to chat afterwards and said, “Have you read Maj Sjowell?” “And Per Wahloo,” I said. That conversation was a highlight of my night.
So my point here (ah, yes, the point) is simple. When you read a crime novel off the bestseller list, don’t forget the crime writers who paved the way. Some of the writers of an earlier generation, whose name aren’t and weren’t ever household words, were masters of their craft. | |||
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] | null | [] | 2012-08-15T00:00:00 | The Fire Engine that Disappeared Sjöwall and Wahlöö, translated by Joan Tate First published in Sweden, 1969, P. A. Norstedt & Söners Forlag This edition Fourth Estate (HarperCollinsPublishers) 2011 ISBN: 9780007439157 258 pages Score 5/5 This is the fifth in the ambitious and influential series of ten novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. The… | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/a2127bf6d002614744021f6d9190ac8857b70557e440cea6307fa522c4e63aef?s=32 | Past Offences: Classic crime, thrillers and mystery book reviews | https://pastoffences.wordpress.com/2012/08/15/sjowall-and-wahloo-the-fire-engine-that-disappeared/ | The Fire Engine that Disappeared
Sjöwall and Wahlöö, translated by Joan Tate
First published in Sweden, 1969, P. A. Norstedt & Söners Forlag
This edition Fourth Estate (HarperCollinsPublishers) 2011
ISBN: 9780007439157
258 pages
Score 5/5
This is the fifth in the ambitious and influential series of ten novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. The series, dating from 1960s Sweden, is subtitled The Story of a Crime, and is intended as a socialist critique of a society in crisis. That sounds a bit heavy, but the books are written with a great deal of humour (both character-based and one-liners) and are also thoroughly satisfying police procedurals.
As with all procedural series, there is a team of police which shares the investigations. Martin Beck is the lead character, but actually doesn’t play a massive role in this book. He is plagued by minor health problems and had an unsatisfactory, humdrum home life with his wife and two children. An account of his perfect weekend (spent alone at home with some beer, building a matchstick model of the Cutty Sark), is hilarious.
Gunvald Larsson is a bullish ex-seaman whose bravery and tenacity make up for his lack of finesse. Larsson begins the book as hero of the hour, saving most of the residents of an apartment block which explodes while he keeping one of its residents under surveillance. Larsson and Beck’s sidekick Lennart Kollberg are constantly at loggerheads, adding an interesting dynamic to team meetings. The calm and logical Fredrick Melander patiently sifts clues and follows up leads. The youngest member of the team, Skacke, is generally disregarded as an idiot, but works hard to earn his keep. The oldest member, Evald Hammar, is counting the days until his retirement.
We are also reintroduced to a guest star who appeared earlier in the series, the laid-back but surprisingly effective policeman Per Månsson in Malmö, who picks up the reins of the case when the clues move south. Månsson is a great character with an interesting approach to his home life and his work.
All of the characters play a part in uncovering the crime which is hidden beneath the apparently accidental explosion and death of a small-time crook, but which proves to have deep roots.
The politics are mainly soft-pedalled, expressed through the characters’ mild dissatisfaction with everything from care homes to reform schools. However, the authors can be very acerbic:
If he had been in charge of the disturbances which had taken place during that long hot summer and which were generally regarded with great anxiety, then probably most of them would not have occurred. Instead they were handled by people who thought that Rhodesia was somewhere near Tasmania and that it was illegal to burn the American flag but positively praiseworthy to blow your nose on the Vietnamese. These people thought that water cannons, rubber truncheons and slobbering German shepherd dogs were the best means of dealing with human beings, and the results ran according to those beliefs.
The disturbances of the 1960s are a fading memory now, but it is good to be reminded that people cared.
However, the tone is generally one of black humour, obviously influenced by Ed McBain’s work. The first paragraphs give a taste of this:
The man lying dead on the tidily made bed had first taken off his jacket and tie and hung them over the chair by the door. He had then unlaced his shoes, placed them under the chair and stuck his feet into a pair of black leather slippers. He had smoked three filter-tipped cigarettes and stubbed them out in the ashtray on the bedside table. Then he had lain down on his back on the bed and shot himself through the mouth.
That did not look quite so tidy.
About this edition
This book is from a new edition for the Swedish classics, and I am not that impressed with the presentation. The books deserve better covers than this increasingly standard silhouette/dramatic backdrop approach – a cheap and cheerful matter of Photoshopping two stock photographs together. I much preferred the minimalist covers of the last generation of Beck novels (pictured below) which used just the one stock photograph.
And also, they’ve dropped all the umlauts from the names. Is that allowed?
On the plus side, this edition has a charmingly frank introduction by Colin Dexter – ‘When I was invited to write the introduction to The Fire Engine that Disappeared, I somewhat guiltily realized that I had never read a single word written by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.’
The book has retained the valuable PS TM section that I remember from the previous editions. The PS contains a brief history of the police procedural, a section on the legacy of Sjöwall and Wahlöö, an author-team biography, and recommendations for further reading. If I were a crime publisher I’d put a PS in every book, although the TM might be overkill.
Anyway, book-nerdery aside, I found Fire Engine the funniest of the Martin Beck series. Definitely worth picking up if you’re not already a fan.
Sarah at Crimepieces is reviewing the Martin Beck novels in order. See Roseanna, The Man Who Went up in Smoke, and The Laughing Policeman.
Final destination: Back to the library | ||||
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] | null | [] | null | en | http://fp.home.amu.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/fp_favicon.png | http://fp.amu.edu.pl/scandinavian-crime-fiction-or-a-few-words-on-snow-myth-and-murder/ | Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen’s book, published in 2017 and not yet translated into Polish, should offer a solid knowledge base for both the scholar of Scandinavian literature and culture and the average amateur reader who is simply a devoted fan of the crime genre. Stougaard-Nielsen ruthlessly deconstructs the idyllic myth of the welfare state. He lays bare the mechanisms of the depraved capitalist system lurking beneath its veneer and tells the story of the historical demise of ideas such as egalitarianism, progress and prosperity.
We should begin with an observation that may seem obvious: Stougaard-Nielsen is by no means original in the array of examples from literature and film he chooses to include in his book. In this sense, he is no different from his predecessors. The book Nordic Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Film & TV, published four years earlier by Barry Forshaw, analyzes the poetics of the Scandinavian school of crime fiction by referencing the exact same pool of novels and television series. Both authors invoke the classics of the genre (Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell) as well as Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö – the couple who forged a mode of social critique dressed up as “Scandi noir” in the 1970s. We could say the same of the book Scandinavian Crime Fiction, edited by Paula Arvas and Andrew Nestingen, and offering a multifaceted analysis of the genre. All these authors cover the same stylistic conventions and motifs that, taken together, have become the proper territory of Scandinavian crime fiction. In so doing, they paint a picture of the genre’s broader cultural, literary and social context. They also all address the question of neoromantic trends (mentioned by Stougaard-Nielsen only twice in the context of the Gothic novel), Icelandic and Finnish prose (omitted wholesale from Scandinavian Crime Fiction), as well as issues of queer culture that continue to be relevant today.
The analytical method adopted by Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen follows a somewhat different route. He embeds each novel discussed in its socioeconomic context. He sketches a portrait of an ethnically homogeneous Scandinavian society and reveals the great potential in analyzing the language of crime novels. To give an example: he cites a passage describing homes that once “leaned on each other” and demonstrates how this anthropomorphizing device highlights the impression of bygone times that may have been tougher, but were at least rooted in a sense of community. Several times, the author will hint at an intriguing idea without following up on it (as in his analysis of the symbolism behind the hero’s name (Varga Veuma) in Gunnar Staalesen’s series, or Staalesen’s allusions to Nordic mythology). These promising interpretive seeds could undoubtedly have enriched the overall effect of Scandinavian Crime Fiction, but they are abruptly curtailed to leave room for the author to reiterate – for each subsequent novel – the same set of theses asserting the claim that the poetics of the Scandinavian crime novel and its protagonists’ worldviews are all tools for delivering a critique of the social welfare state. Perhaps his most developed section is the analysis of Peter Høeg’s novel Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow. Smilla, the book’s protagonist, is a glaciologist of Greenlandic descent who lives in Denmark yet feels a foreigner. The author continues the trend popular in the ‘90s to adopt a voice that conveys the foreigner’s experience of the welfare state. In this decade, Scandinavia was undergoing sweeping demographic, political, and cultural changes. The collapse of the economy, influx of refugees, and sharp rise of unemployment all contributed to an identity crisis experienced among Scandinavians. They suddenly had to confront the question: “what is my place in this new, dynamic reality?” And since Scandinavian-born populations turned a blind eye to these feelings, we can only presume that it was in fact the newcomers arriving from abroad who found themselves blocked at this major impasse. Stougaard-Nielsen draws our attention to the symbolism of the color white, which figures here as an ambiguous color that can be found on the façade of Smilla’s building and simultaneously signifies the systemic veil thrown over the socially abject (associated with the ethnic Others living in white ghettos, if we follow the author’s analysis). Stougaard-Nielsen also looks into the meaning behind the names of the concrete housing blocks painted in white, described in Danish as “det hvide snit,” which literally translates to “white cuts” and metaphorically evokes the act of lobotomy. This last term ultimately becomes a form of slang to describe the buildings. This contemptuous phrase was meant to foreground the foreigner’s status as a second-class citizen cast out by society. Stougaard-Nielsen does not, however, develop this notion further but leaves it suspended in a sphere of meanings to be guessed at.
A critical reading of Scandinavian Crime Fiction yields the unshakeable impression that one crucial concept for the scholar (although it is never explicitly addressed in the text) is myth. This concept brings up a set of issues of social consciousness, and for all its capaciousness, it cannot be summarized in any concise definition. I will, however, allow myself to invoke two descriptions of this feature of social life which, in my opinion, figures as a line prompter hidden in the wings of Stougaard-Nielsen’s book, quietly guiding the author’s line of reasoning but never showing his face. The first quote comes from Robert Morrison MacIver’s The Web of Government and designates two categories of tools mobilized to amass power: techniques and myths.
Techniki to wszelkiego rodzaju umiejętności i sposoby dowolnego manipulowania rzeczami i ludźmi traktowanymi jak rzeczy. Mity zaś to „przeniknięte wartościowaniem przekonania i pojęcia, które ludzie posiadają, według których i dla których żyją. […] każde społeczeństwo jest powiązane systemem mitów, zespołem panujących form myślowych, które określają i podtrzymują wszystkie jego czynności. Każda cywilizacja, każdy okres, każdy naród ma swój charakterystyczny zespół mitów. W nim leży sekret społecznej jedności i społecznej trwałości, a jego zmiany tworzą historię wewnętrzną każdego społeczeństwa” 1
The welfare system wielded a similar power to establish societal bonds in the 1950s, when it was still a relatively new phenomenon. Its task was to shape a society that would be modern, socially democratic, and advanced. In principle, the northern periphery of Europe was to provide an ideal model of the nation that its southern neighbors would ultimately strive to emulate.
Yet for MacIver, myth was a neutral concept, so there is little sense in assessing the accuracy or falsehood of a given myth. It would seem that for the author of Scandinavian Crime Fiction, the model of the Scandinavian welfare nation qualifies as a false myth, and it is at this juncture that the two authors’ paths diverge. While adopting a traditional conception of the function of myth and conceding its role to sanctify the existing social order, the school of Nordic Noir might suggest, rather, that the welfare nation model falls squarely within this field. In the noir genre, Scandinavian writers found an inexhaustible wellspring of inspiration for spawning increasingly inventive, macabre tales that were singularly expressive of their circumstances.
The second definition of myth I find compelling was conceived by George Schöpflin. He emphasizes the enormous symbolic strength implicit in myth and its effects:
Mit jest jednym ze sposobów, w jaki zbiorowości – (…) zwłaszcza narody – ustalają i określają podstawy swego istnienia, własne systemy moralności i wartości. Tak rozumiany mit jest zbiorem wierzeń zbiorowości o sobie samej, przybierających formę opowieści (…). Członkowie zbiorowości mogą zdawać sobie sprawę, że mit, który akceptują, nie jest w pełni ścisły, lecz ponieważ mit nie jest historią, nie ma to znaczenia. Ważna jest treść mitu, nie ścisłość jego historycznych danych.2
In the golden age of the Scandinavian welfare state, society dreamt up this kind of narrative to make sense of their situation. Among Scandinavian populations, a trend emerged to fulfill one’s social duty by assisting the police in their investigations. This cooperation between civil servants and civilians therefore become an instrumental piece of the welfare myth’s functionality. Yet little by little, this myth was compromised as its dystopian character came to light. The society of the future suddenly found itself trapped within a state of unending imprisonment, escalating xenophobia, and a bureaucratic system that was slowly encroaching on social life. Stougaard-Nielsen tries to furnish proof that crime novels lucidly reflect this crisis of identity experienced by the Nordic nations.
Scandinavian Crime Fiction demonstrates that Scandinavian writers working in the mode of crime fiction force their readers to confront the illusion lingering in the wake of the welfare system fantasy. For Stougaard-Nielsen, the crime novel becomes an effective tool for describing societies in the throes of drastic change. It should come as no surprise, then, that this genre has found its proper home in Scandinavia, of all places, and in a century witnessing escalating globalization, conflict, and inequality. To shed light on the ramifications of the welfare state crisis, the author focuses on lone wolf protagonists: detectives, victims, and evildoers alike. For all of the above are united by a sense of being stranded within the superficial morass of consumerist reality dominated by the interests of the middle class. In this context, the authors themselves become particularly relevant. Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, for instance, two forerunners of the genre who based their ten-volume Martin Beck series on actual crimes, used the genre to convey their far-left views of the depraved world of the new proletariat spawned by consumerist society. The authors portray the dilemmas of the welfare state citizen who must constantly struggle for status and has no choice but to participate in a career-centered model of social existence.
The very idea of the welfare state system first took shape in an era that witnessed the radical restructuring of urban space and public life in the years following World War II. At the time, sweeping plans were being drawn up to remodel the citizen and her role in her environment. Urban planners attempted a comprehensive overhaul of agglomeration systems throughout all of Scandinavia. Public transportation, office buildings, and residential buildings were to play a role in shaping the “pure society of the future,” eliminating inequalities and subverting archaic traditions and their monocultural model of living. Yet it was not long before fully autonomous “ABC towns” (such as Vällingby in Sweden) were proven to be misguided ideas, for instead of bringing their populations together, they enforced segregation, and instead of engaging them in collective life, they led to alienation.
Stougaard-Nielsen takes the Norrmalmstorg bank robbery in Stockholm in 1973 as the symbolic starting point of the systemic crisis of these northern nations. He argues that this event marks a fundamental blurring of the borders between good and evil that had once seemed so fixed. Upon their release, the hostages spoke of their captor in almost glowing terms. Rather than framing him as a criminal, they saw him as a victim of the system – perhaps a bit lost, but at the end of the day, a good man (we encounter a similar motif of the hero ill-fitted for the new reality and lured by the freeing power of crime in Anders Bodelsen’s Think of a Number). The robbery, which played out live on television, triggered a surge of popularity for crime stories in Scandinavia. Crime became a mass spectacle, and the illusion that the welfare state is equipped to eradicate all evil was shattered. Citizens ceased to place their trust in institutions, which in turn burst the bubble of security and protection they had once taken for granted. A wave of anxiety ensued that was easily converted into xenophobia and nationalism later on, in the 1990s. And so, towards the end of the 1970s, the idea of the “People’s Home” (Folkhemmet), postulated in 1928 by Per Albin Hansson, chairman of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Sweden, collapsed. To settle accounts in its wake, Nordic Noir was born. Narratives conceived in this emerging genre raise issues of financial crisis, (un)stable families, the search for self-identity, societal bonds, and reasserting the role of the nation in late modernity.
Alongside myth, another critical category for the crime novel is nostalgia. Scandinavian novels are steeped in a deep longing for a once-powerful social order, a feeling of belonging, and values that have since been lost. Yet as Stougaard-Nielsen indicates, these things are features of an invented past painted in the light of a “false nostalgia” for an idealized image of reality as it never, in fact, existed. This kind of counterfeit perception of the past becomes visible in Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s The Man on the Balcony. In this text, the couple offers a critique of consumerism and expresses nostalgia for local tradition and mom-and-pop stores. Later on, twenty-first century crime novels reorganized this paradigm and did away with its nostalgic mood and its idealization of the authenticity and social unity of bygone times. In lieu of interpersonal bonds, they propose a post-welfare model of individualism and the re-negotiation of traditional gender roles. In the crime novel model that has emerged over the last two decades (most visibly in television production), emancipated women have decided to reject the imperative to conform their priorities to society’s expectations (take, for example, the journalist Annika Bengtzon from Liza Marklund’s series, or the cold and recalcitrant heroines of the television series The Killing and The Bridge).
In spite of the somewhat redundant and perhaps chaotic nature of Scandinavian Crime Fiction, the book as a whole conveys a certain coherent portrait of the Scandinavian crime novel. The genre consists of elements such as: nostalgia, realism, action set in snowy or rainy landscapes, social critique (with a scope that looks beyond local concerns and attends to issues like capitalism and neocolonialsm), a critique of the prison system and social welfare system, an authenticity established by referencing actual crimes, the promotion of socialist ideas, and finally, lone wolf heroes skeptical of the justness of national institutions.
As I mentioned earlier, Stougaard-Nielsen’s book might offer a valuable point of reference for research on the Scandinavian crime novel. The question is merely: to what extent? At a moment when this genre has grown vastly popular and the volume of bibliographic publications on the subject is equally vast (in relation to the genre’s short timeline), there is still a need for basic analyses and preliminary overviews that are presumably already available in multiple articles and publications, not least those by Barry Forshaw.
translated by Eliza Cushman Rose | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 42 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Beck | en | Martin Beck | [
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] | 2004-05-21T00:52:50+00:00 | en | /static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Beck | Fictional Swedish police detective
For other uses, see Martin Beck (disambiguation).
Martin BeckRoseanna
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke
The Man on the Balcony
The Laughing Policeman
The Fire Engine That Disappeared
Murder at the Savoy
The Abominable Man
The Locked Room
Cop Killer
The TerroristsAuthorMaj Sjöwall and Per WahlööTranslatorLois Roth (1), Joan Tate (2, 5, 6, 10), Alain Blair (3, 4), Amy and Ken Knoespel (6), Thomas Teal (7, 9) and Paul Britten Austin (8).CountrySwedenLanguageSwedish, translated into EnglishDisciplinePolice proceduralPublished1965-1975No. of books10
Martin Beck is a fictional Swedish police detective and the main character in a series of ten novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö,[1] collectively titled The Story of a Crime. Frequently referred to as the Martin Beck stories, all have been adapted into films between 1967 and 1994. Six were adapted for the series featuring Gösta Ekman as Martin Beck.
Between 1997 and 2018 there have also been 38 films (some released direct for video and broadcast on television) based on the characters, with Peter Haber as Martin Beck. Apart from the core duo of Beck and his right-hand man Gunvald Larsson, the latter adaptations bear little resemblance to the plots of the original series. They feature a widely different and evolving cast of characters, though roughly similar themes and settings around Stockholm.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Sjöwall and Wahlöö conceived and wrote a series of ten police procedural novels about the exploits of detectives from the special homicide commission of the Swedish national police; in these the character of Martin Beck was the protagonist.[2] (Both authors also wrote novels separately.) For the Martin Beck series, they plotted and researched each book together, and then wrote alternate chapters simultaneously.[3] The books cover ten years and are renowned for extensive character and setting development throughout the series. This is in part due to careful planning by Sjöwall and Wahlöö.[4]
Roseanna (Roseanna, 1965)
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (Mannen som gick upp i rök, 1966)
The Man on the Balcony (Mannen på balkongen, 1967)
The Laughing Policeman (Den skrattande polisen, 1968) (Edgar Award, Best Novel, 1971)
The Fire Engine That Disappeared (Brandbilen som försvann, 1969)
Murder at the Savoy (Polis, polis, potatismos!, 1970)
The Abominable Man (Den vedervärdige mannen från Säffle, 1971)
The Locked Room (Det slutna rummet, 1972)
Cop Killer (Polismördaren, 1974)
The Terrorists (Terroristerna, 1975)
Martin Beck: The protagonist of the series, Martin Beck goes from being an unhappily married man and father of two young teenagers, to a divorced man in a happy unmarried relationship with Rhea Nielsen, a kind and emphatic landlady whom Beck meets while investigating the death of a man who was Nielsen's tenant. Beck is prone to colds and often suffers from ailments and physical discomforts. Beck also gets several promotions, from Detective to Inspector, and Chief of the National Murder Squad by the end of the series. This seems to be to the chagrin of everyone involved, including him, as he hates the vision of being confined to desk work. In Cop Killer, he is happily spared a promotion to a Commissioner. In The Terrorists, he is, however, forced to become Chief of Operations in an important job protecting an American senator, meaning that he is for once, in theory, higher in position than his superior, Malm. He is allowed to assemble his perfect team, consisting of Larsson, Rönn, Skacke, Melander and himself. He does extremely well coordinating the desk work and keeping in communication (through allowing Melander to handle all telephone communications, and diverting all telephone calls, or switching off the telephone altogether whenever he needs time to think), impressing the Commissioner. In The Abominable Man, he is shot and severely wounded. He quits smoking after the incident as his favourite manufacturer discontinues his preferred type of cigarette.
Lennart Kollberg: Beck's most trusted colleague; a sarcastic glutton with a Socialist worldview; served as a paratrooper. After having shot and accidentally killed a person in the line of duty, he refuses to carry a gun. He is newly married in the second book and fathers two children over the course of the series. In The Fire Engine That Disappeared, he refers to Gunvald Larsson as "the stupidest detective in the history of criminal investigation", and in The Abominable Man, Larsson informs him, "I've always thought you were a fucking idiot". Through working with each other on numerous investigations, they later come to understand each other. He resigns from the force at the end of the penultimate book, Cop Killer. He realises he was ashamed of what the police force had become, but still has the last word in the last book.
Gunvald Larsson: A former member of the merchant marine and the black sheep of a rich family, he has a liking for expensive clothes and pulp fiction including the work of Sax Rohmer. He is one of the few people outside East Germany who owns and drives a sports car manufactured by Eisenacher Motorenwerk. He is somewhat lacking in interpersonal skills and is disliked by most of his colleagues. He and Kollberg share a mutual antipathy, but are capable of working together efficiently when the occasion demands it. However, although he often treats Einar Rönn with the same boorishness, Rönn is his only friend. The two are close, often spending time together off the job. His rich, cultured family taught him how to behave correctly in all circumstances, something which the Commissioner notes that he tries to conceal. Larsson has a penchant for expensive clothes, and his tailored suits frequently get ruined during his investigations. He is tall and has china blue eyes, and is in extremely good shape. He is noted as the best in the team at breaking down doors.
Einar Rönn: Larsson's friend from Arjeplog in the rural north of Sweden, he is married to a Lapp woman. He is permanently red-nosed, incapable of writing a coherent report and totally unimaginative, but a hard-working and efficient policeman. He is very calm and peaceful, losing his temper only once (on Larsson's behalf) in all the books. By the end of the series, Beck notes that Rönn had defied all expectations to become a valuable asset to the team, and someone whom he could trust.
Benny Skacke: A young ambitious, overzealous and sometimes hapless detective. He is introduced in the fifth book as a new member of the homicide commission, but later transfers to Malmö for personal reasons. Skacke is still somewhat naïve, seeking to become police commissioner, but he is noted by Beck in the last book as having matured significantly.
Fredrik Melander: Noted for his flawless memory and for always being in the lavatory when anyone wants him. Melander is described as a first-class policeman in The Fire Engine That Disappeared, but also as very boring. He insists on getting ten hours of sleep every night and has illegible handwriting. He is noted for having no temper displays and being immune to flattery. He later transfers to the Burglary and Theft division in an effort to avoid overtime. After, he is featured briefly in the later books in the series (except The Terrorists). In the Terrorists, Beck puts him in charge of telephone communications for his skill in having a long conversation with someone and getting nothing done.
Evald Hammar: Beck's boss until he retires in the end of The Fire Engine That Disappeared. He is mild-mannered, trusts his men's judgment, and dislikes the political infighting which increasingly accompanies his job.
Stig Malm: Beck's boss from Murder at the Savoy onwards. A politician with little understanding of police work who is willing to do anything to get up the career ladder, for whom Beck eventually feels sorry by the end of the book. Malm is often ordered around by the National Police Commissioner. He has an overly high opinion of himself, not hampered by his one case as Chief of Operations ending in disaster.
Kurt Kvant and Karl Kristiansson
Lazy and inept partner patrolmen from Skåne who are shouted at by Larsson. At one point their trampling all over a crime scene resulted in a lengthy investigation, as no footprints or fingerprints could be taken at the scene. After Kvant is killed in The Abominable Man, Kristiansson has a new partner, Kenneth Kvastmo, who is equally inept but far more zealous.
Per Månsson
A leisurely but very competent Malmö detective who becomes involved in several of Beck's cases. He is particularly known for his searching skills.
Åke Stenström
A young detective noted for his shadowing skills. He is killed in The Laughing Policeman.
Åsa Torell
Widow of Åke Stenström, who later decides to become a cop herself. She appears prominently in Murder at the Savoy and The Terrorists.
Aldor Gustavsson
A mediocre policeman, who bungles the initial investigation in The Locked Room.
Backlund
An unimaginative and rigid detective in Malmö.
Inga Beck
Martin Beck's wife, whom he later divorces.
Ingrid Beck
Martin Beck's daughter, often described as mature and independent. She has a good relationship with her father, and they often go out for dinner together. She urges Beck to leave her mother Inga.
Rolf Beck
Martin Beck's lazy son, with whom he has a poor relationship. Beck finally admits to himself in a later book that he dislikes the boy.
Rune Ek
One of the detectives. The character is usually minor, but appears more prominently in The Laughing Policeman.
Emil Elofsson and Gustav Borglund
Two partner patrolmen in Malmö. They appear in The Fire Engine that Disappeared and Cop Killer. In the later book, Borglund is killed by a wasp.
Norman Hansson
A uniformed police sergeant in some of the books.
Oskar Hjelm
A highly skilled but vain and temperamental forensic scientist, who is highly susceptible to flattery. Beck uses this weakness on a daily basis.
Gun Kollberg
Kollberg's young wife and mother of his two children.
Rhea Nielsen
Martin Beck's new girlfriend after he divorces his wife. She is an open socialist, and enjoys cooking. The series ends with Kollberg and his wife Gun, and Beck and Nielson having a happy New Years' party, in a perfect atmosphere with Nielsen's delicious cooking. She is a landlady, having inherited a block of apartments. Unlike many other landlords, she takes good care of the property, and builds a social community around her apartments. She charges less rent than average, and has them well refurbished. She meets Beck in The Locked Room, as the ex-landlady of the deceased man. Intelligent and straight-talking, she is a professional social worker.
Herrgott Nöjd (Herrgott Allwright or Herrgott Content in English translations)
A down-to-earth police officer from the rural district of Anderslöv, who gets on well with just about anybody. Appears in the books Cop Killer and The Terrorists.
Sten Robert "Bulldozer" Olsson
A very busy, energetic and enthusiastic public prosecutor in charge of investigating and prosecuting bank robbers. He has a big part in The Locked Room, where several fiascos occur under his watch when he insists on personally overseeing the investigation. He is known for being so busy, with often 10 cases at once, that he never appeals a case after losing, which he rarely does.
Strömgren
A Stockholm detective with a minor role in some of the books. Little is known about him, but he is disliked by both Beck and Larsson. In The Terrorists he apparently is a spy for Bulldozer Olsson.
Richard Ullholm
A pedantic and nit-picking detective in some of the books. He is constantly making official complaints about his colleagues over usually minor details.
Bo Zachrisson
Another mediocre policeman, who appears in The Fire Engine That Disappeared and later lets the Prime Minister get assassinated in The Terrorists. Eric Möller, the chief of Security Police, mistakes Larsson's "CS" (meaning Clod Squad) list of policemen who should not be used for any important duties, as the "Commando Section".
All ten novels have been adapted to film. Some have been released under different titles and four have been filmed outside Sweden. The first actor to play Martin Beck was Keve Hjelm in 1967. Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt portrayed Beck in 1976.
In 1993 and 1994, Gösta Ekman played the character in six films. American audiences are likely most familiar with Walter Matthau playing the Beck role in the 1973 film called The Laughing Policeman, where his character was called "Jake Martin."
Martin Beck has also been played by Jan Decleir, Derek Jacobi and Romualds Ancāns. Two of the novels, Roseanna and Murder at the Savoy, have each twice been adapted for films. In the later TV series films based more on the named characters than events, Martin Beck is played by Peter Haber.
1967 – Roseanna (Sw) (based on Roseanna, starring Keve Hjelm)
1973 – The Laughing Policeman (US) (based on The Laughing Policeman, starring Walter Matthau; the setting is changed to San Francisco and the characters have different names)
1976 – Mannen på taket ("The man on the roof") (Sw) (based on The Abominable Man, starring Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt)
1979 – Nezakonchennyy uzhin ("The unfinished supper") (USSR) (based on Murder at the Savoy, starring Romualds Ancāns (lv)
1980 – Der Mann, der sich in Luft auflöste ("The man who disappeared into thin air") (Ger) (based on The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, starring British actor Derek Jacobi)
1993 – Beck – De gesloten kamer ("Beck- the closed room") (Neth) (based on The Locked Room, starring Jan Decleir)
1993 – Roseanna (based on Roseanna)
1993 – Brandbilen som försvann (based on The Fire Engine That Disappeared)
1993 – Polis polis potatismos! (based on Murder at the Savoy)
1993 – Mannen på balkongen (based on The Man on the Balcony)
1994 – Polismördaren (based on Cop Killer)
1994 – Stockholm Marathon (loosely based on The Terrorists)
Further information: Beck (Swedish TV series)
The BBC dramatised the ten stories for radio and broadcast began in October 2012 on BBC Radio 4 under the umbrella title of The Martin Beck Killings.
The series stars Steven Mackintosh as Beck, Neil Pearson as Kollberg, Ralph Ineson as Larsson, Russell Boulter as Rönn, and Adrian Scarborough as Melander.[5]
1 – Roseanna (27 October 2012)
2 – The Man who Went Up in Smoke (3 November 2012)
3 – The Man on the Balcony (10 November 2012)
4 – The Laughing Policeman (17 November 2012)
5 – The Fire Engine That Disappeared (24 November 2012)
6 – Murder at the Savoy (6 July 2013)
7 – The Abominable Man (13 July 2013)
8 – The Locked Room (20 July 2013)
9 – Cop Killer (27 July 2013)
10 – The Terrorists (3 August 2013)
Sjöwall and Wahlöö's technique of mixing traditional crime fiction with a focus on the social issues in the Swedish welfare state received a great deal of attention.[6] The concept has been updated in the 1990s with Henning Mankell's detective character Kurt Wallander and in the 2000s with Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy featuring Lisbeth Salander. The basic concept has, by extension, given rise to the entire Scandinavian noir scene. The Mystery Writers of America, in 1995, rated The Laughing Policeman as the 2nd best police procedural, after Tony Hillerman's Dance Hall of the Dead.[7] | ||||||
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] | null | Per Wahlöö Per Wahlöö (1926 - 1975) This is black caviar of the finest grade Born in 1926, Per Wahlöö was a Swedish writer and... | es | http://biographiesii.blogspot.com/favicon.ico | http://biographiesii.blogspot.com/2020/05/per-wahloo-this-is-black-caviar-of.html | StålsprångetThe Steel Spring
Inspector Jensen
Not a crime, but a peculiarly chilling and plausible political horror is the subject of the second and final part in Per Wahlöö’s diptych with Chief-Inspector Jensen. Already known to readers of the first part in the diptych, Murder On The Thirty-First Floor, Chief-Inspector Jensen is not a detective in the ordinary fictional sense. He belongs to a hypothetical but discomfittingly realistic Northern country of the near future, where paternalistic government, on the principles of the broilerhouse, has been carried to its logical end. Where newspapers are designed for reassurance, unsolved difficulties are concealed and suppressed, and wrong thoughts are held to be unthinkable. In The Steel Spring, this country of the sterile and half-alive is suddenly cut off from communication with the rest of the world, and from its own governing class who have fled the capital. Jensen returns to penetrate the silence and mystery of the sudden curtain that has fallen over the people.
In Per Wahlöö’s powerfully imaginative diptych with Chief-Inspector Jensen, Murder On The Thirty-First Floor and The Steel Spring, he clearly demonstrates the gift he and Orwell possesses, namely that of elevating the expression of his ideas by apparently depersonalising his subjects.
Mord på 31:a våningenMurder on the Thirty-First Floor
Inspector Jensen
This chilling yet satirical semi-surrealistic political thriller is set in an unnamed Northern country in a horribly possible future world. A paternal government spoonfeeds the stolid unthinking masses with tales of show-piece Royals and of successful, materialistic workers. Taste has been deadened through the medium of sugary newspapers and magazines, all the monopoly of a publishing trust organization housed in a huge glass tower which overlooks the whole city. An anonymous letter arrives to say that there is a bomb in the building. It is in effect a hoax, and Chief-Inspector Jensen is given a week to find the culprit. There are false confessions. Then Jensen begins to wonder if the heads of the trust really want him to pry into their secrets. What is the mystery of the 31st floor?
Murder on the Thirty-First Floor, the first part of Per Wahlöö’s diptych with Chief-Inspector Jensen, is another crisp, fast-moving, sardonic story of ruthless power-politics by the author hailed as one of the 20th century’s finest Swedish writers.
GeneralernaThe Generals
Corporal Edwin Velder is on trial for his life. Some of his 127 alleged crime are military, but others are civil and moral: bigamy, rape, and sacrilege. The Generals, Per Wahlöö’s most complex novel, takes the form of the proceedings of the trial, stretching over three months. The trial is of great political importance to the regime. The result is foregone conclusion: Velder has been prepared in prison by “specialists” for three years. He is a physical and mental wreck and confesses to all but one of the charges. In reality the court-martial is an elaborate rehearsal of the events of the last eight years. The past and the dead are on trial. A group of civilized, intelligent men took over the island, we learn, and began to build an ideal state. There were no politics, religion, laws, bureaucracy, or taxes. The country was carefully developed and enjoyed great prosperity and general happiness under the loosely exercised authority of the state’s founders. After five years the first cracks appeared with a disagreement in the ruling council. Slow disintegration set in: a secret armed force was built up by one of the rulers, and eventually civil war broke out. The rout of the liberal party was followed by full-scale fighting between the “fascists” and the “reds”. At the time of the trial the country has enjoyed, officially, three years of peace after the cease-fire, but in fact the Generals, who rule with an iron grip, are ceaselessly struggling for power with one another. The military tribunal, a gallery of fanaticism and obtuse cruelty, forces Velder to reconstruct the events, personalities, ideals, battles, and final defeat of the island revolution. As the inevitable verdict is pronounced on the innocent, unprotesting Velder, the latest coup takes place.
The Generals is a political novel but told with Wahlöö’s sardonic humor and thriller writer’s sense of suspense. He is too subtle a moralist to draw an obvious allegory or point a message for his readers. They must draw their own conclusions from what is Wahlöö’s most demanding and satisfying novel.
UppdragetThe Assignment
The Provincial Resident of a desolate province in a South American country has been assassinated. When Manuel Ortega, a minor diplomat, accepts the appointment as the dead man’s successor, it seems a foolhardy decision. From the day he assumes his post he is thrown into a violent, corrupt world, where two extremist political factions are trying to destroy each other. Ortega is the proverbial man in the middle, surrounded by men and women he wants to trust - his secretary, the cy
nical Chief of Police, and the sullen bodyguards who try to keep the Resident alive. Political and moral undercurrents, and a brutally ironic climax.
The Assignment is another brilliant and tense novel by a Scandinavian Franz Kafka.
Reviews
“A frighteningly effective and clear book. /…/ *The Assignment *is a novel with clear documentation as an organic component, but set up for a brave film director (perhaps a Kubrick). It is as exciting as a thriller by Graham Greene, unpleasant, because its not written as entertainment, but in concentrated novel form sets forth shocking material. /…/ An international book of unseen cogency.”
Jyllands-Posten, Denmark
“The Assignment is something as uncommon as a political thriller which is equally excellent as a thriller and as a political novel. You rush through it with pounding heart and cold hands, but it is so precisely constructed and so sensually written that it is impossible to read it superficially.”
Information, Denmark
“Frighteningly effective.”
Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden
LastbilenA Necessary Action
This gripping and highly disturbing novel takes place in a coastal village in Spain - not the tourist Spain of toreadors and castanets, but a country of passionate and brooding people with the fury of the Civil War still fresh in their minds. A land of poverty, of hot summers and cold winters, and of violence hidden by fear. Against this backdrop, Dan and Siglinde Pedersen – a cheerful, irresponsible and beautiful couple from Norway – live in a dilapidated cottage with their lonely and introspective companion, Willi Mohr. When Siglinde Pederen sees her husband murdered, and is then brutally raped and killed, it sets Willi Mohr, the hitherto apathetic anti-hero, on his own violent road to resolving the conflict between alienation and commitment.
Regarded as one of the most extraordinary and exciting Scandinavian novels of the sixties, The Lorry is a unique fusion of tension, social insight, and awareness of the connection between political frustration and sexual violence.
“A Necessary Action is necessary reading.”
Vinden och regnetThe Wind and the Rain
Spain 1955. Two rootless survivors share a short journey before an indomitable catastrophe shatters their hopes and slight chance of happiness. Both are damaged by the cruel reality that hounds them. He is poisoned by a misanthropic ideology; she is its already scarred victim - a Jew without a country. An act of violence forces them into a joined escape and during a short boat passage between two islands, with their pursuers at their heels, panic brings them together in a passionate and intensely rendered encounter.
HövdingenThe Chief
Per Wahlöö’s 1959 debut The Chief is a classic sports novel, as extraordinarily festive as it is savage in its description of the game in the lower soccer divisions. Behind the quirkiness lie darker undercurrents; already in this debut one can trace Wahlöö’s dedication to social issues.
It is also a book about human ruthlessness. The team leader known as The Chief is an unconscionable climber, determined to raise his worthless team higher in the divisions, no matter the costs. For The Chief, his own success and that of the team have become synonymous. And in The Chief’s world, the game set on the pitch is often less important than that played out behind the scenes.
SALOMONSSON AGENCY | |||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 17 | https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL1460559A/Per_Wahl%25C3%25B6%25C3%25B6 | en | Open Library | [
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] | null | Author of Roseanna, Mannen som gick upp i rök, Mannen på balkongen, Den skrattande polisen, Det slutna rummet, De man die even wilde afrekenen, Polismördaren, Brandbilen som försvann | en | /static/images/openlibrary-128x128.png | Open Library | https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL1460559A/Per_Wahl%C3%B6%C3%B6 | Swedish writer. Together with his wife Maj Sjöwall, author of crime novels about detective Martin Beck, using the signature Sjöwall/Wahlöö.
43 works Add another?
Showing all works by author. Would you like to see only ebooks? | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 59 | https://www.npr.org/2010/08/09/129081110/larssons-just-the-tip-of-the-nordic-literary-iceberg | en | Larsson's Just The Tip Of The Nordic Literary Iceberg | [
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"Maureen Corrigan"
] | 2010-08-09T00:00:00 | Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has taken U.S. readers by storm. Not since the arrival of Ikea on these shores has Sweden made such an inroad into the American home and imagination. But critic Maureen Corrigan says the impressive "Ice Age" of Nordic mystery writing is well under way. | en | NPR | https://www.npr.org/2010/08/09/129081110/larssons-just-the-tip-of-the-nordic-literary-iceberg | For the past few months, whenever I've found myself in a public space -- a Starbucks or a doctor's waiting room -- I have always seen somebody reading one of the novels in the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson. As a phenomenon, it's truly incredible. Millions of people in the U.S. alone -- men and women, blue-staters and red-staters -- are captivated by a mystery series built around a main character who's a brilliant, antisocial, bisexual, feminist avenger. Oh, and she's Swedish. Not since the arrival of Ikea on these shores has Sweden made such an inroad into the American home and imagination.
As far as mystery fiction goes, though, Larsson is the tippy-top of a Nordic literary iceberg that has been moving inexorably into our waters over the past few decades. Before The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo landed in this country in 2008, Henning Mankell was the mystery writer everybody was raving about. Mankell's fellow Swedes Helene Tursten, who writes very good police procedurals, and Kerstin Ekman, whose novel Blackwater was a standout, also made their mark. So have Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbo from Norway, and the late crime master Janwillem van de Wetering from Holland. If the years between the World Wars were the "Golden Age" of British mystery, we've surely entered a new "Ice Age."
When I first read Stieg Larsson and heard his novels talked about as composing a multi-novel epic about contemporary Swedish society, a little chime went off in my head. I thought of an extraordinary pair of older Swedish mystery writers I haven't yet mentioned: Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. To anyone who loves crime fiction, Sjowall and Wahloo are immortals. Their novels about Chief Inspector Martin Beck are still in print and still read, though their popularity has never approached anything like Larsson's. Sjowall and Wahloo were married, and together they dreamed up the idea of writing 10 novels of 30 chapters each -- composing an epic that spanned 10 years, from 1965 to 1975.
Their aim, like Larsson's, was to investigate society. In their own words, Sjowall and Wahloo said they wanted to use detective fiction to "wield a scalpel" to lay open the soft "belly" of the "morally debatable" bourgeois welfare state, exposing the cancer that was eating away at Swedish society. At night, after they put their children to bed, Sjowall and Wahloo would sit down at a table together, facing each other, and from detailed outlines they would simultaneously write alternate chapters of whatever Martin Beck novel they were then working on. To me, this sounds like a marital recipe for homicide, but it worked for Sjowall and Wahloo, and they wrote brilliant stories -- among them The Fire Engine That Disappeared and The Laughing Policeman -- about the growing violence in Swedish society and the upsurge in militant demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.
To read the collective work of Sjowall and Wahloo and Larsson is to have the dizzying illusion of reading one smart, entertaining, multi-volume work of social criticism focused on Sweden, with pointed applications to America as well. But there's more: Great detective fiction doesn't only offer social criticism; it also contains utopian alternatives to a "world gone wrong." For Sjowall and Wahloo, that utopian alternative, circa 1975, involved a recommitment to the ideals of social democracy. In the last scene of the last novel, The Terrorists, Martin Beck and one of his close colleagues are setting up a game of Scrabble. The colleague, who quit the police in frustration, tells Beck, "The trouble with you, Martin, is just that you've got the wrong job. At the wrong time. In the wrong part of the world. In the wrong system." Then, he turns over his Scrabble square and says, "My turn to start? Then I say X -- X as in Marx."
Compare that class-based solution to society's ills to the dream vision that Larsson gives us. By the end of the Millennium series, a much more ragtag community of characters has come together, their very existence made possible by feminism and by the gay and lesbian liberation movements. In uneasy alliance, they temporarily conquer the forces of cannibalistic capitalism, sexism and international worker abuse. Such is the utopian dream that has infiltrated the psyches of the American reading public. Whatever you ultimately think of the politics of Larsson's Millennium series, its astounding popularity is a testament to the power of literature -- high and low -- to airlift us readers out of our hemmed-in worldviews. | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 56 | https://www.fictiondb.com/series/a-martin-beck-police-mystery-maj-sjowall-per-wahloo~11480.htm | en | Martin Beck Police Series in Order by Maj Sjowall; Per Wahloo | [
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7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 18 | https://746books.com/2022/01/25/no-386-roseanna-by-maj-sjowall-per-wahloo-translated-by-lois-roth/ | en | No 386 Roseanna by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, translated by Lois Roth | [
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] | null | [] | 2022-01-25T00:00:00 | The series of ten ‘Martin Beck’ police procedurals, which were written in the ‘60s and ‘70s by the Swedish couple Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are considered classics of the genre, influencing a generation of crime writers across the world. Of their work, Henning Mankell said; They realized that there was a huge, unexplored territory… | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | https://746books.com/2022/01/25/no-386-roseanna-by-maj-sjowall-per-wahloo-translated-by-lois-roth/ | The series of ten ‘Martin Beck’ police procedurals, which were written in the ‘60s and ‘70s by the Swedish couple Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are considered classics of the genre, influencing a generation of crime writers across the world. Of their work, Henning Mankell said;
They realized that there was a huge, unexplored territory in which crime novels could form the framework for stories containing social criticism.
Indeed, their books are most known for that social criticism, which, when included in ten books published over ten years explores a decade of social and cultural development in Sweden.
Roseanna is the first in the series and opens on a summer’s day in July with the discovery of the strangled body of a young woman, found during a dredging operation in Lake Vättern. The local police in Motala open an investigation, but without being able to even identify the victim, they make little headway and call in assistance from the National Homicide Bureau, led by Detective Martin Beck. When Beck and his team arrive, they have little to go on aside from an approximate time and cause of death. From this, they have to work out who their victim is first, before they can even think about finding her killer.
We haven’t learned a thing since then. We don’t know who she is, we don’t know the scene of the crime, and we have no suspects.
Roseanna takes a while to get going and features a deceptively simple and sparse style. As a procedural it is detailed and lucid, exploring inter-agency working and the day to day slog of detective work, where the officers have to painstakingly identify and contact almost 80 tourists who have now returned to their countries of origin. What it also explores in a fascinating way is the sheer amount of time that an investigation of this kind would take.
The narrative starts in July, with the discovery of the woman’s body and the investigation proceeds at a snail’s pace. Beck and his colleagues don’t find out the woman’s identity for three months and a break in the case doesn’t come until Christmas time. For such a compact and well-paced book, its depiction of the drudgery of this kind of work is spot-on.
Having said that, Roseanna is not a dull book and a lot of that is down to the fact that solving the mystery is not the only concern, with Sjöwall and Wahlöö clearly just as interested in characterisation, believable working practices and the depiction of balancing police work and family life. A lot of the success is clearly down to the character of Beck, who although not fully rounded in this first book, is still an engaging character.
Although crime readers are well-used to the dour, antisocial, dyspeptic detective nowadays, in the form of Wallander or Rebus, Beck’s sheer normality must have been a shock to crime readers in the 1960s. Here is a credible detective – overworked, under-resourced and curmudgeonly because of it. He has trouble at home, trying to communicate with his children and placate his hassled wife. He smokes too much and isn’t fit. He gets sick easily. Beck, and the officers who work for him, come across as normal human beings with lives that are put on hold as they carry out the slog required of a murder investigation.
What’s also impressive about this book is that it doesn’t feel dated despite police work being a completely different world nowadays. Beck and his crew have no mobile phones, no computers and no internet. They rely on telegrams and written reports, pay-phones and holiday photographs. Despite this, and despite the slow nature of the investigation, the novel reads as all good crime novels do, successfully building a growing sense of tension and pace which builds to a really impressive and quite nail-biting denouement.
I read Roseanna for this month’s Nordic FINDS hosted by Annabookbel and look forward to exploring more of the Martin Beck series. | |||||
7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 6 | http://biographiesii.blogspot.com/2020/05/per-wahloo-this-is-black-caviar-of.html | en | This is black caviar of the finest grade.” | https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tK_Z7x3zotGmL8huN9COsLBT8HZqn4qtfNWSTWDNQR9wDxqnkxuQeXBQ-pLDJlxrMBZ57OI5HoOnGbDDMk3-SKj7mdf7kKpK0mvaI5g6oHGA9SXHfpGs9gVw4-2xUMI-XCrRW3Mw2qR-Y9S-BgSjIBfE6vXESxBg6tFHmBDioZRKhx8w0pfh_OvbgxYMpGZQ=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu | https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tK_Z7x3zotGmL8huN9COsLBT8HZqn4qtfNWSTWDNQR9wDxqnkxuQeXBQ-pLDJlxrMBZ57OI5HoOnGbDDMk3-SKj7mdf7kKpK0mvaI5g6oHGA9SXHfpGs9gVw4-2xUMI-XCrRW3Mw2qR-Y9S-BgSjIBfE6vXESxBg6tFHmBDioZRKhx8w0pfh_OvbgxYMpGZQ=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu | [
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"Ver todo mi perfil"
] | null | Per Wahlöö Per Wahlöö (1926 - 1975) This is black caviar of the finest grade Born in 1926, Per Wahlöö was a Swedish writer and... | es | http://biographiesii.blogspot.com/favicon.ico | http://biographiesii.blogspot.com/2020/05/per-wahloo-this-is-black-caviar-of.html | StålsprångetThe Steel Spring
Inspector Jensen
Not a crime, but a peculiarly chilling and plausible political horror is the subject of the second and final part in Per Wahlöö’s diptych with Chief-Inspector Jensen. Already known to readers of the first part in the diptych, Murder On The Thirty-First Floor, Chief-Inspector Jensen is not a detective in the ordinary fictional sense. He belongs to a hypothetical but discomfittingly realistic Northern country of the near future, where paternalistic government, on the principles of the broilerhouse, has been carried to its logical end. Where newspapers are designed for reassurance, unsolved difficulties are concealed and suppressed, and wrong thoughts are held to be unthinkable. In The Steel Spring, this country of the sterile and half-alive is suddenly cut off from communication with the rest of the world, and from its own governing class who have fled the capital. Jensen returns to penetrate the silence and mystery of the sudden curtain that has fallen over the people.
In Per Wahlöö’s powerfully imaginative diptych with Chief-Inspector Jensen, Murder On The Thirty-First Floor and The Steel Spring, he clearly demonstrates the gift he and Orwell possesses, namely that of elevating the expression of his ideas by apparently depersonalising his subjects.
Mord på 31:a våningenMurder on the Thirty-First Floor
Inspector Jensen
This chilling yet satirical semi-surrealistic political thriller is set in an unnamed Northern country in a horribly possible future world. A paternal government spoonfeeds the stolid unthinking masses with tales of show-piece Royals and of successful, materialistic workers. Taste has been deadened through the medium of sugary newspapers and magazines, all the monopoly of a publishing trust organization housed in a huge glass tower which overlooks the whole city. An anonymous letter arrives to say that there is a bomb in the building. It is in effect a hoax, and Chief-Inspector Jensen is given a week to find the culprit. There are false confessions. Then Jensen begins to wonder if the heads of the trust really want him to pry into their secrets. What is the mystery of the 31st floor?
Murder on the Thirty-First Floor, the first part of Per Wahlöö’s diptych with Chief-Inspector Jensen, is another crisp, fast-moving, sardonic story of ruthless power-politics by the author hailed as one of the 20th century’s finest Swedish writers.
GeneralernaThe Generals
Corporal Edwin Velder is on trial for his life. Some of his 127 alleged crime are military, but others are civil and moral: bigamy, rape, and sacrilege. The Generals, Per Wahlöö’s most complex novel, takes the form of the proceedings of the trial, stretching over three months. The trial is of great political importance to the regime. The result is foregone conclusion: Velder has been prepared in prison by “specialists” for three years. He is a physical and mental wreck and confesses to all but one of the charges. In reality the court-martial is an elaborate rehearsal of the events of the last eight years. The past and the dead are on trial. A group of civilized, intelligent men took over the island, we learn, and began to build an ideal state. There were no politics, religion, laws, bureaucracy, or taxes. The country was carefully developed and enjoyed great prosperity and general happiness under the loosely exercised authority of the state’s founders. After five years the first cracks appeared with a disagreement in the ruling council. Slow disintegration set in: a secret armed force was built up by one of the rulers, and eventually civil war broke out. The rout of the liberal party was followed by full-scale fighting between the “fascists” and the “reds”. At the time of the trial the country has enjoyed, officially, three years of peace after the cease-fire, but in fact the Generals, who rule with an iron grip, are ceaselessly struggling for power with one another. The military tribunal, a gallery of fanaticism and obtuse cruelty, forces Velder to reconstruct the events, personalities, ideals, battles, and final defeat of the island revolution. As the inevitable verdict is pronounced on the innocent, unprotesting Velder, the latest coup takes place.
The Generals is a political novel but told with Wahlöö’s sardonic humor and thriller writer’s sense of suspense. He is too subtle a moralist to draw an obvious allegory or point a message for his readers. They must draw their own conclusions from what is Wahlöö’s most demanding and satisfying novel.
UppdragetThe Assignment
The Provincial Resident of a desolate province in a South American country has been assassinated. When Manuel Ortega, a minor diplomat, accepts the appointment as the dead man’s successor, it seems a foolhardy decision. From the day he assumes his post he is thrown into a violent, corrupt world, where two extremist political factions are trying to destroy each other. Ortega is the proverbial man in the middle, surrounded by men and women he wants to trust - his secretary, the cy
nical Chief of Police, and the sullen bodyguards who try to keep the Resident alive. Political and moral undercurrents, and a brutally ironic climax.
The Assignment is another brilliant and tense novel by a Scandinavian Franz Kafka.
Reviews
“A frighteningly effective and clear book. /…/ *The Assignment *is a novel with clear documentation as an organic component, but set up for a brave film director (perhaps a Kubrick). It is as exciting as a thriller by Graham Greene, unpleasant, because its not written as entertainment, but in concentrated novel form sets forth shocking material. /…/ An international book of unseen cogency.”
Jyllands-Posten, Denmark
“The Assignment is something as uncommon as a political thriller which is equally excellent as a thriller and as a political novel. You rush through it with pounding heart and cold hands, but it is so precisely constructed and so sensually written that it is impossible to read it superficially.”
Information, Denmark
“Frighteningly effective.”
Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden
LastbilenA Necessary Action
This gripping and highly disturbing novel takes place in a coastal village in Spain - not the tourist Spain of toreadors and castanets, but a country of passionate and brooding people with the fury of the Civil War still fresh in their minds. A land of poverty, of hot summers and cold winters, and of violence hidden by fear. Against this backdrop, Dan and Siglinde Pedersen – a cheerful, irresponsible and beautiful couple from Norway – live in a dilapidated cottage with their lonely and introspective companion, Willi Mohr. When Siglinde Pederen sees her husband murdered, and is then brutally raped and killed, it sets Willi Mohr, the hitherto apathetic anti-hero, on his own violent road to resolving the conflict between alienation and commitment.
Regarded as one of the most extraordinary and exciting Scandinavian novels of the sixties, The Lorry is a unique fusion of tension, social insight, and awareness of the connection between political frustration and sexual violence.
“A Necessary Action is necessary reading.”
Vinden och regnetThe Wind and the Rain
Spain 1955. Two rootless survivors share a short journey before an indomitable catastrophe shatters their hopes and slight chance of happiness. Both are damaged by the cruel reality that hounds them. He is poisoned by a misanthropic ideology; she is its already scarred victim - a Jew without a country. An act of violence forces them into a joined escape and during a short boat passage between two islands, with their pursuers at their heels, panic brings them together in a passionate and intensely rendered encounter.
HövdingenThe Chief
Per Wahlöö’s 1959 debut The Chief is a classic sports novel, as extraordinarily festive as it is savage in its description of the game in the lower soccer divisions. Behind the quirkiness lie darker undercurrents; already in this debut one can trace Wahlöö’s dedication to social issues.
It is also a book about human ruthlessness. The team leader known as The Chief is an unconscionable climber, determined to raise his worthless team higher in the divisions, no matter the costs. For The Chief, his own success and that of the team have become synonymous. And in The Chief’s world, the game set on the pitch is often less important than that played out behind the scenes.
SALOMONSSON AGENCY | |||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 63 | http://paradise-mysteries.blogspot.com/2015/01/review-murder-on-thirty-first-floor-per.html | en | MYSTERIES in PARADISE: Review: MURDER ON THE THIRTY FIRST FLOOR, Per Wahloo | https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uXWHqbvkgdllm83VLAbd_aS4Nl5NKjYVYwbmEooKkFtP4tdukoF5e-VbspTkmE1JPXVlMSAY3F4p_AfWjjKfMKClgG6GbUAN8XCG3GuPJKQAqW7TdsvviOyd4K=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu | https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uXWHqbvkgdllm83VLAbd_aS4Nl5NKjYVYwbmEooKkFtP4tdukoF5e-VbspTkmE1JPXVlMSAY3F4p_AfWjjKfMKClgG6GbUAN8XCG3GuPJKQAqW7TdsvviOyd4K=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu | [
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] | null | first published 1964 this edition translated from Swedish into English by Sarah Death published by Vintage Books 2011 ISBN 978-0-0995546... | en | http://paradise-mysteries.blogspot.com/favicon.ico | http://paradise-mysteries.blogspot.com/2015/01/review-murder-on-thirty-first-floor-per.html | Why MYSTERIES? Because that is the genre I read.
Why PARADISE? Because that is where I live.
Among other things, this blog, the result of a 2008 New Year's resolution,
will act as a record of books that I've read, and random thoughts. | |||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 97 | https://www.crimethrillerhound.co.uk/best-60s-set-crime-books | en | Top 60's crime books | [
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] | null | [] | null | The Best 60's set crime novels, top ten | en | https://static.wixstatic.com/ficons/431b42_34632bda0edb471c864609d49132f198_fi.ico | hotfootcrime | https://www.crimethrillerhound.co.uk/best-60s-set-crime-books | I first started reading crime fiction seriously in the 1960s. So when I came to choose an era in which to set my own books, I guess I must have been influenced by what those far-off days.
The 1960s - the Swinging Sixties - was an exciting decade to live through. It wasn't all flower power and free love - as we like to think. There were wars (in Vietnam), terrorism (the hijack of Flight 253) and a Cold War which seemed chillier than ever as superpowers rattled their nuclear arsenals. | ||||
7165 | dbpedia | 3 | 78 | https://findingtimetowrite.wordpress.com/tag/maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | en | Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo – findingtimetowrite | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/e7bf3913bf81e7b362ac7d43f74abbe07a8b4f0b642bc415d42841cd32a2481e?s=200&ts=1723901587 | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/e7bf3913bf81e7b362ac7d43f74abbe07a8b4f0b642bc415d42841cd32a2481e?s=200&ts=1723901587 | [
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] | null | [] | 2019-11-24T09:41:00+00:00 | Posts about Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo written by MarinaSofia | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/e7bf3913bf81e7b362ac7d43f74abbe07a8b4f0b642bc415d42841cd32a2481e?s=32 | findingtimetowrite | https://findingtimetowrite.wordpress.com/tag/maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | Susana at A Bag Full of Stories always prods me to join some fun blog posts about my reading habits. When I read her Favourite Books by Most-Owned Authors blog post, I was inspired to examine my own bookshelves. Some of the results might surprise you, they certainly surprised me!
But first: what constitutes a lot? I have very many authors with 3-4 books on my bookshelf. In some cases they died too soon (Sylvia Plath) or they haven’t written more (yet – I’m waiting impatiently, Eva Dolan). In other cases, the rest of their works might still be at my parents’ house (Barbara Pym, Penelope Fitzgerald, Colette, Rilke, Liviu Rebreanu and Arthur Schnitzler take a bow!).
If endless editions of the same book count, then Murasaki Shikibu is also abundant on my bookshelf, with 5 different translations of Genji Monogatari, as is Cavafy with several editions (some electronic) of his poems in translation, including a bilingual one in Greek and English.
So here are the remaining authors who are present with five or more books on my current bookshelves (some of them in e-book form but only where I couldn’t easily access physical volumes).
Old Favourites I Cannot Live Without
Virginia Woolf – When it comes to Virginia, I am a bit of a completist, so although some of her books are still in my parents’s house, I nevertheless have her complete diaries, some of my favourite novels and quite a few of her essays on my bedside table.
Franz Kafka – the plain white Fischer Verlag editions of all of Kafka’s novels, stories, letters and diaries which I bought when I was 13-14 have accompanied me wherever I lived in the world ever since.
Tove Jansson – As with Virginia, I am a completist when it comes to Tove and my latest purchase is a volume of her letters. If I include her biography and all the Moomin cartoons (collected editions) as well as the Moomin books which are currently on my sons’ bookshelves, she is probably the most omnipresent author in my house.
Jane Austen – All her novels, including her juvenilia and the unfinished ones, plus her collected letters
Jean Rhys – not quite as complete as she deserves – four of her novels, a collection of short stories, her autobiography, her letters and a biography by Lilian Pizzichini.
Murakami Haruki – well, he reminds me of my student days. I prefer his earlier work and have pretty much stopped reading him since Kafka on the Shore (although, admittedly, I did fall for the Killing Commendatore hype and pre-ordered it).
Marin Preda – one of the most famous Romanian writers of the post-war period, he became a bit of a national hero when he published his last novel The Most Beloved Human. It was almost instantly withdrawn from sale, when readers interpreted it as a virulent critique against the communist regime. A few weeks later, he died under mysterious circumstances – some say possibly related to this book. I have it in three volumes, but also other novels, including the one we all had to read in school, about the destruction of village life before, during and after WW2, Morometii. I’d kind of forgotten he was so prominent on my bookshelf though…
Serendipitous Purchases
Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö – the whole Martin Beck series, so ten books – bought as a job lot on Book People for a very low price, one of the best purchases I ever made. I absolutely devoured the whole lot in about 1 month and return periodically to them. The parents of the whole Nordic noir genre.
Muriel Spark – Another job lot from the Book People, which includes many of my favourites (Loitering with Intent, A Far Cry from Kensington, Girls of Slender Means). However, it doesn’t have some of her more challenging works (The Mandelbaum Gate or The Abbess of Crewe). So I may have to invest at some point in buying some more (although I’ve borrowed most of them over the course of the years from the library).
More Recent Discoveries
Below are all authors that I’ve discovered in the past 6-7 years (in some cases, even more recently) and have taken into my heart – or at least could not resist buying more of them.
Pascal Garnier – It all started with a request in 2012 to review one of his first books to be translated into English (by Emily Boyce and published by Gallic Books) for Crime Fiction Lover. This was the book How’s the Pain? and I was smitten. I have since reviewed pretty much all of the books that have been translated, as well as hunted him down in French libraries and second-hand bookshops. I even am the proud owner of a book signed by him to a certain Marie Louise (I think Marina Sofia is close enough, don’t you?)
Kathleen Jamie – initially I bought and read her poetry books, because she was doing a poetry masterclass with us back in my Geneva Writers’ Group days, but I soon fell in love with her insightful essays and strong sense of place as well.
Sarah Moss – I’d read a shopping list written by Sarah Moss: I admire the way her mind works. I either own or have borrowed all of her books, but my favourite book might not be the one most people like – it’s Night Waking, because it captures so well the challenges of being a mother and scholar.
Javier Marias – I read A Heart So White in 2016 and was so impressed that I hastily bought several more of his books, including the trilogy Your Face Tomorrow but I haven’t actually gotten around to reading any of them.
Antti Tuomainen – an author I discovered a few books in, once he got published by Orenda, but I’ve bought his (much grimmer) back catalogue since and have particularly enjoyed his recent forays into black comedy.
Old Passions Reignited
Shirley Jackson – an author I’ve always admired but only been able to find in libraries rather than bookshops, at least until recently. Luckily, her books are now back in print courtesy of Penguin Modern Classics, so I have availed myself of several of those, as well as The Library of America collection of her most famous novels and stories. I also have the illuminating biography by Ruth Franklin, and even her stories of the chaos of family life.
Mihail Sebastian – I’d always admired him as a playwright and was particularly fond of his novel The Accident, because so much of it was set in the mountains and referred to skiing. But this past year I’ve read his diaries and much less sentimental, more polemical novel For Two Thousand Years and I fell in love even more with his voice and clear-sightedness.
Jean-Patrick Manchette and Georges Simenon – actually, both of them are present with just 2-3 books each, but in each case one volume contain about 11-12 novels (I’ve gone for Simenon’s ‘romans durs’, although I have a few Maigret volumes as well).
Now all I have to do is to actually work my way through all of these, since not all of them have been read. Plus, I’d quite like to reread many of them!
After a couple of failed attempts, I’m delighted to finally be able to feature one of my favourite crime reviewers here. Bernadette is joining us all the way from Australia, the land that book publishing forgot, as she humorously says on her blog Reactions to Reading. In an effort to improve international knowledge of Australian crime fiction, she also runs a blog called Fair Dinkum Crime and you can find her on Twitter too.
How did you get hooked on crime fiction?
I guess I can thank (or blame?) a combination of my mum and the librarian at our local branch of the Mechanics’ Institute (it didn’t become a Council operated public library until I was a teenager). Mum always took my brother and me along on her weekly trips to the library, so from early on I became as voracious a reader as she was. Early on I read the Famous Five and Bobbsey Twins, although apparently I derided these at an early age declaring them not to be criminal enough. I then moved on to Trixie Beldon and Nancy Drew, but it wasn’t long before I’d exhausted the kids’ stuff. So Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Nero Wolfe and Dick Francis followed. I’ve dabbled with other genres over the years – including a pretty intense horror phase in my teens – but I always make my way back to crime fiction.
Are there any particular types of crime fiction or subgenres that you prefer to read and why?
I used to say I give anything a go but that’s not really true anymore. If it ever was. I avoid some subjects all together – gangsters and mafia storylines top of the list – and am very choosy these days about reading books featuring serial killers. I guess it’s still possible that someone will come up with a new take on that trope but most of what I see is derivative and boring. I also avoid books that feature ‘too much’ gratuitous violence. I know that defining ‘too much’ is subjective but I am heartily sick of reading about the hacked up bodies of women (‘cos in the types of books I’m thinking of it is almost always women who are tortured and mutilated).
Other than the above-mentioned things, I try to read a mixture of subgenres but my heart will always be won over by a story with a point. I love a good yarn, and even more one that explores some political or social issue. Books that show me some aspect of life I am unfamiliar with or take me into some part of the world I’ve never been to (even those close to my backyard) or make me think differently about a topical subject are the sort of thing I look for these days.
What is the most memorable book you’ve read recently?
I’ve had a really great reading year so far but if pushed to choose just one I’d have to say Malla Nunn’s Present Darkness is the most memorable. Malla Nunn migrated to Australia from South Africa many years ago (lucky for us) but she sets her books in the country of her birth in the early days of apartheid. Present Darkness is the fourth book in her series and while I’ve thought its predecessors all excellent this one was her best yet. It does exactly what I was talking about earlier – it really gives readers a glimpse of the day-to-day grind and fear and inhumanity of being a black person living under that regime. Plus it’s a helluva yarn.
If you had to choose only one series or only one author to take with you to a deserted island, whom would you choose?
I’ve spent way too long thinking about this question. Way, way too long. The likelihood of me actually being stuck on a deserted island after having had an opportunity to select some books to take along is really, really tiny. So I know my answer doesn’t actually matter. But still…
For a while my answer was going to be Dick Francis. I have a soft spot for this author, partly due to him being one of my mum’s favourites. For years each time he had a new book out, we would both get hold of a copy and compare notes as quickly as we could. The other part of my fondness is due to the global availability of his books. When I was young and un-arthritic I did a fair bit of backpacking and the biggest problem was finding something to read (I am woefully monolingual). Even when travelling there is lots of down time but in a pre-Kindle world you couldn’t carry a dozen or more books. I have scoured newsstands and second-hand stalls in many countries of the world and can report that if you’re looking for something to read in English in some far-flung part of the globe you can just about guarantee to find novels by Barbara Cartland and Dick Francis (or at least you could in the late 80’s and 90’s when I was abroad). As I’ve never been a romance reader, I always opted for the Francis books and I am eternally grateful to his global appeal.
But I have read them all multiple times so think I would want something a bit fresher on my island sojourn. It is tempting to opt for a long series that I’ve never started – maybe Ed McBain’s 87th St. precinct novels for example – but what if I don’t like even the first one? How depressing to be stuck on an island with plenty to read and no motivation to do so.
So after way too much thought I’ve decided to opt for the novels of Reginald Hill. I’ve read enough of them to know that I like his style a great deal but some would be completely new to me and even those that would be re-reads are still fresh enough. If I were allowed two series/sets of authors I’d throw in the Martin Beck novels by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. I’ve only read 2 or 3 of these and very much want to read them all. But there are only 10 and they’re very thin. Not bulky enough for a long stint on a deserted island.
What are you looking forward to reading in the near future?
I’ve just put all six books shortlisted for this year’s Petrona Award on hold at the library. In recent years I have thoroughly enjoyed expanding my reading horizons via the explosion in translated crime novels from across the globe. But I have a soft spot for this award named in honour of a fellow crime fiction lover who passed away far too soon. Her love of good quality crime fiction in translation has been ably honoured by the previous shortlists and I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into this year’s selection.
Outside your criminal reading pursuits, what author/series/book/genre do you find yourself regularly recommending to your friends?
I love historical fiction and not only the kind that involves murder. I think the book I’ve recommended most over the years is Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders: plague, a strong female character, a not so subtle dig at religious hypocrisy – what more could you ask for?
Thank you so much, Bernadette, for your very amusing and candid observations; it’s certainly been worth the wait. I love the fact that all of my interviewees seem to assume a lengthy stay on a deserted island and are very much afraid of running out of reading material. As for me, I’d be terrified that I get rescued too soon and don’t have enough time to read everything!
What do you think of Bernadette’s choices? It reminds me that I certainly must read Malla Nunn, about whom I’ve heard such good things. You can see previous respondents in the series here and for future interviewees: well, you know the drill… Please let me know if you’d like to participate. I’m always eager to hear your recommendations.
Well, of course I owe it to everyone (and myself) to put a more positive spin on things. It’s easy to vent about overrated books. It’s easy to be harsh with authors, especially when we cannot replicate their success. But which books deserve a wider audience? Because this is how I choose to define ‘underrated’ -not in terms of critical appreciation, but which should be better known. I try to stick to books which were either written in English or are easily available in translation. The issue of how little foreign literature is translated into English (although crime fiction seems to be the exception here) is a separate rant, which I will leave for another day.
1) Patricia Highsmith:
Yes, everyone has heard of The Talented Mr. Ripley (or at least lusted over Jude Law at his most gorgeous as Dickie Greenleaf in the Anthony Minghella film). But Patricia Highsmith has written some of the most chilling psychological thrillers in the world. So of course she is underrated, because she is usually shunted into the ‘just another crime fiction writer’ category. What is perhaps most unsettling about her work is that her criminals/murderers are not evil monsters: instead, they are portrayed as confused, vulnerable humans, who find ways to justify even their most vile actions. Very much like you and me, in fact.
2) Dorothy Parker:
Everybody quotes her witticisms, most people have heard of her ‘Men seldom make passes/at girls who wear glasses’, she was the most acerbic critic. But how many have read her short stories? They are funny and brilliantly observed, as you might expect. Her first-person monologues are as true-to-life and fresh (and as good an insight into tortured female psyche) as the day they were written (try ‘The Telephone Call’ or ‘The Little Hours’). But they are also poignant and terribly painful at times.
3) Jean Rhys:
Speaking of poignant stories of no-hope, grim exploitation and cynicism, nobody does it better than Jean Rhys, especially in her short stories. Like Barbara Pym (another underrated writer) she was forgotten and out of print for nearly two decades. She is still largely unknown, with the exception of ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’, the story of Mr. Rochester’s first wife.
4) Tove Jansson:
I adored the Moomins when I was a child, but only now, when I am rereading them with my children, do I realise just how much of a craftswoman the Finnish artist and writer really is. The books work on many levels – they are absurd, funny, highly imaginative, yet also tinged with melancholy and asking profound questions. And she has written books for adults too! ‘The Summer Book’ brings back so many memories of childhood, a beautiful and unsentimental description of the relationship between a grandmother and granddaughter.
5) Maj Sjӧwall and Per Wahlӧӧ:
I’ve written about them before but they really are one of the earliest and best, most influential writers of crime fiction (of the police procedural type). Whether you care for their Marxist leanings or not, you have to appreciate their realism, their deceptively simple prose, their subtlety and their questioning of all the values and treasured beliefs of society.
Looking at this list, I notice that my underrated authors are virtually all female (or a husband-and-wife team). I wonder if there is something subconscious at work there, that I feel women’s literature (or the so-called women’s topics) are still regarded as somehow second-class.
What is your opinion? Which authors have I missed out? Is it easier to neglect women authors? Thank you all so much for your honest and illuminating comments on the overrated books post. I’d love to hear your thoughts on books and authors we should know better. | ||
7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 34 | https://theviewfromthebluehouse.blogspot.com/2010/05/review-of-roseanna-by-maj-sjowall-and.html | en | The View from the Blue House: Review of Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (Vintage Crime, translated 1967, published in Swedish in 1965) | [
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7165 | dbpedia | 1 | 77 | https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2018/05/ | en | Can't Explain | https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/favicon.ico | https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/favicon.ico | [
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7165 | dbpedia | 2 | 22 | https://www.amazon.com/Terrorists-Maj-Wahloo-Sjowall/dp/0575022310 | en | Amazon.com | [
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7165 | dbpedia | 0 | 83 | https://www.stephenpuleston.co.uk/2017/07/14/review-of-roseanna-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | en | Review of Roseanna by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö | https://www.stephenpuleston.co.uk/wp-content/themes/thegem-elementor/images/favicon.ico | https://www.stephenpuleston.co.uk/wp-content/themes/thegem-elementor/images/favicon.ico | [
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] | 2017-07-14T00:00:00 | Roseanna Roseanna is the first in a series of ten books by the writing team behind the Martin Beck mysteries. It is one of the books that Henning Mankell specifically mentions as inspiration for his character Kurt Wallander. And it is credited with being the inspiration for lots of Scandinavian noir | en | https://www.stephenpuleston.co.uk/wp-content/themes/thegem-elementor/images/favicon.ico | Stephen Puleston | Crime Mystery Thrillers | Just another WordPress site | https://www.stephenpuleston.co.uk/2017/07/14/review-of-roseanna-by-maj-sjowall-and-per-wahloo/ | Roseanna
Roseanna is the first in a series of ten books by the writing team behind the Martin Beck mysteries. It is one of the books that Henning Mankell specifically mentions as inspiration for his character Kurt Wallander. And it is credited with being the inspiration for lots of Scandinavian noir that has developed since the 1960s. It is a classic police procedural which follows Martin Beck as he struggles with tracking down the killer of a young girl found naked in a lock in a Swedish waterway. She has been abused and strangled but there no clues as to her identity so we get months of painstaking work where detectives have to identify who might have been present, and who might be possible suspects.
No typewriters
The novel was written years ago in the 60s when detectives used typewriters and there were no mobile telephones. But it doesn’t mean that the narrative is less engaging. The detectives face the same challenges – how to balance family life with the demands of the frantic police investigation, dealing with the friction between various police officers.
Sweden
What I particularly enjoyed was the sense of place. I was in Sweden with a detectives learning about what it was like to live there. By today’s standards it could be it would be easy to describe the book as slow-paced, perhaps even boring at times. There is a dignified humanity in the way in which the police treat the investigation. Despite Roseanna being an American and despite their frustrations in being able to find her killer quickly there is never any suggestion they might give up. This nobility of cause is found in the writing of Henning Mankell who gives his very flawed character a moral imperative. And I can see how he would have been inspired by this novel to write crime fiction.
It stands as one of the landmark novels in the development of crime fiction. I thoroughly recommend it as a satisfying read although not one to leave you breathless and reading to the small hours of the morning. |