It’s unusual to be able to point to the actual parents of a literary tradition. It’s even more unusual when we speak of an entire genre. But that is actually the case for the Swedish crime fiction genre that is still the strongest today: the police procedural that has a perspective of social criticism. Before Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö appeared on the scene, the Swedish detective novel looked completely different. With them all the naïveté of the classic murder mystery was irrevocably lost.
Almost all Swedish authors who write police procedurals have at one time or another been hailed as successors to Sjöwall and Wahlöö. In my case, it has happened rather more often than for other writers. And I have never objected. When people ask me about my role models, I usually say: Sjöwall and Wahlöö. This is the honest truth, even though in life I’m generally not particularly dependent on role models – whether I sink or swim, I believe in going my own way. It’s always better for an author to speak in his own voice.
Writers of detective novels are almost always expected to say that they don’t read detective novels. And I have tended to live up to these expectations. When I took my first stumbling steps towards writing crime fiction nearly a decade ago, I could in all honesty say: I don’t read detective novels.
But it wasn’t always like that. In fact, I readily admit that the very opposite was true. The books that I read as an adolescent were to an absurdly high degree based on suspense fiction: nail-biting cliffhangers, action stories, classic murder mysteries, spy thrillers – you name it. I read absolutely everything that contained even the slightest hint of suspense.
You might well ask when the adolescent mind is at its most receptive, at which age in particular and under which mental conditions the most indelible impressions are made. Fifteen is a strong candidate. It could be deemed the most manic-depressive age in anyone’s life. On the one hand, life seems an almost incessant torment; on the other hand, you are starting to realize who you are and, in spite of everything, what possibilities life has to offer.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö came into my life after I had actually given up all those childish suspense books. And so I was ready for completely different literary impressions (precociously ready, that is). But when those two authors appeared, not only did they make use of all the various suspense traditions in which I had immersed myself, they also added two elements that I had been missing up until then: humour and a critical view of contemporary society.
And one more thing: an incredibly nuanced and meticulously chiselled use of language.
It’s always risky to return to a reading experience that had once proved so decisive in your life. Disappointment is the rule; relief is the exception. Yet I feel no disappointment when I re-read the ten books that make up the series called The Story of a Crime. I may feel a bit surprised by the brief format and the relatively simple plots – and perhaps also by the unrelenting plight of Martin Beck’s weary attitude towards life. And yet – what I really feel is relief. Relief that the books are still so good. That they actually are good role models. And for that I will always be grateful.
The books in the series known collectively as The Story of a Crime were published in Sweden between 1965 and 1975, with one book appearing each year except in 1973. But it was in that year that Per Wahlöö said in an interview: ‘In the beginning we tried to keep a low profile in order to reach an audience, but the socialist elements have undoubtedly become more prominent.’ As early as 1966 Wahlöö stated their goal with great clarity: ‘The basic idea is, via one long novel of approximately 3,000 pages – divided into ten freestanding parts, or chapters, if you will – to present a cross-section of a society that possesses a specific structure and to analyze criminality as a social function as well as its relationship to both society and the various types of moral lifestyles that encompass the society in question.’
In other words: literature emblematic of the 1968 generation. It ranges from the period of dawning political consciousness in 1965 up to what might be considered the most dogmatic of years, 1975. It was supposed to be like much of the fiction coming out of 1968: so politically doctrinaire that all forms of literary tension were lost and the whole thing fell flat.
The remarkable thing was that this didn’t happen. Not even in the last novel, The Terrorists, which was more or less completed by cutting and pasting it together after Wahlöö’s death. This novel is truly ideological down to the smallest detail. The final scene is significant. Martin Beck and his new lover, Rhea, are visiting the home of his former colleague Lennart Kollberg and his wife Gun. Here the entire series is supposed to be summed up, the threads from all ten books drawn together. There is also, in a rudimentary fashion, a political summation of the preceding ten years. But it happens in a relaxed and clear context. The four characters are sitting together playing a game as they chat. The game is called Crossword. One person says a letter of the alphabet and the others have to try to place it in a grid on their piece of paper. Kollberg keeps winning, and they keep starting over. He brings the scene to a close with the words: ‘It’s my turn to start. So I say “x,” “x” as in “Marx”.’
But the point is that the literary creation is never allowed to be subsumed by political proselytizing. The authors never forget the conventions of time and space; they never forget that the novel has to place the characters in a particular setting and that it has to be done with a certain vitality – a vitality that always comes before ideology. Which is what you will discover if you read the books closely.
With the sixth novel, Murder at the Savoy, from 1970, the ideological perspective moves to the forefront. From a purely literary point of view, the book is among the very best in the series – the technical skill of the authors is at its peak, and the humour is most fully developed – and yet the novel is also problematic. Both amazing and problematic.
It’s amazing because the literary creation has never been better. It’s problematic because the book personifies the least appealing side of the leftist politics of 1968. I think that in some ways we can talk about the dehumanizing side of the Left. The extremely predictable depiction of the capitalist circles criticized by the book is unrelenting. The corporate executive who is assassinated at the Savoy in Malmö in the opening chapter is given virtually no redeeming or even human qualities. Although there is a satirical power in the portrayal, it leaves the reader with a bitter aftertaste. So this was what the dehumanizing side of the Left looked like when ideology took precedence over humanism, and when the end was allowed to justify the means.
But if you’re prepared to accept this point of view, Murder at the Savoy makes for thoroughly fascinating reading. The book presents an incomparable picture of a social climate during a critical period in both Swedish and world history – a social climate that was in many ways idiotic and inhumane, and we are still living on the fringes of it today. If you read all ten books in order, you will actually discover that together they do form the story of a crime. An enormous crime.
What was it that Sjöwall and Wahlöö accomplished with their series of books? What was it that struck such a chord in a fifteen-year-old boy that twenty years later it triggered his own production of crime fiction? I think it was the sense of suppressed rage. A fire – but at the same time a strictly disciplined fire. The slowly emerging awareness that rage which is uncontrolled and without direction will fall flat. Yet at the same time, the fire must be present, and it must be preserved.
Maybe it was the desire to find a form for their anger.
Jan Arnald / Arne Dahl
(translated