There is no argument about it. Two writers started the Scandicrime boom, and remain the key influence on most of their successors: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. But they were not the first. It is perhaps unfair to draw attention to the fact that one of the earlier writers in Swedish crime fiction, Maria Lang (her real name was Dagmar Langer and she died in 1991) was part of the old guard which younger crime writers felt the need to react against, despite the considerable success she enjoyed in her day with such books as The Murderer Does Not Tell Lies Alone, 1949. Lang’s model was (unsurprisingly) the English ‘Queen of Crime’, Agatha Christie, and Lang was undoubtedly enjoyed by many readers because she presented a similarly unrealistic picture of her country, where crime is not the deeply destabilising force it is for later writers.
Lang had been preceded by another important Nordic writer, Stieg Trenter, who also enjoyed great commercial success in his day, but Lang enjoyed a second readership in Great Britain, with her uncomplicated prose style echoing that of the creator of Jane Marple. Lang, however, was never quite accorded the respect and esteem granted to other foreign writers in translation such as Georges Simenon. The latter was quickly perceived to be an acute social commentator along with his status as a canny entertainer in his books featuring pipe-smoking inspector Jules Maigret. Lang’s memory survives more than her influence, with many readers in the Nordic countries cherishing fond memories of her books, avidly consumed in their youth. But after Sjöwall & Wahlöö, it seemed that there was to be no revisiting of the less confrontational, more comforting crime fiction of the Lang era – although, interestingly, the contemporary writer Camilla Läckberg has utilised Christie-like elements (notably the small-town murder) in her work.
While themselves avid consumers of the detective story form, Sjöwall & Wahlöö were nevertheless impatient with what they perceived as the bourgeois accoutrements of the genre. They became convinced that a radical shake-up (as adumbrated in the lean and efficient novels of the American writer Ed McBain, a clear inspiration) could benefit the form, by removing its more retrograde elements and allowing it to function as a laser-like, unsparing examination of society. And while the S and W approach was specifically Marxist, the duo were canny enough to realise that an undigested leavening of agitprop would hardly be conducive to their books having any kind of commercial success. Their approach (in this regard at least) was more indirect: painting a picture of a compromised, unequal society and pointing the reader in a direction which he or she might move to ameliorate it.
One element of their then-innovative approach (now, like so many things in their work, overfamiliar from endless imitation) was the cold-eyed analysis of corruption within both the police force and various strata of society. (The corruption is at all levels – unlike, say, the English filmmaker Ken Loach, they did not posit an antithesis between unfeeling middle-class social institutions and essentially noble working people.) Those readers spotting the critique of the ‘totalitarian’ aspects of Western society may consider that the duo were discreetly closing their eyes (as so many did) to the reality of the application of Marxist politics in other countries where totalitarianism quickly – and inexorably – replaced optimistic ideals. Over the years they have been accused of naivety in their approach – the same accusations were later also levelled at Stieg Larsson, but more for his political activity than for the hidden agenda of his books. Interestingly, later writers have criticised the blinkered approach of left-wing thinkers towards the growing iniquities within the Soviet system. This is a motif to be found, for example, in the work of the Icelandic writer Arnaldur Indridason. But such considerations aside, The Story of a Crime, the collective title for ten perfectly formed books by Sjöwall & Wahlöö, hardly seems dated at all when read in the twenty-first century. The duo allowed their detective Martin Beck to investigate a variety of crimes which (in their range) cast a spotlight on many aspects of Scandinavian society. And the plot potentialities afforded the duo were considerable.
It’s not just Sweden. In recent years, the notion that Scandinavian crime fiction largely consisted of work produced in Sweden has been opened up and redefined, as non-Nordic countries (such as Britain) began slowly but surely to discern the differentiation between, say, Finland and Norway. But Sweden inevitably (and annoyingly for the other Nordic countries) remains the principal focus in terms of its market share – and the fact that the country is the largest geographically when measured against its Scandinavian neighbours. (It is, in fact, twice as big as Great Britain.)
Sjöwall & Wahlöö were well aware of the image fondly held by foreigners of Sweden: the intoxicating physical beauty of the country with its exquisite lakes and massive forests, along with a notion that Sweden represented the perfect encapsulation of the social democratic ideal. But S and W were keen to point out the cracks in this roseate picture and (along with such subsequent writers as Henning Mankell) began to draw attention to the social problems of their country, including such thorny issues as immigration. This is a recurrent theme in the genre – and a theme of particular concern to writers on the left who saw such issues as the difficulties of integrating immigrant populations into the host country as perfect fodder for the far right. Recent developments in the Scandinavian countries, such as the Breivik massacre in Norway in 2011, have perhaps suggested that the attention paid by left-wing crime writers to this worm in the bud of social democracy was, in fact, all too prescient. Significantly, the ideologically-inspired creators of the Martin Beck books had, perhaps without knowing it, lit a blue touch paper and the subsequent explosion was to bear the name of the writer Henning Mankell.