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Per Wahlöö (1926-1975) | |
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Swedish writer and journalist, who published with his wife Maj Sjöwall the widely translated series novels of Martin Beck and his colleagues at the Central Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm. Its style has been described as "reportal... spare, disciplined and full of sharply observed detail..." The critic and awarded mystery writer H.R.F. Keating selected Roseanna (1965) in 1987 for his list of the one hundred best crime novels. Several of the books have also been adapted into screen. "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, 1974) 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 in 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 Sweden. The protagonist in 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. In 1961 Wahlöö met Maj Sjöwall when they were working for magazines published by the same company. They were married next year. The carefully planned crime novel series was created in the evenings, after their children had been put to bed. Starting from ROSEANNA (1965), their 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." The narrative focused on realistic police routine and teamwork – rather the deductive leaps of a Hercule Poirot type individual – and was compared to Georges Simenon. The first three novels, Roseanna, a story of rape-murder of an American girl whose body in found in a Swedish canal, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966) and The Man on the Balcony (1967), were straightforward police procedural novels. They introducing 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, wildman and a drop-out from high society, 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. The Laughing Policeman (1968), about the investigation of the murder of eight occupants of a Stockholm bus, was made into a film in 1973, directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, and Lou Gossett. The story was set in San Francisco. The film shared its Bay area locale with Dirty Harry (1971), but was otherwise more downbeat. At the end of The Locked Room (1972), Sjöwall and Wahlöö show their sympathy towards a bank robber; however, they abhor sexual violence. In Cop Killer (1974) Lennart Kollberg writes his resignation, because of his socialist world view. The later novels, and especially the last, The Terrorist, is a bitter analysis of the welfare state, and openly sides with criminals-as-revolutionaries. At the end, Beck is deeply ambivalent about remaining a policeman, because he fears that he is contributing to the violent nature of Swedish society rather than preventing it. The novel was published after Wahlöö's death in Stockholm on June 23, 1975. 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. "He was an extreme Left-winger with a taste for popular sport," said the English mystery writer Julian Symons of Wahlöö, "and his interest in British football... was passionate. The books he wrote with Maj Sjöwall represents an attempt to bring his political feelings into a literary form with a wide appeal."
Selected works:
With Maj Sjövall:
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