Nordic Noir

The Pocket Essential Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Film & TV

By Barry Forshaw

Oldcastle Books

Copyright © 2013 Barry Forshaw
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84243-987-6

Contents

Introduction,
Chapter 1 Beginnings: Sjöwall & Wahlöö’s Martin Beck Series,
Chapter 2 Sweden’s Trojan Horse: Kurt Wallander,
Chapter 3 Lisbeth Salander’s Legacy,
Chapter 4 Larsson’s Rivals,
Chapter 5 The New King: Jo Nesbo and Other Norwegians,
Chapter 6 Dark Nights in Iceland and Finland,
Chapter 7 Darkness in Denmark,
Chapter 8 The Nordic Screen: Film and TV Adaptations,
Epilogue Some Names to Watch For,
Appendices,
Index,
Copyright,

CHAPTER 1

Beginnings: Sjöwall & Wahlöö’s Martin Beck Series

The Scandinavian Agatha Christie

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.

The First Stieg

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.

Leading with the Left

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 indire