Maj Sj�wall
Swedish writer and journalist, "the grandmother of
Scandinavian crime writing", who published with her husband Per Wahl��
ten novels about the detective character Martin Beck
and his colleagues at
the Central Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm. According to Maj
Sj�wall, the series, a dissection of capitalist society, was more
popular in the United States and
France than in Sweden. 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 & mystery novels. All of the Martin Beck
books have been filmed. The novels prepared the ground for authors
such as Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, and Liza Marklund.
"I still recall the first time I read Cop Killer. Like Maj and Per's other detective novels, it has been with me for as long as I can remember. The Martin Beck series is part of my childhood, my adolescence, the way I relate to Sweden and to reality." ('Introduction' by Liza Marklund, in Cop Killer: A Martin Beck Mystery by Maj Sj�wall and Per Wahl��, 2010, p. ix)
Maj
Sj�wall was born in Stockholm, the daughter of Will
Sj�wall, the manager of a chain of hotels, and the former Margit
Trob�ck. The family lived in an apartment at the Hotel Gillet. When
Sj�wall was ten, they movend to Kungholmen. From early on, she was a
book worm, reading Selma Lagerl�f, Elin W�gner, Maxim Gorky, Maria
Lang, and Stieg Trenter. She also began writing poetry and short
stories, one of which appeared anonymously in the magazine Fick Journalen.
"I was rather wild," Sj�wall once described her youth. ('The Queen of Crime' by Louise France, The Guardian, 22 November, 2009) At the age
of 21 she had an abortion. Sj�wall studied journalism and
graphics before finding employment as a reporter and art director at a
series of newspapers and magazines. From 1959 to 1961 she was an editor
with the publishing house Wahlstr�m and Widstrad.
Sj�wall and Per Wahl�� met in 1961 while working for magazines
published by the same company; Maj Sj�wall for Idun and Per
Wahl�� for Folket i bild.
Wahl�� was a political journalist, who had been deported from General
Franco's Spain in 1957. Both Sj�wall and Wahl�� were members of the
Communist Party. Wahl�� was married,
Sj�wall was a single parent of a six-year-old daughter, Lena, and already
twice divorced. They became lovers but never officially married. Their
carefully planned crime series was created in the
evenings, after their two sons, Tetz and Jens, had been put to bed.
At the time, there were no Swedish police procedurals, just amateur detectives. The literary venture was aimed to reveal "how the social democrats were pushing the country in a more and more bourgeois and rightwing direction." ('Sweden's Crime Writers Too Interested in Love, Says Maj Sj�wall' by Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian, 14 August, 2013) Starting in 1965 from Roseanna, Sj�wall and Wahl�� ended ten years and ten books later with Terroristerna (1975).
Until 1969, the couple lived in Stockholm, but they kept
contact with the KRW (Kronkvist-Rooke-Wahl��) group from Malm�, where
they lived and worked from 1969. From the beginning, the collaboration
was seamless,
based on the journalistic experience and
style that demanded brevity, concision, and attention to detail. Both
writers were Marxists and admired the work of Dashiell Hammett and
Raymond Chandler. The first plot was invented on a canal trip from
Stockholm to Gothenburg. "There was an American woman on the boat,
beautiful, with dark hair, always standing alone. I caught Per looking
at her. 'Why don't we start the book by killing this woman?'" Sj�wall
suggested. ('The Queen of Crime' by Louise France, The Guardian, 22 November, 2009)
According to Wahl��, 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." ('Wahl��, Per (1926-75 and Maj Sj�vall (1935-)' by Bo Lundin, in Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers, second edition, edited by John M. Reilly, 1985, p. 947)
Of course, even in the 1960s, this kind of radicalism did not boost the sales of the books. "Fortunately
none of this has any bearing on the quality of the Martin Beck series
itself, which is not only unique in presenting a detailed and evolving
vision of police work from a definable political perspective but
consistently transcends the level of the average police procedural
thanks to a prevailing sense of unease which in the end seems as much
existential as ideological." (The Picador Book of Cime Writing
by Michael Dibdin, 1993, p. 102)
The general plan of Sj�wall and Wahl�� was that based on meticulous research and authentic details,
the series would mirror the Swedish society. Martin Beck, his career in the
National Homicide Squad, would act as the barometer of the times, reflecting changes in the political, economic,
social climate.
The narrative model came from Ed McBain's
internationally acclaimed Eighty-seventh Precinct series. Some of them
the couple even translated into Swedish for PAN/Norstedts series in the late
1960s.
The first three novels, Roseanna, a story of rape-murder of an American girl, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966), which takes place mostly in the cold war Budapest, and The Man on the Balcony (1967),
were straightforward police procedural novels, written in reportal,
spare style: "On the table were three empty vermouth bottles, a
soft-drink bottle and two coffee cups, among other things. The ash tray
had been turned upside down and among the cigarette butts, bottle tops
and dead matches lay a few dirty sugar lumps, a small penknife with its
blades open, and a piece of sausage. A third coffee cup had fallen to
the floor and had broken. Face down on the word linoleum, between the
table and the bed, lay a dead body. (The Man Who Went Up in a Smoke, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate, 2006, pp. 3-4)
These first novels introduced
the
central characters – the solid, methodical detective Martin Beck with
failing marriage, ex-paratrooper Lennart Kollberg, a gourmet, who hates
violence and refuses to carry a gun, Gunvald Larsson, wildman and a
drop-out from high society, Einar R�nn from the rural north of Sweden –
he was Wahl��'s favorite figure – and patrolmen Kristiansson and Kvant,
whose activities usually lead to some kind of fiasco. Beck suffers from
insomnia, and he has troubles with his stomach; the pains go away when
he leaves his wife and her cooking. He had joined the police
force in the mid-1940s. Beck met Inga, his future wife on a canoe tour
in 1951. After marriage they moved to Kungsholmen. They have two
children, but during the story their marriage dissolves.
Roseanna 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. In the story the body of a girl is discovered, but nothing is know of her. Eventually she is linked to Roseanna McGraw, an American, who never returned from her tour of Europe. Martin Beck and his colleagues find a photograph in which Roseanna is accompanied by an unknown man. Beck is convinced he is the killer. "Chance, too, is allowed to play a bigger role than most storytellers, those shapers of events to their own ends, would allow. This, once more, introduces an element of outside reality. 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 Sj�wall and Per Wahl��: Roseanna,' in Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating, 1987, p. 138)
Until The Story of a Crime series
Swedish detective novels had been apolitical, conservative or liberal,
but Sj�wall and Wahl�� managed to revive interest in a genre generally
overlooked by leftist intellectuals. Readers were ready to accept their
new approach, the introduction of political issues (glimpses of gentle humour) as part of crime
fiction. In Cop
Killer (1974) Lennart Kollberg, a man with strong views, writes
his resignation: he is a socialist, and refuses to support the oppressive system any longer. The suspected cop
killer of the title, a teenager in a stolen car, is chased across Sweden.
At the end of the series, Beck plays a game called "crosswords" with Kollberg, who says: "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." (The Terrorists, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate, 2010, p. 280)
The Laughing Policeman (1968), filmed by Stuart
Rosenberg in 1973, and The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969),
brought in the development of the series more social themes and weak
points
of the Western society. "I found little or nothing in the novel that
could be called tub-thumping propaganda. Instead, I came across a few
rather muted and humane reflections on those laudable intentions which
somehow had failed to materialize." ('Introduction' by Colin Dexter, in The Fire Engine that Disappeared, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate, 2007, p. viii)
Rosenberg's film was set in San Francisco instead of Stockholm and Malm�. Walter Matthau played a laconic detective named Jake Martin, who is solving a case in which all passengers in a bus are massacred by an unseen killer. "It's almost the kind of movie, indeed, to blast loose a detective-novel fan from Ross Macdonald," said Roger Ebert in his review. ('The Laughing Policeman' by Roger Ebert, December 24, 1973, RogerEbert.com) Swedish reviewers were unanimous in that the film had very little to do with the novel and there was little left of Sj�wall and Wahl��'s social analysis.
Bo Widerberg's screen adaptation of Den
vederv�rdige mannen fr�n S�ffle (1971, The Abominable Man) from
1976, entitled Mannen p� taket, was a great success. One of
its highlights was a helicopter crash on the Odenplan metro station.
Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt, who was best known as a comedian, was cast in
the role of Martin Beck. Sj�wall herself had imagined him to be
lean, looking like Gunnar Bj�rnstrand or the young Henry Fonda,
but Lindstedt was stockily built. In this film, Lindstedt
realized his potential as a serious actor. Widerberg, who was
not a Raymond Chandler fan, planned to continue with the third book in
the series, The Man on the Balcony, but this
production never went ahead. Widerberg accused J�rn
Donner, the director of the Swedish Film Institute, of putting him on a blacklist. However, he actually
supported the idea: "Det �r v�rt att notera att J�rn Donner gjorde sig
m�dan att sj�lv kontakta Olle Hellbom, och Donner blev �verraskad �ver
att SF var s� avvisande. Donner anstr�ngde sig ganske inte p� n�got
uppseendev�ckande s�tt men det var �nd� ett f�rs�k att se om det kunde
bli en Mannen p� balkongen-film." (H�ggradigt j�vla excentrisk: En biografi �ver Bo Widerberg by M�rten Blomkvist, 2011)
Noteworthy, the authors did not give full attention to theme of class conflict right from the beginning,
but its weight grew step-by-step, in the context of social ills and problems the novel
exposed. In the
final
volume, The Terrorists, the
murder of the prime minister signals the decline of the social
democratic welfare state. Sj�wall and Wahl�� 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, 2012, p. vii) Rebecka is the killer of the book's Swedish prime minister. Later she commits suicide. The whole series is finished with the name "Marx".
The Terrorists
was published after
Wahl��'s death in 1975, at the age of 48. Though a joint venture, this
volume was mostly written by Wahl��, who was already very ill. After
the murder of Olof Palme in the winter of 1986, Sj�wall
was frequently asked did she had any regrets for killing the
prime minister in the story. She
felt no need to apologize, emphasizing the difference between
fiction and real life. Many far-right people in Sweden hated Palme.
Following
Wahl��'s death, Sj�wall found it difficult to write
novels. With �ke
Sj�wall she translated Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels into Swedish.
Sj�wall received the Lenin Award in 2013 (the name was changed to the
Jan Myrdal Library's big prize in 2016).
Following a long illness, Maj Sj�wall died on April 29, 2020.
Sj�wall and Wahl��'s successors have adopted their critical approach of the abuses of state power, including Olov Svedelind, Kenneth Ahl (pseudonym of Lasse Str�mstedt och Christer Dahl), Leif G.W. Persson, K. Arne Blom, Henning Mankell, and Stieg Larsson, and others. Also the Chinese mystery writer Qiu Xiaolong, who has lived in the United States since the 1980s, has acknowledged his admiration of Martin Beck police mysteries.
For further reading: 'Roman om en forbrydelse' - Sj�wall/Wahl��'s verk og virkelighed by Ejgil S�holm (1976); Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, edited by Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler (1976); 'The Police in Society: The Novels of Maj Sj�wall and Per Wahl��' by Frank Occhiogrosso, in The Armchair Detective, no. 2 (1979); The Police Procedural by George Dove (1982); Lystmord, edited by J�rgen Holmgaard and Bo Tao Micha�lis (1984); Polemical Pulps by J. Kenneth Van Dover (1993); 'Wahl��, Per (1926-75 and Maj Sj�vall (1935-)' by Bo Lundin, in Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers, second edition, edited by John M. Reilly (1985); 'Maj Sj�wall and Per Wahl��: Roseanna,' in Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating (1987); 'Maj Sj�wall and Per Wahl��' by Nancy C. Mellerski and Robert P. Winston, in Mystery and Suspense Writers, edited by Robin W. Winks (1998); 'Sj�wall, Maj (b. 1935) and Per Wahl�� (1926-1975' by J.K. Van Dover, in Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing, edited by Rosemary Herbert (2003); 'Introduction' by Colin Dexter, in The Fire Engine that Disappeared: A Martin Beck Mystery by Maj Sj�wall and Per Wahl�� (2007); 'Introduction' by Liza Marklund, in Cop Killer: A Martin Beck Mystery by Maj Sj�wall and Per Wahl�� (2010); 'Introduction' by Dennis Lehane, The Terrorists: A Martin Beck Novel by Maj Sj�wall and Per Wahl�� (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 Sj�wall & Wahl�� 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 Sj�wall Wahl�� och tiden som for by Johan Erlandsson (2020); Dictionnaire Sj�wall et Wahl��: 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 with Per Wahl��:
- 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 Petr�, Hans Bendrik; 1993, prod. Nordisk Film- & TV-Fond, Rialto Film, Svensk Filmindustri (SF), dir. Daniel Alfredson, starring G�sta Ekman (as Beck), Kjell Bergqvist, Rolf Lassg�rd, Anna Helena Bergendal - Mannen som gick upp i r�k, 1966
- The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (translated by Joan Tate, 1969)
- Mies joka h�visi savuna ilmaan (suom. Kari Jalonen, 1967)
- film adaptation: Mann, der sich in Luft aufl�ste, 1980, prod. Andre Libik, Europa Film, Mafilm 'Dialog' Studio, dir. P�ter Bacs�, starring Derek Jacobi (as Martin Beck), Judy Winter, Tomas Bolme, Lasse Str�mstedt, S�ndor Szab� - Mannen p� balkongen, 1967
- The Man on the Balcony (translated by Alan Blair, 1968)
- Mies parvekkeella (suom. Margit Salmenoja, 1980)
- film adaptation: Mannen p� balkongen, 1993, prod. Nordisk Film- & TV-Fond, Rialto Film, Svensk Filmindustri (SF), dir. by Daniel Alfredson, starring G�sta Ekman (as Martin Beck), Kjell Bergqvist, Rolf Lassg�rd, Niklas Hjulstr�m, Bernt Str�m - 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 f�rsvann, 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 G�sta Ekman (as Martin Beck), Kjell Bergqvist, Rolf Lassg�rd, Niklas Hjulstr�m, Holger Kunkel - Polis, polis, potatismos!, 1970
- Murder at the Savoy (translated by Amy and Ken Knoespel, 1971)
- Miss� 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 G�sta Ekman, Kjell Bergqvist and Rolf Lassg�rd - Den vederv�rdige mannen fr�n S�ffle, 1971
- The Abominable Man (translated by Thomas Teal, 1972)
- Komisario Beck t�ht�imess� (suom. Marja-Riitta Ritanoro ja Kari Jalonen, 1974)
- film adaptation: Mannen p� taket, 1976, prod. Svensk Filmindustri (SF), Svenska Filminstitutet (SFI), dir. by Bo Widerberg, starring Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt, Sven Wollter, Thomas Hellberg, H�kan 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 - Polism�rdaren, 1974
- Cop Killer (translated 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 G�sta Ekman (as Martin Beck), Kjell Bergqvist, Rolf Lassg�rd, Tomas Norstr�m, 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 G�sta Ekman (as Martin Beck), Kjell Bergqvist, Rolf Lassg�rd, Niklas Hjulstr�m, Corinna Harfouch - Sista resan och andra ber�ttelser, 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 Nesb�)
- 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)
Other works:
- Kvinnan som liknade Greta Garbo (with Tomas Ross), 1990
- Nainen joka muistutti Greta Garboa (suom. Tarmo Haarala, 1991) - Sista resan och andra ber�ttelser, 2007
Some rights reserved Petri Liukkonen
(author) & Ari Pesonen. 2008-2024.