Swedish Marxist Noir: The Dark Wave of Crime Writers and the Influence of Raymond Chandler

266 Pages·2018·2.166 MB·English

by  Per Hellgren

Swedish Marxist Noir
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Swedish Marxist Noir
The Dark Wave of Crime
Writers and the Influence
of Raymond Chandler
P H
ER ELLGREN
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-7371-4
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-3415-9
Library of Congress cataloguing data are available
British Library cataloguing data are available
© 2019 Per Hellgren. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, i ncluding photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover photograph by Iakov Kalinin (iStock)
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
For Maria
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Preface 1
Introduction: Marxist Noir at the Gates 3
1. A World Gone Wrong: Raymond Chandler 29
2. The Accord: Per Wahlöö and Sjöwall-Wahlöö 46
3. The Fall from Grace: Henning Mankell 79
4. The Collapsed Dream: Stieg Larsson 94
5. Excavating the Swedish Underbelly: Roslund & Hellström 128
6. A Brave New Sweden: Jens Lapidus 150
7. Sleuths of the Post- Political Condition: Arne Dahl 164
8. The Age of the Manhunter: Lars Kepler 190
Conclusion: The Dialectics of Crime Fiction 206
Chapter Notes 221
Works Cited 238
Index 247
vii
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Acknowledgments
This work has—as writing a book usually does—taken several years of
my life to finish. During this period, the past three or four years, some people
have been of crucial importance.
The first seed for the idea of actually writing about a transatlantic pol-
lination between Raymond Chandler and Per Wahlöö came when I was in
the apartment of Sylvia Wahlöö, the writer Per Wahlöö’s second wife, in Stock-
holm in January 2015. Sylvia and Per were married from the end of the 1950s
until the early 1960s. Sylvia and I were looking at photos for my book about
Per Wahlöö that would be published in the autumn of 2015. Later that day
she showed me her bookcase where she had saved her and Per’s readings from
the old days. One glance at it revealed that he had a surprising number of
Chandler’s books in old rugged English paperback originals, and she told me
they had read Chandler a lot in the 1950s.
Later this fact got me thinking about the connection between Chandler
and Swedish crime fiction, and soon my theory of Swedish Marxist Noir
started to unfold, bit by bit. Thanks, Sylvia, for showing me your bookcase
and for telling me all the wonderful stories about you and Per.
I also owe debts to the wonderful, indefatigable staff at Eskilstuna
City Library, Sweden, especially crime fiction librarian Synnöve Hansen (who
is actually the only one in Sweden), for helping me to dig out the dusty
crime fiction past and some of the scholarly research performed through the
years.
I need to reserve a special word of appreciation for Alan Wald, whose
concept of Marxist Noir has been of great importance for this study, and I
would like to thank him for his thoughts and for answering my questions
and helping me to find one of his most defining texts on the subject. Even
though I’ve never met him in person, I wish he had been my teacher in high
school or at the university.
Göran Therborn is another scholar who has been important for this
ix