Leif G W Persson. He Who Kills the Dragon (London: Doubleday, 2013)

Leif G W Persson (1945-) is an eminent criminologist with a doctorate in criminology from the University of Stockholm (1980) and a long career as a crime expert and a psychological profiler in Swedish academia, police and media. His parallel career as a crime novelist started in 1978 with Girsfesten (The Pig Party). Persson has won the prize for the best Swedish crime novel three times: 1983 for Samhällsbararna (The Pillars of Society), 2003 for En annan tid, ett annat liv (Another Time, Another Life) and 2010 for Den döende detektiven (The Dying Detective). He won the Glass key for the best Scandinavian crime novel in 2012 also for Den döende detektiven.

He Who Kills the Dragon (orig. Den som dödar draken) is the second Evert Bäckström novel. The first was Linda – as In the Linda Murder (orig. Linda - som i Lindamordet in 2005) and there is a third one, published in Sweden 2013, called Den sanna historien om Pinocchios näsa (The True Story of Pinocchio’s Nose).

 

He Who Kills the Dragon is technically excellent. The plotting, the handling of the characters and the manipulation of the reader’s expectations are well executed. The detectives are as much the object of the reader’s interest and a source of narrative tension and suspense as the crime they are investigating. The tone of the narrative is often sarcastic and its black humour has a distinctly Swedish flavour, similar to the humour in Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of a Window and Disappeared (2009), and as in Jonasson’s book, it can be questioned how well that humour travels across translations

There is discipline and subtlety in the plotting. The novel opens with the crime scene and the investigation progresses in widening circles while keeping the murder firmly in the centre. Persson uses well the method of moving the narrative forward by re-interpreting the same clues in different ways. The pace of the narrative is slow and the investigation progresses through a series of team meetings where police officers report on their work (28, 70, 80, 106, 198, 343). There is only one small instance which disturbs the smooth and confident plot: we see Bäckström settle down to hear a critical piece of information from Halfy Söderman, but we are not told what it is. It is an awkward moment in a narrative which otherwise keeps the reader abreast with Bäckström’s investigation.

There is also discipline and subtlety in Persson’s description of the Swedish society, “our glorious socialist paradise” (57). The murder victim is an old Swedish man, with old Swedish cronies. The murder, at least at first appears to be “the tragic story of the most common murder victim in Swedish criminal history,” (7, also 8) “A purely routine case” (10): “One pisshead has been murdered by another pisshead.” (39) Karl Danielsson, 68, has been battered to death and strangled in his flat after a night of drinking. The initial interpretation of the murder is as a traditional, genuinely Swedish kind of murder. The police team investigating the murder is multi-national and multi-ethnic. There are foreign witnesses and suspects. There is a carefully built contrast and intermingling of the old Sweden and the new Sweden. While a Polish builder waits to return “back to civilization back home in Poland,” (41) he warns the Swedes: “Don’t curse the paradise that you Swedes actually live in, because it might be taken away from you” (42). Paradise Sweden certainly is, but whether it is a civilization is another matter.

And there is discipline and subtlety in Persson’s depiction of the police force. The investigative team is large and each police officer gets her or his backstory and individual character. On the back cover blurb there is quote from Barry Forshaw: “Bäckström is a character worthy of Joseph Wambaugh at his best …” Rather than Bäckström, what reminds me of such Wambaugh novels as Hollywood Station (2006) is the carefully managed cast of police characters who all contribute to the investigation. In Persson’s novel, too, the various characters have differing ideas about the crime and sometimes not very good opinions of each other (339). This leaves the reader to decide, which characters are most likely to figure things out and which ones simply cannot be trusted. It makes the narrative more engaging.

But there is very little discipline and subtlety in main joke of the narrative: Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström. We meet Bäckström as he is “voluntarily sober for the first time in his adult life” (18). Within twenty pages he is established as a rude, bad-tempered, alcoholic slob. He lies (89, 161, 183, 188, 302, 312), he deceives (159), he is two-faced (52, 70, 81). He is male-chauvinist (20, 24, 84, 232, 280), he is racist (25, 55, 182, 185, 301, 375), he is homophobic (240, 241, 350). Bäckström has an inflated image of himself both in terms if of his intellectual superiority (28, 68, 106, 137, 152, 213, 215) and his physical attractiveness. (244, 280, 312) He refers to his “super-salami” on several occasions (85, 234, 243, 266, 352).

Bäckström’s prejudices are best revealed in his views on the Swedish police force: “What the hell is happening to the Swedish police? Faggots, dykes, darkies and the usual yes-men. Not a single ordinary police constable as far as the eye can see.” (23, also 52, 343) Meanwhile, everyone else in the investigative team get along well with each other (66). The team seems to be made up of people from all corners of the earth (35, 60, 251, 252, 253, 297) working well as a team with the support of their management. As the investigation progresses, Bäckström looks more and more like the only dinosaur around the table. He is tolerated rather than liked. His colleague Lars Alm says: “Every time I turn on the news and see that an officer has been shot, I pray to God that it’s Bäckström. (66) … if only Bäckström would do his civic duty and drop dead … (67)

Persson places Bäckström carefully on the borderline of grandiose self-delusion and amoral, opportunistic selfishness. The reader is left to decide whether he is a tragic character or just a total twit. This is a good achievement. In Bäckström’s past, there is the shadow of Palme’s murder (123, 131), there is no getting away from this pivotal moment in the history of modern Swedish society and its police. Persson has drawn a direct link from it to the character of Bäckström (135). (There are also references to the murder of Anna Lindh [318] and war-time collaborations with the Germans [325]). Bäckström is a product of the Swedish society.

It is clear that while Bäckström’s prejudiced views are shared by a few other characters, they are not shared by the third person narrator. The Somali postman Septimus Akofeli, the Polish migrant worker Jerzy Sarniecki and the police officers of diverse ethnic backgrounds are presented with sympathy. Although there is an ironic  suggestion that Bäckström could replace Leif G. W. Persson  (Alm to Bäckström: “maybe you could … replace that tired old professor on the National Police Board, that Persson bloke” [369]) , the solution to the crime suggests that Bäckström’s prejudices are not shared by the author either; the motivation for Danielsson’s murder is another sarcastic twist in the tale but can also be read as a comment on our current political and cultural prejudices.

Persson’s decision to make his detective hero a thoroughly unpleasant character is not only a source of humour, it also raises some interesting considerations about the reader’s expectations. We want Bäckström to redeem himself. We read in the hope of coming across some action, even some thought or feeling of Bäckström’s, by which we could reconcile ourselves to his unmitigated horridness. We want our hope in the detective to be restored. Instead Persson gives us a different picture of the state of the detective hero: just consider what happens to the fortune discovered in the safety deposit box. This part of the narrative does not work so well, because by around page hundred we grow tired of Bäckström’s misanthropy (112, 116, 119). There are only so many times we need to hear about his racial and sexist prejudices. The overabundance of Bäckström’s obnoxious thoughts and comments makes the reader feel like the same old joke is being repeated and the narrative is in danger of becoming as tedious as Bäckström himself. This is a stylistic fault in an otherwise good novel.

Persson is an intelligent writer and one of the best contemporary crime writers, not just in Sweden, but anywhere. Despite its faults, there is much to appreciate in this story.  Persson’s novel is both perceptive and intelligent in the way it presents a traditional Swedish crime investigated by a contemporary, diverse police force, and how both traditional ideas about Swedishness and contemporary concerns about crime and foreigners affect the investigation. The handling of the murder case and its solution would seem to suggest that it is not the foreigners that are the problem, quite the opposite. Quote apart from the cumbersome Evert Bäckström, there is some very black and subtle humour in the resolution of this excellent crime novel, with a clue in its very title.

Unni Lindell. Orkestergraven (Oslo: Aschenhoug, 2010)

 
Orkestergraven (The Orchestra Pit) is fifth in Lindell's series featuring police detective Cato Isaksen, (the story is also included in the TV-series made of her novels in 2009). The Norwegian title has an added sombre tone, because en "grav" also means a "grave." In this story, Isaksen is called to investigate the death of a woman found stabbed in a cold winter's night behind a trendy furniture store (which is now a garden centre) in the western part of Oslo.

The woman is Siv Ellen Blad, a violinist. The title, the occupation of the victim (although she also worked part-time at a post office) and several characters with large CD collections, give the story a musical flavour, but this theme does not significantly affect the course of the narrative.

The narrative's interest is very much with family life and its complications. The Blads, with a teenage daughter Maiken, were separated. The husband, Axel, has moved out to live with a new partner, who also has a son in his twenties. Ellen Blad has rented the basement of the large marital home to a single mother, who has a friend, a troubled young man with a problematic relationship with his own family. Cato Isaksen's family life is just as chaotic as those he is investigating: he has returned to live with his ex-wife and two older sons, but is involved in the care of his youngest son, whose mother is now in a relationship with a new (somewhat controlling or perhaps just jealous) partner. Families and relationships between parents and children criss-cross the narrative, not least Isaksen's relationship with his youngest son Georg.

Themes of family and parenthood are linked with questions about wealth and whether it brings happiness. The setting is very specific and significant: Vinderen on the T-bahn route 1, which meanders up the steep slope to Holmenkollen past large villas with apple orchards and heated driveways. This is a prosperous, wealthy and highly respectable neighbourhood of designer buggies, big Audis and shopping weekends in London. Lindell does not only give us the street where Ellen Blad lives, but she describes precisely the house (in the corner of Frognerseterveien and Dagaliveien) where Ellen's husband Axel now lives. This murder is located in the heart of comfortable, confident and secure Oslo and brought close to home to Lindell's audience.

The location gives the story a very explicit social dimension: as is so often the job of the detective, Cato Isaksen's job is to tear off the smooth, glossy mask of West-Oslo's wealthy and reveal the ugly, raw emotions beneath: greed, fear, loathing and desire.

Lindell offers more than just the traditional revealing of dark secrets. The tension and conflict between society's haves and have-nots, and how easy it is to slip between these categories, rumble beneath the surface of the narrative.

The pace of the police investigation is slow. The police fumble, they miss clues, occasionally they feel powerless. Witnesses and other people involved in the events have their own plans and motives; they are blinded by emotion; they hide or simply forget important details. Wally Steen is so upset by Isaksen's phone call that she hangs up without answering his crucial question.

This adds a sense of realism to the narrative. Lindell's characters behave in a way you might imagine real people to behave under pressure and in a chaotic aftermath of a violent death. In addition, the irrationality in people's behaviour is a source of tension and suspense. Lindell handles her characters well and shows their emotional states and turmoil through their behaviour. It is a shame that she has resorted to the old gimmick of opening and closing the novel with italicized sections giving us an agonized internal monologue of the killer. These sections are entirely superfluous.

Lindell creates convincing characters in all age groups; her children are as rounded as her adults. Perhaps this is not surprising as she is also a successful children's writer. There is certainly gender equality in this novel: the female characters (including the victim) are more active and determined than the male characters, despite the detective hero being a man.

The murder in Orkestergraven happens off the page. The narrative does not shock with violence; it entertains with suspense. Even in the final, dramatic scenes of the novel, this suspense remains realistic and the events believable. The focus of the story is in solving the murder. Yet there is enough in the narrative to make it a very good, traditional, detective story. The psychological depth of the characters, although not immense, is sufficient to make them interesting. The problems of parenthood and family relationships and the question of wealth and its effects add further food for thought.

Roseanna (1965) by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (London: Fourth Estate, 2011)

Roseanna is the first book in Sjöwall and Wahlöö's ten-book series The Story of a Crime, better known to general readers as the Martin Beck-series after its protagonist. The authors explained their motivations in an article entitled "Kriminalromanens förnyelse" ("Renewal of crime fiction") published in the first number of the Jury- magazine (a Swedish magazine for friends of detective fiction) in 1972, and since then it has been generally acknowledged that they aimed to use crime fiction as a vehicle for social criticism. As Henning Mankell writes in his 2006 introduction to Roseanna: "They wanted to use crime and criminal investigations as a mirror of Swedish society". Much has been made of this idea of Swedish crime fiction as a tool for left-wing social criticism. I do not see much of it in Roseanna.

The novel has thirty short chapters, each one is a step in the long investigation into the death of a young woman, whose body is lifted out of the Göta-canal on the 8th of July 1964. There are no sub-plots and only just enough background detail to stop the world of Martin Beck from becoming too claustrophobic. The only other narrative strand is Beck's deteriorating marriage. Beck's wife and family are pushed to the margins as he concentrates on the murder case. This allows Beck to display the traditional doggedness of a detective on a case. It also reveals something of Beck's character: he is emotionally more concerned about the dead young woman than about his family.

The language in Roseanna is matter-of-fact. The sentences are short; there are no metaphors or similes. The movement is consistently forward in time (there are no flashbacks) and the focus is exclusively on the police. The third-person narrative does not speculate or explain; the narrator is very much a reporter describing what happens. The only back-story belongs to Martin Beck and it is squeezed onto a single page (page 12).  The narrative presumes an attentive and (reasonably) intelligent reader, who is expected to keep up with Beck's thinking.

There is much low-key humour. The novel opens with an incompetent bureaucratic muddle in organizing canal dredging "until someone picked up the phone and dialled an engineer who knew all about bucket dredging machines." (Page 2) This is followed immediately by an outline of the police bureaucracy in Motala, raising the question whether the police would be any more efficient. Due to a bad telephone line, Kafka is left under the mistaken impression that Beck has shot the culprit: "Great. Tomorrow you will be the hero of the day over there." Kollberg remarks, "Shoot-em-up Martin, the avenger from south Stockholm." (Page 56).

The investigation takes six and a half months. It takes three months to identify the victim as Roseanna MacGraw, an American tourist. The investigation moves between Stockholm and Motala and it is international. Already on page two we get a glimpse of a Vietnamese tourist. The boat where Roseanna is killed is full of foreigners: "Fifteen Swedes, ... Twenty-one Americans, minus one, of course. Twelve Germans, four Danes, four Englishmen, one Scot, two Frenchmen, two South-Africans, ... five Dutchmen and two Turks." (Page 64) There are references to Interpol cases (co-operation with Spanish and French police) and witnesses work on foreign freight-ships (someone in The Hague speaks Danish and so can interview a Swedish sailor on a German ship currently docked in Hook van Holland, page 101). "The case ... was spreading itself out all over the globe," (page 129) with Detective Lieutenant Elmer Kafka in Lincoln, Nebraska, Roseanna's home town, involved.

Gunnar Ahlberg, the Detective Inspector in Motala, where Roseanna's body is found, and Martin Beck, who is sent from Stockholm to help, are determined to find Roseanna's killer. From the start Beck "felt sorry for the girl that no one missed." (Page 20) As the first excitement surrounding the death subsides, these two agree that they will never let this one go (page 34, see also page 41). There is a strong sense of sympathy for the victim, the "poor, little friend" (page 44). Beck is literally sick with worry: he is constantly ill, unable to sleep or eat, and seems to feel better only when the investigation takes a step forward (see pages 53,129).

Starting with Kollberg's "real description" (page 34) and further through Kafka's interviews in the US (making up most of chapter 12 and 13), the first half of the investigation is all about getting to know the victim. Roseanna was an independent woman, who was not shy to approach men. She was "natural" with her sexuality, to an extent that makes Beck hot under the collar reading her ex-boyfriend's statement (page 88).

Seagulls remind Beck of his colleagues: "Their powers of observation and their patience were admirable, as was their staying power and optimism. They reminded Martin Beck of Kollberg and Melander." (Page 23). Later Beck thinks of "three of the most important virtues a policeman can have ... You are stubborn and logical, and completely calm." (Page 44) Officer Kafka displays these qualities too. He, together with Ahlberg and Beck share the same instincts. They communicate frequently and often anticipate each others' thinking. There are hints in the narrative that the obsessive nature of detectives is not exceptional. Beck receives a phone call in the middle of the night meant for Stenström; a voice tells him that another case has been solved: "I only wanted to tell you so you wouldn't lie awake and think about it unnecessarily ..." (page 39). There is also the mention of an older colleague who was plagued by an unsolved case for seven years (page 130).

Once Beck and his team have identified a prime suspect (after chapter 20), the focus switches to the perpetrator. His character becomes the object of interest. With the police, we get to know his habits, his daily routine; we meet him in an interview room. Beck is convinced that the man is the culprit, but he has no way to prove it. He resorts to a highly unorthodox and dangerous method (although supported by his superiors). For a long time Beck's plan does not seem to work. In a very effective way, the narrative ratchets up the reader's frustration and suspense alongside the police's, until it culminates in a dramatic scene.

Roseanna is a crime investigation in two halves: the portrait of the victim and the portrait of the killer. Neither one is a monster, neither one is flawless. There is an unpalatable subtle suggestion that Roseanna triggered her own killing. This novel shows crime as part of society and human interactions. Criminals are members of society and not alien to it. Or as Beck puts it: "A murderer is a regular human being, only more unfortunate and maladjusted." (Page 44) The crime is an almost casual side-effect of life: "Later, he had happened to kill her. She could just as easily have been run over on King Street in Stockholm." (Page 244). Beck's use of Sonja Hansson muddles the moral of the novel further: first, it reconfirms the idea that victims can 'trigger' crimes with their behaviour, and secondly it draws to question Beck's motivations in his willingness to risk Sonja in order to catch the killer. If victims can trigger crimes, crimes in turn, seem to trigger equally strong passions and obsessions in detectives.

At the end, stands the question as old as the detective story: is it a conservative, reassuring genre? Does it give us a warm feeling to know, that out there, there is an international brotherhood of detectives (Beck, Ahlberg, Kafka) who will stay on the case stubbornly, until justice is done and the order of society is restored? Rather, Roseanna seems to be saying that crime is part of the society's status quo, not because there is something fundamentally wrong with the current social order (maybe that argument comes later in the series), but because crime is part of the human condition.