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.