Crime Couple
The article was published in The New Indian Express, Feb 6, 2016, in a somewhat altered form. This is the original version.
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I got married in the middle of January 2016, to someone who possesses a more eclectic reading taste than mine. Apart from contemporary literary fiction, where I have a slender but noteworthy lead, there is perhaps only one other category where I can call myself better read than her, and that is crime fiction.
It was in the way of introducing her to my kind of crime fiction that I gave her the first case from the series featuring one of the most realistic detectives of the 20th century: the Swede named Martin Beck. The fact that Martin Beck was created by two writers in love, Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, writing in the liberating sixties and the decisive seventies (as previous generations inform us), might have been another reason.
Her reaction to the novel titled Roseanna was not very promising at first. Having read the thrillers of Dan Brown, John Grisham, and the likes, she found it ‘Boring.’ Midway through the novel, though, her opinion began to take a definite form. ‘It’s really real,’ she said. After finishing the book, which happened on the same day that she had begun reading it, she had this to say: ‘It’s too real, it’s just too real.’
The Wahloo-Sjowall novels are considered the first manifestation of a sub-genre that has brought millions of realism seekers to the fold of crime fiction: the police procedural. Their impact on other serious writers can only be underestimated, and it is safe to say that the much talked about boom in Nordic crime writing, examples of which are Stieg Larsson’s Millenium series (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, et al) and Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series, would not have been possible without their contributions. The dour, methodical, patient, dyspeptic, depressive, dysfunctional lump of a detective that they created, Martin Beck, became the template for many other famous characters, like Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander, Arnaldur Indriðason’s Erlendur Steinsson, and Karin Fossum’s Konrad Sejer.
A police procedural differs from the typical detective story in that it values patience, diligence, and, most importantly, teamwork, more than the intuitive gifts of the lead detective. In the Wahloo-Sjowall novels, Martin Beck’s eminence appears more the result of the authors’ random choice rather than any special crime-solving chops that he has got. Other members of Beck’s team contribute as much to the solving of the crime as he, and unlike many other series, they do so not in the background but along with Beck. Just in this, Wahloo and Sjowall break one of the unspoken rules in detective fiction: that the crime should appear solvable only by the hero.
As I asked my wife the other night what she wanted to read next, the question was answered as she walked up to the bookshelf and picked up The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, the second in the series. I think now there is the risk that she will read the ten Martin Beck novels on the trot.
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I got married in the middle of January 2016, to someone who possesses a more eclectic reading taste than mine. Apart from contemporary literary fiction, where I have a slender but noteworthy lead, there is perhaps only one other category where I can call myself better read than her, and that is crime fiction.
It was in the way of introducing her to my kind of crime fiction that I gave her the first case from the series featuring one of the most realistic detectives of the 20th century: the Swede named Martin Beck. The fact that Martin Beck was created by two writers in love, Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall, writing in the liberating sixties and the decisive seventies (as previous generations inform us), might have been another reason.
Her reaction to the novel titled Roseanna was not very promising at first. Having read the thrillers of Dan Brown, John Grisham, and the likes, she found it ‘Boring.’ Midway through the novel, though, her opinion began to take a definite form. ‘It’s really real,’ she said. After finishing the book, which happened on the same day that she had begun reading it, she had this to say: ‘It’s too real, it’s just too real.’
The Wahloo-Sjowall novels are considered the first manifestation of a sub-genre that has brought millions of realism seekers to the fold of crime fiction: the police procedural. Their impact on other serious writers can only be underestimated, and it is safe to say that the much talked about boom in Nordic crime writing, examples of which are Stieg Larsson’s Millenium series (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, et al) and Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series, would not have been possible without their contributions. The dour, methodical, patient, dyspeptic, depressive, dysfunctional lump of a detective that they created, Martin Beck, became the template for many other famous characters, like Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander, Arnaldur Indriðason’s Erlendur Steinsson, and Karin Fossum’s Konrad Sejer.
A police procedural differs from the typical detective story in that it values patience, diligence, and, most importantly, teamwork, more than the intuitive gifts of the lead detective. In the Wahloo-Sjowall novels, Martin Beck’s eminence appears more the result of the authors’ random choice rather than any special crime-solving chops that he has got. Other members of Beck’s team contribute as much to the solving of the crime as he, and unlike many other series, they do so not in the background but along with Beck. Just in this, Wahloo and Sjowall break one of the unspoken rules in detective fiction: that the crime should appear solvable only by the hero.
As I asked my wife the other night what she wanted to read next, the question was answered as she walked up to the bookshelf and picked up The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, the second in the series. I think now there is the risk that she will read the ten Martin Beck novels on the trot.
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