VYTAUTO DIDŽIOJO UNIVERSITETAS HUMANITARINIŲ MOKSLŲ FAKULTETAS UŽSIENIO KALBŲ, LITERATŪROS IR VERTIMO STUDIJŲ KATEDRA

Šarūnas Liulevičius

KETURI INSPEKTORIAUS MARTINO BEKO PROCEDŪRINIAI DETEKTYVINIAI ROMANAI IŠ ŠVEDIŠKOS KRIMINALINĖS LITERATŪROS

Bakalauro baigiamasis darbas

Anglų filologijos studijų programa, valstybinis kodas 612Q30004 Anglų filologijos studijų kryptis

Vadovė prof. dr. Milda Julija Danytė ______(parašas) (data)

Apginta doc. dr. Rūta Eidukevičienė ______(parašas) (data)

Kaunas, 2020

MAJ SJOWALL AND PER WAHLOO’S MARTIN BECK CRIME SERIES AS A SWEDISH VERSION OF THE POLICE PROCEDURAL

By Šarūnas Liulevičius

Department of Foreign Language, Literary and Translation Studies Vytautas Magnus University Bachelor of Arts Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Milda Julija Danytė 3 June 2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SUMMARY SANTRAUKA 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. MAJ SJOWALL AND PER WAHLOO’S “STORY OF CRIME” PROJECT: USING CRIME FICTION TO ANALYSE SWEDISH SOCIETY ...... 2

2.1 Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and their “Story of Crime” series ...... 3

2.2 Crime fiction as a tool for social criticism ...... 3

3. THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE MARTIN BECK SERIES: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SWEDEN AS A WELFARE STATE ...... 5

3.1 The political and economic context of Sweden in the late 19th century and the early 20th century ...... 5

3.2 Social Democrats and the development of the Swedish welfare state ...... 6

3.3 Problems with the welfare state system in Sweden ...... 9

4. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POLICE PROCEDURAL GENRE ...... 10

4.1 Plot and action in police procedurals ...... 11

4.2 The typical choice of setting in the police procedural ...... 12

4.3 Police officers as the major characters in police procedurals ...... 13

5. THE MARTIN BECK SERIES AS A VERSION OF THE POLICE PROCEDURAL ...... 15

5.1 The working life and relationship between major and minor police characters ...... 15

5.2 The narrative structure of the Martin Beck novels: variations on police procedural plot structures ...... 19

5.3 Sjowall and Wahloo’s use of a crime fiction series to criticize the Swedish state system ...... 24

6. CONCLUSION ...... 29

WORKS CITED ...... 31

SUMMARY

This BA thesis analyses four crime fiction novels from the Martin Beck Series as a version of police procedural by two Swedish writers Maj Sjowall (1935-2020) and Per Wahloo (1926-1975). The analysis refers to the theoretical ideas discussed by several critics. The articles by Jack Kerridge (2015) and Bernard Norcott-Mahany (2015) are used for information about the lives of two novelists. The development of Swedish welfare state is discussed through works by Arthur Gould (2001), H. Arnold Barton (2009), Lennart Schön (2012), Björn Wittrock (2012) and Sven E. O. Hort (2014). The theoretical material by George N. Dove (1982), Peter Messent (1997) and Kerstin Bergman (2011) provides the characteristics of the police procedural genre. All four novels are about a police inspector Martin Beck and the homicide squad that he heads in Stockholm. The Laughing Policeman (1968) deals with a mass murder on a Swedish bus during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration. The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969) is about the case of an apparent suicide and terrible fire in which several people die. The Abominable Man (1971) describes the murder of a sadistic police inspector Styg Nyman, later revealed to be a revenge killing. The novel culminates with an action scene when the murderer is killed and Martin Beck is severely injured. The Locked Room (1971) deals two separate crimes: a bank robbery and a dead man in a locked room. The latter case is solved by Martin Beck but the murderer is convicted not for this but a bank robbery he did not commit, while the real robber escapes from Sweden. This paper is divided into six sections. After the first section, the introduction, Section 2 provides some information on Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, including their project to write crime novels closely linked to Swedish realities. Section 3 presents historical information on the development of the Swedish welfare state. Section 4 explains the main features of the police procedural genre. Section 5 is the analysis of the four novels of the Martin Beck series; it is divided into three subsections. Subsection 5.1 looks at the main police officers, their interpersonal relationships and working life. Subsection 5.2 compares the narrative structures of the novels. Subsection 5.3 reviews the strong criticism of Swedish society and the welfare system presented in the novels. Section 6, the conclusion. It provides general results of the analysis: the main police characters’ ability to work as a team despite their differences, the differences in the narrative structure and the grim reality of Swedish society. A list of works cited is provided at the end of the paper.

SANTRAUKA

Šiame bakalauro baigiamajame darbe yra analizuojami keturi švedų rašytojų Maj Sjowall (1935- 2020) ir Per Wahloo (1926-1975) procedūriniai detektyviniai romanai apie inspektorių Martiną Beką. Analizė yra paremta kelių kritikų teorine medžiaga. Informacija apie abiejų rašytojų gyvenimą yra paimta iš Jack Kerridge (2015) ir Bernard Norcott-Mahany (2015) straipsnių. Švedijos gerovės valstybės susiformavimas yra apžvelgiamas Arthur Gould (2001), H. Arnold Barton (2009), Lennart Schön (2012), Björn Wittrock (2012) ir Sven E. O. Hort (2014) veikaluose. George N. Dove (1982), Peter Messent (1997) ir Kerstin Bergman (2011) veikaluose yra aptariami procedūrinio detektyvinio romano bruožai. Visuose keturiuose romanuose yra pasakojama apie policijos detektyvą Martiną Beką ir jo vadovaujamą žmogžudysčių skyriaus komandą tyrinėjančią tam tikrus nusikaltimus. The Laughing Policeman (1968, čia ir toliau yra pateikiami angliškų vertimų pavadinimai) yra tiriama autobuse įvykusi, demonstracijos prieš Vietnamo karą metu, masinė žmogžudystė. The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969) tiriamos tariamos savižudybės ir gaisro, kurio metu žūsta keletas žmonių, bylos. The Abominable Man (1971) aprašoma žmogžudystė, kurios metu nužudomas sadistiškas policijos inspektorius. Vėliau paaiškėja, kad žmogžudystė buvo kerštas. Romano kulminacija – greitas ir įtemptas veiksmas, kurio metu žudikas miršta, o Martinas Bekas yra sunkiai sužeidžiamas. The Locked Room (1971) pateikiamos dvi atskiros bylos: banko apiplėšimas ir lavonas, rastas užrakintame kambaryje. Pastarąją bylą tiria Martinas Bekas ir romanas baigiasi tuo, kad žudikas yra nuteisiamas už banko apiplėšimą, dėl kurio yra nekaltas, o tikroji kaltininkė pabėga iš Švedijos. Šį darbą sudaro šeši skyriai. Po pirmojo įvadinio skyriaus, antrajame skyriuje yra pateikiama informacijos apie Maj Sjowall ir Per Wahloo bei jų projektą: dešimties kriminalinių romanų ciklą, kuri kažkiek atspindėtų Švedijos tikrovę. Trečiajame skyriuje pateikiama istorinės informacijos apie Švedijos gerovės valstybės susiformavimą. Ketvirtajame skyriuje yra pateikiami pagrindiniai procedūrinio detektyvinio romano bruožai. Penktasis skyrius – keturių romanų apie Martiną Beką analizė. Šis skyrių sudaro trys poskyriai. Pirmame poskyryje yra analizuojami pagrindiniai veikėjai (policijos pareigūnai), jų tarpusavio santykiai ir darbas policijoje. Antrajame poskyryje yra palyginamos romanų pasakojimo struktūros. Trečiasis poskyris apžvelgia romanuose išryškėjančią stiprią kritiką, nukreiptą į Švedijos visuomenę ir gerovės valstybę. Šeštame išvadiniame skyriuje pateikiami bendri analizės rezultatai: pagrindinių veikėjų gebėjimas dirbti komandinį darbą, pasakojimo struktūrų skirtumai ir niūri Švedijos visuomenės tikrovė. Panaudotų šaltinių sąrašas yra pateiktas darbo gale. 1. INTRODUCTION While many people are familiar with classical private detective stories about Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie, the police procedural is a very different form of crime narrative featured in many books, TV series and films. This genre is noted for its greater realism and a focus on the police as a team rather than a single brilliant investigator. This BA thesis analyses four crime fiction novels from the Martin Beck series as a version of police procedural by two Swedish writers, Maj Sjowall (1935-2020) and Per Wahloo (1926-1975): The Laughing Policeman (1968), The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969), The Abominable Man (1971) and The Locked Room (1971). The development of the Swedish welfare state is explained, based on historical works by Arthur Gould (2001), H. Arnold Barton (2009), Lennart Schön (2012), Björn Wittrock (2012) and Sven E. O. Hort (2014). Critical material by George N. Dove (1982), Peter Messent (1997) and Kerstin Bergman (2011) provide the characteristics of the police procedural genre. All of the four novels take place in Stockholm. The Laughing Policeman is about a mass murder on a bus during which eight people are shot with a submachine-gun. Martin Beck and his team conduct a standard investigation through door-to-door questioning and technical examination but the focus of their interest is on Ake Stenstrom, a young policeman who is also one of the victims. Finally he is revealed to have been shadowing a killer who many years earlier got away with another murder; the novel ends with a confrontation with the murderer who attempts but fails to commit suicide. The Fire Engine That Disappeared deals with two separate incidents: a dead man found to have apparently committed suicide in his room but with Martin Beck’s name written on his telephone pad; a sudden housefire with some people saved by Gunvald Larsson and others perishing while the fire department arrives too late at the scene. The two events are eventually linked together: the dead man was actually murdered by an incendiary chemical bomb placed in his bed which also caused the fire. The murderer was the one to call the fire department but by error directed it to the wrong location. The Abominable Man is about the murder of Stig Nyman, a brutal police inspector notorious for various acts of misconduct against people through wrongful arrests, interrogations and beatings. The killer is revealed to be Ake Erikkson, a disillusioned police officer whose wife died because Nyman did not realize that she was diabetic. The novel culminates in an exciting action scene during which Ake Erikkson is killed and Beck seriously wounded. The Locked Room features two separate cases: a bank robbery and a dead man mysteriously shot in a room locked from the inside but with no gun. Martin Beck takes up the latter case as a way to cope with severe psychological trauma from the events in the previous novel. Other members of the homicide squad conduct the bank robbery investigation, mistakenly connecting it with the plans for another bank robbery by a criminal gang. The police operation to stop this robbery fails while the 1 culprit from Martin Beck’s investigation is pardoned for a crime he did commit while but sentenced for the first bank robbery, of which he was innocent; the real robber escapes from Sweden. Section 5 is the analysis of the four novels insofar as they are typical or not of police procedurals; it is divided into three subsections. Subsection 5.1 examines the main characters, all of whom are police officers, their relationships and their working life. One strong friendship that stands out in the novels is between Martin Beck and Lennart Kollberg. Other officers have different traits: Gunvald Larsson, who is upper-class and uses violence, is disliked by his colleagues, Einar Ronn is considered to be mediocre and Fredrik Melander has an exceptional memory. Despite having different skills and attitudes, all the officers are able to cooperate in investigations through various methods including door-to-door questioning and technical examinations; temporary reinforcements are sometimes called in from other cities. Subsection 5.2 looks at the narrative structure of the four novels, including beginnings and the relative importance in individual novels of kinds of investigation. There are several similarities and differences: The Laughing Policeman and The Fire Engine That Disappeared do not show the crime itself, only the aftermath; The Laughing Policeman and The Abominable Man deal with the murder of a police colleague; The Abominable Man is the only novel to end with a long and intense action scene. Subsection 5.3 considers the most unusual feature of Sjowall and Wahloo’s novels: the inclusion of strong criticism of the Swedish welfare state and its effects. Their intention is to show the readers the reality of a supposedly successful social and economic system: poverty, unemployment, increasing crime, the drug trade, ineffective and sometimes semi-totalitarian police and the manipulation of mass media. This criticism, expressed in certain cases by characters like Kollberg or the narrator, in other by scenes showing problems, figures in all of the novels, especially The Locked Room. Section 6 is the conclusion. It presents the results of the analysis: the main police characters’ ability to work as a team despite their differences, the differences in narrative structure and the grim reality of Swedish society. A list of works cited is provided at the end of the paper.

2. MAJ SJOWALL AND PER WAHLOO’S “STORY OF CRIME” PROJECT: USING CRIME FICTION TO ANALYSE SWEDISH SOCIETY The crime fiction novels known as the Martin Beck series, according to the name of the leading character, were written by two Swedish writers, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. According to Paul Arvas and Andrew Nestingen, “[t]he legacy of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo has defined the shape of Scandinavian crime fiction, making it recognizable to readers beyond Scandinavian countries and creating a set of expectations” (2). Barry Forshaw similarly states that the two authors “might (without too much argument) be said to have started it all in terms of important Scandinavian crime fiction”

2 and further adds that “[t]heir continuing influence (since the death of Per Wahloo) remains prodigious” (16). This section looks briefly at the two writers and then at how crime fiction served as criticism of Swedish society.

2.1 Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and their “Story of Crime” series Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were born respectively September 25, 1935 in Stockholm and August 5, 1926 in Gothenburg; Wahloo died on June 22, 1975. According to Jake Kerridge, Maj Sjowall was “brought up on the top floor of a Stockholm hotel managed by her father” (Kerridge); she states that she “was a boyish girl, climbing trees and kicking footballs, but … was very introverted” (Sjowall in Kerridge). During her lifetime, Sjowall “married and divorced in quick succession two much older men (“I think I had a father complex”) and was a single mother with a daughter when she met Wahloo”, who was married (Kerridge). Sjowall states that “[i]t was not a passionate story. We met as friends, and found out we thought very much the same way, and at first he was in love with me but I was not in love with him. It took some time” (Sjowall in Kerridge). She asserts that Wahloo “was very different” in “his own very masculine world, where men were important and women were just what you made love to” (Sjowall in Kerridge), since he respected her as a writer. They had two sons although they decided never to marry (Kerridge). In her interview with Kerridge, Sjowall explains that, they would plan a novel together, allot themselves chapters, and, having put their children to bed, sit opposite each other writing for most of the night (Kerridge). She explains: “we never talked about the story when we were writing it. The only things we said were ‘pass me the cigarettes’ or ‘it’s your turn to make more tea’. I would get angry if he was writing and writing and I couldn’t get started, and the same for him” (Sjowall in Kerridge). In a review on The Laughing Policeman, a critic considers that “the style remains consistent throughout, so that one cannot detect a difference between Wahloo’s and Sjowall’s work” (Norcott-Mahany). The result was 10 crime novels set in Stockholm between 1965 and 1975. In her interview with Kerridge, Sjowall reminisces her life with Wahloo: which was very happy ntil the year of his illness; “[i]t was hard for our relationship. It changed from me being younger to being the one who arranged everything” (Sjowall in Kerridge). She now lives alone on a small island“. Sjowall further remarks: “I am not stinking rich” and “I would never leave the countryside” (Sjowall in Kerridge).

2.2 Crime fiction as a tool for social criticism For both Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo crime fiction was a tool used to analyse Swedish society. Arvas and Nestingen state that “the police procedural … served their ambition of political critique aimed at the Swedish welfare state” (3), while Forshaw asserts much the same: “[the novels] simultaneously

3 function as unforgiving left-wing critique of Swedish society (and, inter alia, of Western society in general)” (16). This critic also indicates that both writers “regarded the crime fiction genre as an instrument for transforming society and, to some degree, for the proselytizing of radical views” (Forshaw 17). Sjowall and Wahloo, who were ideologically Marxist-Leninist, “regarded the welfare state or ‘People’s Home’ (Folkheim) as an incrementalist compromise with capital, which obstructed the progress of history towards class revolutions” because “social democracy concealed its reactionary subservience to capitalism in the notion of the solidary union” (Arvas and Nestingen 3, italics in original). In general, Sjowall and Wahloo “felt that the socialist experiment in Sweden was a failure”, as “[t]here was nationalization, but this didn’t lead to improved service, but rather to a mediocre sameness” (Norcott-Mahany). In addition to their negative view on capitalism and what was called Swedish social democracy, “Marxist-Leninist critique sought to expose the welfare state’s fascist nature” (Arvas and Nestingen 3). Another critic, Foreshaw, considers the emphasis on the way, some policemen are “of corrupt or totalitarian part and parcel of the radical political agenda underlying the books” (17). Furthermore, Arvas and Nestingen argue that Sjowall and Wahloo present “the police bureaucracy as metonymy of the People’s Home” (3). However, Foreshaw admits that the novels never became crude propaganda (17). Arvas and Nestingen state similarly that the novels “situated their critique in rounded, interesting and sympathetic police investigators, Martin Beck and his colleagues” (3). Norcott-Mahany points out that the police “often find themselves stymied by the interference of politicians [and bureaucrats] wanting to look good [but] who are almost all inept, so their interference has no good effect” (Norcott-Mahany). As Arvas and Nestingen state, Sjowall and Wahloo “seized on the police procedural as a form that could situate ideological and political critique within the sympathetically portrayed lives of several police officers working in an investigative team” (3). Due to “[t]he fit between police procedural and the socio-political arrangements in Sweden, as well as in other Scandinavian countries”, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo are regarded as having “contributed to making socially critical police procedural the definitive form of the crime novel in the Scandinavian countries since the 1960s, and hence the foundation of the Scandinavian crime tradition” (Arvas and Nestingen 3).

3. THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE MARTIN BECK SERIES: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SWEDEN AS A WELFARE STATE Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo set their crime novels in the Martin Beck series in the context of Swedish society from 1965 to 1975. There are many references in the novels to specific features of Swedish

4 socialism. However, for non-Swedes the economic and political background that led to this society is not clear so that this chapter of the thesis provides a detailed account. The historical development of a welfare state in Sweden has been analyzed by numerous historians, including Arthur Gould (2001), H. Arnold Barton (2009), Lennart Schön (2012), Björn Wittrock (2012) and Sven E. O. Hort (2014). These works focus on the development of the welfare- state model, whose beginnings are traced back to the end of the nineteenth century but are mostly attributed to the rise of the Social Democratic Party in the 1930s and Sweden’s neutrality during the Second World War. In addition, the problems that have arisen with the implementation of social welfare in Sweden are explored.

3.1 The political and economic context of Sweden in the late 19th century and the early 20th century Although the Swedish welfare state development is mostly considered to be a project of the Social Democratic Party, some historians trace its origins back to the nineteenth century. According to Hort, “the tradition of public involvement had already been in existence prior to Sweden’s industrialization at the end of the 19th century as part of the maintenance of the maintenance of work discipline and work ability”, while “poor relief accounted for a large part of social expenditure” (103). Furthermore, as Sweden became an industrial state with an emerging working-class movement, “parliament and the state bureaucracy became increasingly involved in the regulation of working conditions for adults (primarily women) and children, occupational safety and sickness, the care and maintenance of old people and babies, and the problems created by massive immigration” (Hort 104). In general, Gould believes that “Sweden’s powerful labour movement developed towards the end of the nineteenth century as a reaction to squalor engendered by early capitalism” (Gould 19). A Leftist movement which represented the interests of the common people (including the working class and peasantry) and focused on Sweden’s future also served as a reaction against the “new upsurge of chauvinistic nationalism” characterized by old patriotism, conservatism, militarism, upper-class elitism and which draws inspiration from glory of the Swedish past (Barton 260). Barton indicates idealistic statements made by Ellen Key, a Swedish intellectual, about how “[t]he true Swedish character … was to be found among the common folk”, not in the upper-class and, as if she was prophesizing the rise of Social Democrats, about how “[f]rom their midst … the new cultivated party of the Left would emerge from red painted cottages and attic rooms to lead Sweden into a better future” (261). In the period between the start of the twentieth century and the beginning of the First World War, “laws were implemented, influenced … by the profound ties and conflicts between the new semi-urban proletariat, the rural poor and the free peasantry as well as the industrialists and older fractions of the ruling classes” (Hort 104). Hort lists specific laws which were passed to improve the 5 conditions of the workers: the Factory Inspection Act of 1889, the introduction of state subsidies to voluntary sickness benefit societies in 1891 (extended in 1910), another law which made employers liable for reimbursement in case of industrial injury (passed in 1901, changed to compulsory occupational injury insurance in 1916) and the universal and compulsory old age and invalidity pension in 1913. The implementation of these laws is considered to be a precursor to the Social Democratic welfare-state model. The period from 1917 to 1932 in Sweden was marked by significant political changes. Hort points out that the “[s]tate’s responsibility for employment and housing increased at the end of [the First World War], and social expenditure rose considerably” (Hort 104). In addition, “[g]overnment was made responsible to parliament in 1917 and took the decision leading to universal suffrage in 1921” (Hort 104); as Wittrock emphasises, “suffrage now became truly universal (also for women)” (102). Moreover, according to Hort, “[i]n 1920, the eight-our day was implemented and and a Poor Law reform restored the legal right to poor relief” (104). In the 1920s, there was “a period of political instability and minority governments” (Hort 104); the article titled “Sweden” in Encyclopaedia Britannica states that “[f]rom 1920 to 1932 the parties [including Liberal, Conservative and Social Democratic parties] held power alternately, but no government had any chance of gaining firm support for its policy in the Riksdag [Swedish parliament]”. During the period from 1917 to 1932, no major welfare reform was implemented as [t]he main political cleavage was over the question of unemployment” (Hort 104). This issue encouraged the rise of the Social Democrats and a program of reform.

3.2 Social Democrats and the development of the Swedish welfare state The political party that was mainly instrumental in the development of the Swedish welfare state was the Swedish Social Democratic Party. The article “Swedish Social Democratic Party” in Encyclopaedia Britannica provides important information about this organization: it is the oldest existing political party in Sweden, founded in 1889, ideologically socialist and “committed to the creation of an egalitarian society”. Barton comments on how, at the beginning of the 20th century, a “new and growing industrial working class … was mobilizing under the labor and Social Democratic movements” (263), thus indicating that Social Democrats drew their support from and represented the interests of the working class. The rise to power of this party took several decades: its first member of parliament was elected in 1896, but the party was weakened in 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution, when some members created the Left Party, a Communist organization (“Swedish Social Democratic Party”). As the article shows, “[i]n 1917–20, 1921–23, and 1924–26, the SAP was a member of coalition governments” (“Swedish Social Democratic Party”).

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It was only in 1932 that the Social Democratic Party became a majority party in the Swedish government; then it “held power continuously [until 1976], sometimes in coalition with various groups on the left” (“Swedish Social Democratic Party”). Governments under the Social Democrats began implementing “the policy of folkhemmet (“people’s home”), the idea that society should provide a place of safety for the people” (“Swedish Social Democratic Party”). In the middle of the Great Depression, in 1932, the party adopted an active position: as Schön explains, it ran “a budget deficit to finance public works projects, [which] boosted employment and demand” (221). Hort points out the importance of “a major agreement on industrial relations [which] was concluded between the trade unions and the employers’ federation in 1938” (104). Gould adds that these organizations “agreed to negotiate an annual pay award which would set national guidelines for their members” which “provided a successful basis for postwar corporatism in Sweden” (30). Nevertheless, even though the ambitious social and economic reforms, as Hort states, “created Sweden’s reputation as a model for social welfare” (109), “the main expansion of social policies did not occur until after the Second World War” (Wittrock 96). Historians agree that another major factor which contributed to the economic development of Sweden was its neutrality during the Second World War. Although Sweden did not participate in the war, it was affected by it. Gould asserts that “[t]he economy itself benefited from the demand for Swedish steel and manufactured goods” and that “a degree of mobilization was necessary due to the threat of war and the resulting increase in taxation was put to more social uses after 1945” (Gould 30). Hort emphasises how the economy was helped because the country was never bombed: “Swedish industry, highly concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy families and groups, was not damaged by the war, and was in a good position to participate in the postwar industrial reconstruction in Europe” (109). Gould expresses the same idea: “the lack of devastation gave Sweden a head start in the postwar years and rates of economic growth were high” (30). Economic demand for Swedish products, increased taxation and the fact that Sweden was not devastated by the Second World War greatly contributed to the Social Democratic effort to create the welfare state. During the immediate period after the Second World War, from the second half of the 1940s to the second half of the 1950s, the first wave of welfare laws was passed in Sweden. According to Hort, “[m]ajor decisions were taken and implemented in such areas as housing, employment policy and income maintenance” (110). In the area of housing, “[h]ousing construction and the housing market were brought within the complete competence of the state”, a new law was passed in 1947, “which required all construction projects to conform to local government planning standards”, and the National Housing Board was established in 1948 “as a central authority for the supply of dwellings and the handling of housing loans” (Hort 110-111). To deal with unemployment, “the National Labour Market Board was set up as the central authority [in 1948], coordinating the now nationalized

7 local employment offices and supervising the state-subsidized and union controlled unemployment relief funds” (Hort 111). In the field of income maintenance, “basic pensions, general child allowances, and sickness cash benefits, were approved by Parliament in 1946-47 and were implemented, with the important exception of compulsory sickness insurance, in January 1948” (Hort 111). Furthermore, as Hort indicates, “universal flat-rate pensions, both for the old people and the disabled” were introduced in 1948, along with compulsory earnings-related health insurance in 1955 and an earnings-related compulsory supplementary pension scheme in 1959 (Hort 111). Hort describes the first period of welfare-state development as characterized by “the decisions on health insurance and earnings-related pensions, the flat-rate income maintenance programmes” which “were supplemented earnings-related schemes to form the two guiding principles of present-day social insurance in Sweden” (114). The period from the early 1960s to the early 1970s is, according to Hort, marked by the extension of public services. In particular, “there was a forceful expansion in two important areas of public services: health care and education” (Hort 114). Hort explains that “the county councils became the sole health authority”, responsible “for state-provincial physicians” and “for the whole health system including psychiatric care” (109), with municipalities also contributing “to this development in providing care for the aged, children, etc.” (Hort 114). As for education, “the final law on the implementation of a nine-year compulsory school was passed after several controversies in 1962” (Hort 114). Sweden, “[l]ike most European countries, … has extended the period of compulsory education up to the age of 16 (today, this is 17 or 18 in practice)” (Hort 114). Another important policy implemented in the early 1960’s was “[t]he Active Labour Market Policy devised by two LO [the federation of manual trade unions] economists which proved to be a very effective way of dealing with unemployment on a selective basis” (Gould 31). This policy “also had the effect of driving uncompetitive firms out of business while providing benefits for large companies” (Gould 31). As a result, “[t]he [Swedish] economy was dominated by large companies such as Volvo, Saab, Ericsson and Electrolux which were very successful internationally” (Gould 31). At the time such companies ensured jobs for many people. During the mid-1970s, these welfare programmes were further extended. Hort provides several examples: “a combined earnings-related and flat-rate parental insurance for both sexes and early child minding” in 1974, “dental insurance for all adults covering 50 per cent of individual costs” in 1974, “extended entitlements to old age and invalidity pensions combined with a general lowering of pensionable age” in 1976, “an expansion of education allowances” and “an extension of entitlements to housing allowances for all low-income groups and tax-credits to house owners” (115). To summarise, according to Hort, the mid-1970s period is characterized by “the extension of entitlement and improvement of benefit levels” (110) in Sweden.

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The welfare state that was developed in Sweden under the Social Democrats “for a short while [until the economic crisis] looked like an integral element in Western Society, the outcome of a harmonious marriage between capitalism and democracy” and was regarded as an example to other countries of the world; foreign commentators of the time describe the Swedish welfare society as having “little destitution, no slums and no beggars”, a society where “[e]verybody had a job and … access to a high standard of medical care” (Gould 31). Furthermore, several analysts see Swedish society as a place “in which rational scientific knowledge was highly valued” (Hort 247) and “in which the old [that is, traditional values] was expected to give way to what was rational and practical” (Gould 16). Thus, according to commentators, the Swedish welfare state is characterized by a pragmatic, rationalistic, technocratic state that uses interventionism to ensure economic and social prosperity for large parts of society. 3.3 Problems with the welfare state system in Sweden Although Swedish welfare system was regarded as a model for other countries, it faced several problems during the 1970s. The challenges encountered by the welfare state originated from both domestic and foreign environments. In the foreign environment, one of the significant factors in an ongoing global economic crisis was “OPEC’s oil price rises in the late autumn 1973”, which is considered the “explanation of the crisis and the global economic stagnation that followed” (Schön 277). The Swedish industries that were dependent “on global markets, energy prices and investment growth” (Schön 286) were greatly affected, especially the shipbuilding and steel industries, due to “shrinking markets and rising energy costs” (Schön 286). Moreover, “[t]he Middle Eastern war, the oil crisis, the oil crisis, rising inflation were leading to difficulties which challenged the validity of postwar Keynesian [state interventionist] economic policies” (Gould 32). Meanwhile, in the domestic environment, the Social Democratic government faced new economic problems in Sweden, “particularly high rates of inflation and a growing budget deficit” (“Swedish Social Democratic Party”). Hort states that “social reform through state intervention in the process of distribution” has been criticized since it became “troublesome in conjunction with weak economic growth and mounting public deficits” (247). As a result, the government “found it difficult to address these economic problems adequately and at the same time maintain the country’s generous welfare system” (“Swedish Social Democratic Party”); in addition “socialist discontent with welfare achievements [was] … gaining ground” (Gould 32). Gould quotes various comments which note signs of the welfare system crisis: “[i]nequalities, particularly of wealth and economic power remained stark”, “[s]ocial services continued to manifest characteristics of the old poor law”and “[t]rade unions … saw the results of their solidaristic wage policy as improving profits of large

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Swedish companies” (Gould 32). Welfare budgets were threatened by the way that financial power concentrated in the hands of a small number of industrialists (Gould 31). Due to the inability of the Social Democrats to implement effective measures to deal with the crisis, the party lost power in 1976 and a Centre-Right coalition took power (Gould 32). However, unlike in other countries where both “decentralization and privatization have been launched as alternatives to … organizing social security, social services, and full employment in most Western democracies” (Hort 248, italics in original), “little was done to curb public or social expenditure” (Gould 32) and the government found itself “giving state aid to failing industries” (Gould 32). When the Social Democrats returned in 1982, “a devaluation of the Swedish krona seemed to restore the country’s economic fortunes” (Gould 33). Despite the problems of the Social Democratic welfare state in 1970s, full employment remained a priority as did the improvement of social provision and the expansion of public sector” (Gould 33). Although “supporters of the Swedish welfare state remained optimistic” (Gould 33), international trends favouring deregulation, privatization, and the intensification of competition during the 1980s and the hostile reaction by commerce and opposition parties to controversial Wage Earner Funds, made the possibility of Sweden achieving fuller socialism “increasingly unlikely” (Gould 33). In general, for a time Sweden was very successful at improving the social and economic conditions for most of its citizens. However, the monopoly of a small number of very large companies made it difficult to maintain this system. Even during period in which Sweden was seen as a model of social welfare, many working-class people experienced problems and inequalities.

4. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POLICE PROCEDURAL GENRE In general, crime fiction is a type of popular literature involving a crime that is investigated by a character or characters acting as detectives; eventually, the perpetrator responsible for the crime is revealed. One of the distinct sub-genres of crime fiction is the police procedural and, according to Peter Messent, “[w]hile the [private-eye novel] relies on a model of rule-bending individualism [of a private detective], the former puts its emphasis precisely on procedure and collective agency [by the police]” (12, italics in original). While classic private detective stories were popular in the first half of the twentieth century, after the Second World War, a new sub-genre known as the police procedural has emerged. According to J. A. Cuddon, “Lauren’s Treat’s V as in Victim (1945) is generally regarded as the first American police procedural” (727) and the most famous author is Ed McBain, who wrote the 87th Precinct series. A well-known British author is John Creasy, who created the Commander Gideon series (Cuddon 727). Using works by critics such as George N. Dove (1982),

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Peter Messent (1997), and Kerstin Bergman (2011), this section of the thesis describes the characteristics of the police procedural in terms of major action, setting and characters. 4.1 Plot and action in police procedurals According to Bergman, an essential feature of the sub-genre is realism, which “characterizes” the “themes, characters, action and setting” (Arvas and Nestingen 33). For this reason, the police procedural places special emphasis on the combined work of the police rather than a single private detective. In terms of plot, this means that, aside from exciting episodes in pursuing the criminal, a great deal of a police procedural describes less dramatic, even boring work that has to be done during an investigation. As Dove indicates, “[t]he term ‘procedural’ refers to the methods of detection employed, the procedures followed by policemen in real life” (2) like using informants, going door- to-door near a crime scene and reading reports of specialized information provided by police laboratories on autopsies, fingerprints, characteristics of gunwounds, and others. Messent emphasizes that the procedural acknowledges the fact that “in a contemporary world … the making visible of crime has come to depend more and more on sophisticated scientific techniques and the ability to collate information quickly” (11). Private detectives do not have access to this information. Dove further states that, as in reality, “the policemen in the procedurals always work in teams, sharing the responsibilities and dangers, and also the credit, of the investigation”; although there is usually a leading officer, he does not “solve the crime without the collaborative efforts of other police (2). Besides considering specialized information, the action in a police procedural is oriented towards everyday work on the street and getting information from witnesses and informants. A very important form of everyday police work is report-writing. Dove emphasizes the fact that, “[t]here are mountains of paper at every stage of an investigation” and that police officers who are oriented to “physical rather than cerebral activity, tend to resent report-writing” (95). An example is provided by Dove on this dislike of paper work from crime fiction: for example, in a series written by Nicolas Freeling it is said that “Inspector Van der Valk is good at writing reports but has never got over detesting them”, believing that “they require seven-tenths of a policeman’s time” (95). On the other hand, while police officers resent paper work, Dove points out that it is “the awesome quantity of information available to policemen, most of it derived from their reports” which “gives them a decided advantage over the private detective” (Dove 95). Still, part of the genre’s realism appears in conversations among the police characters, who express their resentment over this aspect of their work. The police have to spend long hours talking to witnesses of a crime or those who knew the victim. Witnesses are important for solving a mystery but not always reliable. This is because, as Dove indicates, “[p]olicemen are trained to report what they saw, but civilians are more likely to remember what they think they saw” (64, italics in original). As a consequence, “most departments

11 employ various aids to memory, the most common being the ‘mug file’, a collection of pictures of known offenders” (Dove 64). Dove adds that the central British police also collect pictures of objects like cars and trays to help witnesses identify important objects (Dove 64). In terms of obtaining information, one of the distinguishing features of the police in reality and in the police procedurals is the use of informants. Although these are mostly criminals themselves, they are used to gather specific information without arousing suspicion from others. Dove indicates two qualifications for an informant: “he must be so relatively placed in the underworld as to have relatively easy access to information the police can use” (105) and “must be dependable which … means that he must be vulnerable to police coercion” (105). An informant is never available to the police as a whole, but to a single detective “who considers him private property and usually keeps his existence secret from his fellow cops” (Dove 105). The relationship between an informant and his police employer is characterized by a degree of trust which “does not extend to other policemen”, as “one cop’s informant is still another cop’s crook” (Dove 105). The main way informants are kept reliable is that their criminal actions are ignored so long as they remain useful. Another kind of work that often takes up many pages in a police procedural is the scientific analysis made by specialized members of the police. This begins with the preliminary visit to the crime scene by a doctor who establishes that the victim is dead and may offer an assessment how he/she was murdered. Next, a forensic specialist carries out an autopsy. Often police officers have to take this into consideration. Finally, more complex laboratory work is done by specialists. Trying to be as faithful to reality as possible, police procedural novels often show how all these methods of investigation take place at the same time. While some policemen/women are questioning those living near the crime scene, medical analysis is taking place. The investigation is centralized, as written and oral reports are provided to the officer in charge of a particular case and discussed at meetings at the police station.

4.2 The typical choice of setting in the police procedural In earlier crime fiction, which featured private detectives, the setting was almost always a big city. According to Dove, who indicates “the ambiance of the hard-boiled novel of the Hammet-Chandler- Macdonald”, “the tone is set by the urban jungle, the plundered city that has replaced the despoliated frontier” (238). Later, in police procedurals, Dove comments that still “[n]ot only in America but in Europe and South Africa, the setting is almost invariably the big city”, explaining that “[t]here is a logical explanation for the choice, in that the urban setting provides more opportunities for all kinds of crime, upper-, middle- and lower-class, than a small town would” (238). [t]he main advantage of the urban environment is that it gives the writer infinite opportunity for developing themes involving anxieties, tensions and frustrations we associate with the city, as well as an almost unlimited choice of characters and situations. (238)

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Another important reason in police procedurals is that a big city has a large police station in which the main police characters perform office work, have frequent discussions with each other and have access to specialists.

4.3 Police officers as the major characters in police procedurals Bergman has established criteria that has to be met in order for a literary work to be considered a police procedural: it “must have a set of police characters and – preferably detailed – descriptions of their [investigative] work” (Arvas and Nestingen 34). The members of the police in this fiction, according to Bergman, belong to a “team of individuals, separated by age, experience, gender, race, and ethnicity, [who] work collectively to restore and maintain social order“(Arvas and Nestingen 34). It may be that some variants, like the Swedish police procedural, “following the pattern established by Sjowall and Wahloo, focuses on one main police detective, who is [still] part of a team in which everyone has their own expertise and characteristics, at work as well as their private lives” (Arvas and Nestingen 34). In general, the police procedural focuses on police officers as fairly rounded characters, including scenes showing their different personalities, relations with their colleagues and, sometimes, family lives. Generally, these characters are portrayed as fairly ordinary people doing their job in the police, trying to keep law and order and adhere to moral values in a society ridden with crime. As Dove points out, “the police in these stories are capable of being considerate and even gentle with criminals as a group or as individuals” (80). This statement suggests that the police characters have some degree of understanding of the complicated circumstances and motivations behind a certain crime. Nevertheless, as Dove adds, “[a]lthough [a police character] is capable of pity towards criminals, the policeman is customarily resentful of any manifestation of softness on the part of society” (Dove 80). Dove explains that the police are “especially scornful of lenient judges who grant bail too freely, of the probation system that releases a perpetrator after he has served half of his sentence, and of the practice of plea-bargaining” (80). Their critical view of the system of law in Swedish society often expressed by the fictional policemen suggests why two radicals, Sjowall and Wahloo, make police officers their protagonists. Ideologically Dove classifies the typical police officer as “an anti- intellectual conservative” (86). He also notes that there is “[o]ne feeling almost universally expressed among policemen and their families … a concern over the decline of morality and social standards in general” (Dove 87). Furthermore, one significant character trait of the police character is the equation of “professionalism with dignity, the projection of an image consistent with the public expectation of a policeman’s bearing” (Dove 94). A large part of police procedural fiction focuses on relations among police personnel, which are characterized not only by cooperation but also a strong degree of rivalry. Dove comments on how

13 there is “hostility between members of rival services, departments and squads” (100) and how “[s]tatus in the hierarchy naturally sets the tone for relationships between people from different organizations” (100). To illustrate this, Dove provides several examples: “[p]lainclothesmen delight in pulling rank on patrolmen, as Kollberg, [a character from Martin Beck series] did; captains and lieutenants love to chew out lower-grade detectives from other precincts” and the “worst rank-pullers of all are medical examiners, who almost invariably put down all cops from the lower echelons” (100). These indicate how policemen are very sensitive about their rank, which determines how an individual views police officials of higher or lower rank. On the other hand, “when equals or near- equals from different services or squads come into contact (lieutenant versus lieutenant, lieutenant versus medical examiner, detective versus lab personnel), they usually kid or amiably insult each other” (Dove 100). These are instances in which police personnel treat each other with more respect and tolerance. In addition to rivalry between ranks, there may be competition between different squads. As Dove states, there is “[t]he principle of territoriality”, characterized by “a condition of fierce jealousy [which] becomes especially intense in contacts between rival outfits”, leading to an exchange of insults and banter which “serve to establish a framework for at least temporary cooperation” (100). In some cases, a policemen “who know each other or have worked together and maybe have worked together … will (sometimes maliciously) tolerate violation of status and territory” (Dove 100). Another important element in police procedurals is the depiction of the personal lives of the main characters. As Dove explains, “[m]ost cops have families, and in this respect they differ from the eccentric genius of the classic tale and the lone knight errant of the private-eye story, who are almost always unmarried” (80). The reason for this difference is both realism and the emphasis on the police officer as “part of community, not the lone genius from outside” (Dove 80). However, family lif may be in conflict with workloads, as “low pay, the long hours he must work and the unpredictability of his schedule, together with the danger to which he is subject, create tensions at home that are not conducive to successful marriage” (Dove 82). In other cases, police work requires long absences from home, which does not allow the development of meaningful relationships with children. The police procedural genre is a unique type of crime fiction in which a mystery is solved not by a private investigator but by the collective efforts of police who utilize realistic techniques including specialized scientific information. In addition, special emphasis is put on the personal lives of the main officers, adding to the realism of this genre of crime fiction.

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5. THE MARTIN BECK SERIES AS A VERSION OF THE POLICE PROCEDURAL 5.1 The working life and relationship between major and minor police characters The Martin Beck series is about a police team, specifically the homicide squad headed by Chief Inspector Martin Beck himself, who in turn is subordinate to the Superintendent Hammar. This squad is comprised of people with different personalities and skills who, despite their differences and occasional antagonism towards each other, manage to cooperate during a criminal investigation. The characters have different strengths and weaknesses and perform both similar and different roles in solving a crime including searching for clues, questioning witnesses and other parts. Besides the police work done by the characters, significant attention in this sub-section is paid to their relationships. In this police procedural series, a homicide squad is called to investigate the murders that occurs at the beginning of each novel; superiors like Hammar are the ones to summon investigation teams. The main members of the team are Lennart Kollberg, Gunvald Larsson, Einar Ronn and Frederik Melander who, in addition to questioning witnesses and looking for clues in a crime scenes, use various resources at their disposal like medical and technical labs, police archives and recordings, information from other Stockholm police divisions, Interpol and the temporary help of the police from other cities like Malmo. The members of the homicide squad that feature most prominently in the novels are Martin Beck and Lennart Kollberg, who are portrayed as close friends and colleagues and significant attention is paid to their friendship. In The Laughing Policeman, their relationship is described as being more than just business: “[o]ver the years they had become more and more dependent on each other in their work” (Sjowall and Wahloo The Laughing Policeman 17). Furthermore, “[t]hey were a good complement to one another and … had learned to understand each other’s thoughts and feelings without wasting words” (Sjowall and Wahloo The Laughing Policeman 17-18). Their close friendship is further illustrated by several references: in The Laughing Policeman, at the beginning, Martin Beck, rather than being with his family, spends time with Kollberg in the latter’s apartment playing chess. The same novel mentions that “[w]hen Kollberg got married eighteen months ago and moved to Skarmabrink, they had also come closer together geographically and had taken to meeting in their spare time” (Sjowall and Wahloo The Laughing Policeman 18). The only reason that Kollberg, who is not particularly happy about the police, stays in the force is because of Martin Beck. In The Fire Engine That Disappeared, it is shown that Kollberg is willing to help his best friend to avoid spending time with his family and even arranging a visit to his in-law’s summer cottage along with having food and drinks already transported there.

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In addition to Martin Beck and Kollberg spending a significant amount of time together, the novels contain several conversations in which they express their personal opinions and feelings about certain people or situations. For example, at the end of The Laughing Policeman, when Martin Beck and Kollberg are drinking coffee together after solving the case, they briefly discuss Ake Stenstrom, the murdered young policeman. Another important police inspector in the series is Gunvald Larsson. Unlike the others, Larsson is described as coming from a wealthy upper-class family as shown by his preference for very expensive clothing like new pyjamas that are mentioned in The Fire Engine That Disappeared (Sjowall and Wahloo The Fire Engine That Disappeared 20). Although not a very popular member in the force, he is still portrayed as a very efficient and valuable member of the team. He stands out from other police inspectors, even being referred to by Martin Beck as “a man of action” (Sjowall and Wahloo The Fire Engine That Disappeared 41): the one who is willing to be the first to react to a report on the crime, as seen in The Laughing Policeman when he immediately rushes to the crime scene. Gunvald enjoys using physical force like kicking down doors or getting answers from suspects. In The Fire Engine That Disappeared he is shown breaking the door of a person’s flat in order to frighten him so that he answers questions. In Laughing Policeman, his knowledge of military weaponry, due to him being a former navy officer, is on display when he recognizes the murder weapon and states that he hasn’t “seen one like that since forties” (Sjowall and Wahloo The Laughing Policeman 92). In terms of relationships with other police inspectors, Kollberg and Larsson dislike each other: the former tends to ridicule Gunnar, even calling him “the stupidest detective in the history of criminology” (Sjowall and Wahloo The Fire Engine That Disappeared 88). Only Gunvald’s relationship with Ronn is closer to friendship as illustrated in several occasions. For instance, Ronn defends Larsson in an argument with Kollberg and helps Larsson by bringing him clean clothes to the hospital. The police inspector who is given less characterization and attention than these three but is still very important to the stories is Einar Ronn. He comes from far north of Sweden, a place that other Swedes sometimes make fun of. Calm and good-natured, he tends to get along with most members of the police. There are rare occasions when Ronn becomes irritated or angry. One such example is included The Laughing Policeman when he is waiting to hear a dying man’s words and is irritated by Ullholm, a detective who is known for constant complaining about the police and society (Sjowall and Wahloo The Laughing Policeman 65-67). In The Fire Engine That Disappeared when Ronn is almost prepared to hit Kollberg in defence of Larsson. He is also characterized as being unimaginative and his reports are marked by incoherence. Still he is portrayed, like his colleagues, as a competent and experienced police inspector. In The Abominable Man, during an investigation of

16 the crime scene, Ronn makes an effort to preserve valuable evidence like fingerprints so that they might not be destroyed by natural causes or carelessness. Furthermore, Ronn is shown to be a very hard-working police inspector, as it is mentioned in the same novel how he has spent several hours overtime working on different cases and feels exhausted (Sjowall and Wahloo The Abominable Man 33-35). Another member of the police team to make less appearances than Beck, Kollberg and Larsson is Fredrik Melander. One of his defining traits is his almost flawless memory, remembering every detail about people, events or data relevant to the case. One example is in The Laughing Policeman, during the moment when the witness is being questioned, Melander mentions remembering the man from two years ago although that they have not spoken since that time. In addition to good memory, he is noted in The Fire Engine That Disappeared for having a calm demeanor, logical mind and great experience, even referred as “a veteran of hundreds difficult of investigations” (Sjowall and Wahloo The Fire Engine That Disappeared 29). Despite his exceptional abilities he is noted to have a poor hand-writing which is described in The Abominable Man as being written in “a cramped, distinctive hand that was guaranteed to be illegible” (Sjowall and Wahloo The Abominable Man 79). The significant aspect of the novels is the presence of younger policemen, who are usually of lower rank though very ambitious, and their relationship with older, higher-ranking and more experienced police inspectors. One such policeman is Ake Stenstrom who figures in the mass murder of passengers in The Laughing Policeman. Indeed, he is one of the victims, but he is very present in the novel because the police are concerned to understand why he was on that bus. In a sense, he is the one to solve the murder of Teresa Camarao, a Portuguese woman, before himself becoming the victim of the same murderer. Another important young policeman to appear in the novels is Benny Skacke, a young member of the homicide squad who is also ambitious, even dreaming of becoming the police commissioner. As a junior member of the team, he is given a tiring and probably insignificant job, but the information he collects in The Fire Engine That Disappeared turns out to be important. Although sometimes young ambitious policemen are treated as inferiors, they prove to be instrumental in solving mysteries, especially Stenstrom who was acknowledged by Martin Beck and Kollberg as the first to clear the historic Teresa murder case. During any investigation, one of the methods of gathering important data is by questioning witnesses or people who are in some way or another associated with those who were murdered, as well as talking to police informants who, as members of the underworld, often know useful things. This type of work is done by all the members of Martin Beck’s team except Melander who while sometimes being the one to investigate the crime scene itself, as in The Fire Engine That Disappeared, usually stays at police headquarters writing reports, searching through police archives or handling

17 telephone calls. In some case people that are questioned who were not witnesses to a crime but were relatives or had some dealings with like those shot in the bus in The Laughing Policeman. In this novel there is one example in the same novel where a witness, a man who rode the same bus and exited before the murder occurred, is called to the police station for questioning on details about the passengers. While usually Melander is taking less part in questioning, there is an instance in The Fire Engine That Disappeared where Melander is mentioned to have reliable contacts in the underworld. One of these contacts, Curly, who is a former forger and burglar and is used by Melander to identify a person involved with someone who was found dead in a burned house. The information provided by witnesses, people involved or contacts is the result of hour of patient investigation that occupies a significant amount of the narrative in the Martin Beck series. Another important activity for the police is the scientific analysis of the crime scene, including the information from autopsies and consideration of the methods used to commit a murder. The person who specializes in this field is Hjelm, considered to be one of the best criminal technologists in the world. In The Laughing Policeman he is the one to examine a dead person who was not yet identified at the moment and draw conclusions about this person’s past, medical condition and character by doing an autopsy, examining body parts like teeth and also examining clothing. The conclusion was made that this man was possibly a foreigner, wearing clothes that were never dry- cleaned, and who had been a drug addict and had gonorrhea in an advanced stage. In The Fire Engine That Disappeared, Hjelm is instrumental in conducting the analysis of the fire scene, concluding that the fire was set deliberately: caused by a chemical time bomb in the dead man’s mattress. Furthermore, foreign and international police organizations provide information about criminals, suspects or people involved in different kinds of crime, especially if the person is a foreigner or at least involved in criminal activities in foreign countries. One such instance is in The Laughing Policeman when the Stockholm police receives information from the Portuguese police about Teresa Camarao who later turned out to be murdered by the same person who killed eight people on a Swedish bus. There is another case in which the police inspectors contact Interpol, the international police organization, by sending fingerprints for identification. The person is eventually identified by the French police and later a connection is made between that person and Bertil Olofsson, a Swede who is involved with a person killed in a burned house. The fact that the Swedish police requests information from foreign organizations on several occasions, indicates mutual international cooperation in criminal investigations. In the novels, there are also instances where additional police reinforcements from another city are brought to work in a Stockholm criminal case. One of the most prominent police inspectors belong to this category is Per Mansson from the city of Malmo. In The Laughing Policeman he is

18 involved in the questioning of people who have connections with the murder people on the bus. However, In the Fire Engine That Disappeared, Mansson’s role is more instrumental in an investigation as he is the one involved in a recovery of a car and corpses that are later examined by local police specialists and linked to the crime investigated in Stockholm: the victim is identified as Bertil Olofsson. Mansson is shown to be very competent: his investigation of a car found in the sea the corpses is extremely thorough. Once the dead person is identified, Mansson immediately contacts Martin Beck and informs him. Although sometimes viewed with skepticism by Martin Beck and his colleagues, the reinforcements from other cities prove to be a valuable asset in their police work. The relationship between members of the police, mostly of the homicide squad, and their working life are among the central topics of the Martin Beck series. In addition to purely personal relations among police officers, most of the attention is paid to standard police procedures used in investigating a crime, from questioning witnesses to analyzing medical and technical data including autopsies or details on a murder weapon.

5.2 The narrative structure of the Martin Beck novels: variations on police procedural plot structures Police procedurals are a subgenre of crime fiction and typically follow the traditional narrative structure of such novels. As was explained in presenting crime fiction, such texts usually depict the first crime in the opening pages or opening chapters. The crime is likely to be murder, but it is a mysterious murder in certain ways. It may be that it takes a while to identify the victim, while the name of the murderer may be revealed only in the closing episodes of the story. However, in a police procedural it is also important for the writer to introduce the police team who investigate the case. This section of the thesis looks at variations in narrative structure of the four novels in the Martin Beck series that have been selected for close study: The Laughing Policeman (1968, the Swedish original; 1977, the English translation), The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969 the Swedish original; 2007, the English translation), The Abominable Man (1971, the Swedish original; 2007, the English translation) and The Locked Room (1972, the Swedish original; 2007, the English translation). The narrative order is not exactly the same in each case. However, within each text the same narrative episodes can be found, including investigation of the crime scene, interrogation of people close to the victims, especially family members, more general door-to-door questioning of possible witnesses, reports from scientific police specialists and, interspersed in these, frequent meetings in which officers report to Martin Beck what they have found; then a general discussion by team mmebers takes place. Other narrative elements that may appear include press conferences and conversations between Beck and the higher police authorities. It is possible that further crimes take place so that some of these elements are repeated. What makes this manner of narrating the investigation especially characteristic of police procedurals is that many of the officers report dead 19 ends and failures during the investigation, and some episodes are rather dull. Exciting, violent action does occur, but it is much less common than everyday discussions among the police, or Beck‘s reflections on how little they know. The beginnings of the novels often present a scene when a violent crime is taking place but not necessarily in the very first pages. In certain novels the crime is not shown to be taking place. One such example is at the beginning of The Laughing Policeman, where two police colleagues, Martin Beck and Lennart Kollberg, are playing chess in the evening, while at the same time there is a mass demonstration against Vietnam War near the American embassy taking place; most of the police personnel have been called in from nearly all parts of Stockholm to suppress it. Although there is no murder here, some readers may interpret this as a good opportunity for a mysterious and violent crime to take place since most of the city’s police are busy dealing with the protest. At the end of Chapter 1, readers’ expectations are confirmed as it is stated that during the period of the demonstration “eight murders and one attempted murder were committed in Stockholm” (Sjowall and Wahloo 3). Later, the bus where a mass murder unconnected to the protest takes place is witnessed by a burglar who sees it suddenly stop without apparent cause with its lights still on. Eventually, the bus and the victims are discovered by two lazy and incompetent policemen, Kvant and Kristiansson, who report the incident to police headquarters but also managing to make the investigation more difficult by placing their own footprints on top of other evidence. Another novel, The Fire Engine That Disappeared, begins with the aftermath of an apparent suicide. In Chapter 1, the location is described in detail, as well as the victim’s clothing and circumstances like the fact that the man was smoking before killing himself. After his nearest neighbour hears a shot, he calls the police; they conclude that it was a suicide before discovering two words written on the telephone pad: Martin Beck. Immediately readers wonder why Martin Beck’s name was written here. Then the action moves away from the crime scene to Martin Beck visiting his grandmother, answering any questions about where police detective is now. It is also clear that whatever this case involves, Martin Beck will be drawn into it. In the two following chapters, the narrative focuses on Gunvald Larsson who, after letting another policeman take a break, is watching a house, apparently because of someone living there. Suddenly, a fire erupts: in a midst of chaos, Larsson saves several people, while others die. This scene also raises many questions for the readers, as they are left wondering not only who or what started the fire but also if it is connected to the suicide in Chapter 1 and Martin Beck’s name. While in The Laughing Policeman suspense slowly builds until the discovery of a mass crime scene, this novel starts by showing an apparent suicide and later slowly building up the tension until the fire scene.

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However, a third novel, The Abominable Man, uses a common structure in crime fiction as it begins with the murderer and, later, the murder itself. Chapter 1 focuses on this unnamed man, describing his appearance, including the way he is dressed and a facial expression described as “most childlike … weak and perplexed and appealing, and nevertheless a little bit calculating” (Sjowall and Wahloo 3); his eyes are said to be “steady but vacant” (Sjowall and Wahloo 3). The details imply that he is experiencing complicated emotions between weakness and determination. Once the man takes out a carbine bayonet from his closet, readers understand that he is planning to act violently, an impression supported when his movements are called “quick and lithe and economical” (Sjowall and Wahloo 4), his hands - “steady as his gaze” (Sjowall and Wahloo 4) and when he puts on a pair of gloves, which suggests a planned murder. Chapter 1 follows the man as he drives around Stockholm after midnight and stops near the Eastman Institute, a well-known medical building. Chapter 2 then shifts to the interior of this building, describing an unnamed man who is alone, lying on a bed in a hospital. The hospital ward is described in great detail along with the man himself who appears to be very weak ill, as he gets to injections of morphine and other painkillers. He is anxious, sensitive to pain, dark, noises and experiencing the fear of death. The tension further escalates when he hears a noise from the window, culminating with the appearance of a man with a bayonet: the murderer stabs the victim, killing him. In this way, the first two chapters of The Abominable Man show the murder itself, giving the perspectives of both the unnamed murderer and the unnamed victim. The action takes place at midnight, making the action more dramatic. The only novel of the four to present two separate crimes in its opening pages is The Locked Room. One of these crimes is a bank robbery at Chapter 1: the episode begins with an unnamed woman leaving a metro station and slowly preparing for some deed, most likely a crime. She has carefully planned her action, is very nervous, even considering putting it off for the next week and the fact that she is consciously pretending to be window-shopping. When the woman is said to be standing outside the door of a bank, it becomes apparent to readers that her most likely plan is to rob it. After entering the bank, she threatens the staff with her pistol as the money is put in a bag. However, unexpectedly, as she is leaving, a client rushes at her; she shoots, killing him, apparently without intention as she is upset. Then after leaving the building, the woman is revealed to have been wearing a hat, glasses and blonde wig, confirming that she has prepared carefully for this robbery. She takes them off and puts them in a shopping bag and later she hides them in Mauritzon’s cellar – an old air- raid shelter. Unlike in The Abominable Man where the beginning is characterized by a steady progression of events leading to the murder, The Locked Room begins with a quick action scene of a bank robbery. Then, another crime, the one referred to in the title is described: it involves a dead man found alone in a room. It is an old case investigated without thorough examination so that the cause of person’s

21 death was at first written off as suicide. Then an autopsy shows that the man was shot, his body is found in a room locked from inside and no gun in sight. Martin Beck takes up this case on the advice of Kollberg who realizes that his friend has to deal with depression caused by nearly being killed in The Abominable Man. Instead of going to the crime scene itself as is usual, Martin Beck examines the files on the investigation. Thus, there is almost no tension as this is an old case that was left unsolved In addition, the murder itself is not shown to the readers. The next stage in all four novels is that, after a violent crime occurs, a brief crime scene investigation is conducted by the homicide squad itself. After the bus with many dead people is discovered in The Laughing Policeman, Gunvald Larsson is the first to arrive at the scene. Later, Beck along with Kollberg also arrive where other police personnel, including Martin Beck’s boss Hammar along with medical and technical experts, have already gathered to examine the bodies and the bus. Then the investigation moves to the police station where the bus model is identified along with identities of the murdered victims. The mother of one of these victims, the young police officer Ake Stenstrom, is informed of her son’s death first. The subsequent investigation take place during the rest of the novel. It takes a long time and turns out to be very challenging. In The Fire Engine That Disappeared, Martin Beck is again notified in an early scene of an apparent suicide, while the investigation of the fire scene is conducted after Larsson saves a number of people. This time, Frederik Melander, later joined by Martin Beck and Kollberg, is the first one to investigate the house rubble with a group of experts and manages to identify one dead person. The third novel, The Abominable Man, follows a similar pattern, with Martin Beck being informed of the murder on the telephone; one member of the homicide squad, Einar Ronn, along with police experts are carefully collecting the evidence for later investigation, and are joined by Martin Beck. In addition, as in The Laughing Policeman, the victim is a former police colleague, Stig Nyman, so that his wife is rapidly informed of the murder. The Locked Room stands out from other three novels as it describes two crime scenes that are investigated separately. The bank robbery scene, including a client who was killed, is investigated by Larsson, the first to arrive, and Ronn before returning to the police station to question the witnesses. Meanwhile, as has been said, Martin Beck begins to investigate an older, unsolved crime, in which a man is found dead in a locked room. As in The Laughing Policeman, the case was investigated earlier by incompetent policemen so that some wrong conclusions were made. The Laughing Policeman offers a typical order of activities by the police team. After a violent crime and a crime scene investigation and a press conference, there is a prolonged investigation through the course of the novel. Once the victims are identified, the homicide detectives have a general discussion at police headquarters and draw conclusions on the possible position and movements of the murderer when he or she committed the crime; they include the possibility that the

22 killer was already inside the bus before starting to shoot, which would indicate that the murder was carefully planned earlier. Scientific specialists, including Hjelm, discover, by examining the bullets found in the victims’ bodies and the fact that the mass murder occurred very quickly that a Finnish Model 37 submachine-gun was used. In addition, the scientific efforts to discover the identity of a so- far unknown victim require examination of teeth, clothing and the items found, including hashish, a link to the criminal underworld. At the same time a major part of the novel describes questioning of people close to or who had any connections to the victims as there are practically no witnesses of the murder itself. During an investigation, several meetings occur between inspectors to discuss their findings. However, the most effort is used studying one of the victims, the young policeman Ake Stenstrom. Eventually, near the close of the novel, it is found that he has solved an older crime, the murder of a Portuguese woman, and was shadowing the murderer on the same bus; he became the victim in this murder. The crime investigation in The Laughing Policeman is typical in procedure from early questioning of people close to the victims and the eventual confrontation with the murderer. A lot of similar elements occur in The Fire Engine That Disappeared. In this case, the scientific analysis is carried out by Hjelm and other experts and, from the examination of the victim’s position and the condition of the surrounding furniture, it is deduced that the fire was caused by a deliberate explosion from an incendiary chemical bomb and that the dead man Goran Malm did not commit suicide. The questioning portion of the investigation is carried out by three police detectives, especially Larsson questioning people who were saved by him. Benny Skacke, a young ambitious policeman, is determined to impress his superiors and spends days stubbornly going door to door. Melander, a calm and experienced officer seeks information from his personal contact in the underworld, Curly. All this steady work leads to a person dealing in drugs and stolen cars, Bertil Olofsson, who is later found dead in a car discovered by Mansson in Malmo. Olofsson is eventually linked to the murderer, a Frenchman, leading to a final explosive confrontation at the airport. This investigation goes beyond the boundaries of Stockholm and even Sweden. The Abominable Man begins with the murder of another member of the police: former inspector Stig Nyman. Nyman was, as the title states, an abominable man. There is less attention paid to the questioning of people who were currently close to the victim, like his widow and the right-hand man Harald Hult. The investigation mostly involves research through old police files on Nyman’s past, including several official complaints by people who were the victims of his misconduct. His reputation for abusing his power and treating civilians brutally is revealed through complaints made by people who were wrongfully arrested, interrogated, beaten or kept imprisoned for a long time before being released, thus many people had reason to hate him. Eventually, this kind of investigation reveals the murderer himself: Ake Eriksson, a former policeman whose wife was the victim of

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Nyman’s actions; when she was arrested while suffering from diabetes and locked in a cell where she died due to not receiving medical treatment. Disillusioned with the police and having already killed Nyman, Eriksson plans to kill Martin Beck. This leads to a very long and intense action scene at the end of the novel with Eriksson shot and Martin Beck seriously injured. The Abominable Man is characterized by the divergence from other two novels in terms of greater importance placed on the older archives about the victim’s pats and the very long and dramatic confrontation with the murderer. In The Locked Room, there are two different investigations: one by the district attorney Bulldozer Ollson and a temporary member of Martin Beck’s team, and the other by Martin Beck himself. In the process of bank robbery investigation, the great deal of work is spent into discovering the gang’s plan of bank robbery, including the details on how they prepare to use getaway cars and setting up countermeasures by the police, including blocking of all the exits in the area around the bank in Stockholm. The entire operation turns into an embarrassing fiasco as the bank robbery takes place in a different city, Malmo. This is the single instance where the police is shown to experience a major failure as the robbers, having fooled the investigators, escape with the money. Meanwhile, through quiet questioning of the policemen involved in the locked room case and examining the evidence himself, Martin Beck manages to solve the case by discovering the murderer to be Mauritzon, a man also involved with the bank robber gang. Ironically, because of lack of evidence, Mauritzon is sentenced to life imprisonment for a crime of which he is innocent, while the real robber, Monita, escapes to Greece. While in other three police procedurals, the investigations are successful and the criminals are dealt with, this novel is the complete contrary: the woman robber manages to escape, the police fail to stop a major bank robbery and a person who is guilty of one murder is sentenced for a murder he did not commit. The Locked Room is the only story to end with failure by the police to solve a case.

5.3 Sjowall and Wahloo’s use of a crime fiction series to criticize the Swedish state system While being excellent examples of police procedural, The Martin Beck series also contains a good deal of political and social criticism. This criticism is directed specifically at the Swedish state system; although Sweden has gained an excellent international name as a successful welfare state, her it is portrayed as degraded and corrupt due to crime, poverty, drug distribution and social problems. As an institution, Swedish police are becoming more controlling and even showing signs of leaning to totalitarianism. Sjowall and Wahloo, who were ideologically Marxist-Leninist, viewed the welfare state as a failed experiment that not only no longer provides better economic conditions for all classes but also has created a political and social system that is arguably worse than before. Sjowall and Wahloo give priority to writing crime fiction but often containing strong criticism. This section of the thesis looks at the same four novels in the Martin Beck series and analyzes the forms of criticism of the Swedish welfare state found in there. 24

The criticism of the Swedish system is conveyed through the commentary on social problems like poverty and unemployment, which were supposed to be solved by the welfare. One of the ways used to indicate poverty is showing how people are unable to afford services when these become more expensive. At the beginning of Chapter 3 of The Abominable Man the third-person narrator states that “restaurant prices had as good as doubled, and very few wage-earners could afford to treat themselves to even one night out a month” (Sjowall and Wahloo 20) and that restaurants “managed to keep their heads above water by means of the increasing number of businessmen with credit cards and expense accounts” (Sjowall and Wahloo 20). There is also a criticism of the application of the value-added tax on groceries in Chapter 26 of The Locked Room, where this measure by the government is described as “arranged with a special view to hitting those who have already been knocked out” (Sjowall and Wahloo 221). Another example from the same chapter shows a system that seemingly favors rich over poor people: there was more poverty in The Old City of Stockholm “before they’d cleared out the slums and restored the buildings and raised the rents so the old tenants could no longer afford to stay” (Sjowall and Wahloo 23) and that living in this part of the city “had become fashionable” (Sjowall and Wahloo 23). The three examples suggest that the state systematically encourages measures that create difficult conditions for the lower-class people as a method to relocate them from the city centre so they would kept out of sight and give the public impression that the city is being restored and better living conditions for all people are being created. Another way the novels reveal poverty in Sweden is through showing the living conditions of foreign people in Sweden. Crime fiction naturally features the police visiting many parts of society. An example is in Chapter 18 of The Laughing Policeman when police officers are sent to collect information about the people killed on a bus. Officer Mansson has been delegated from Malmo to Stockholm to help. He goes to a building where one of the victims, an Arab immigrant, lived: her the Swedish landlady not only charges a high amount for rent but also forbids her tenants to cook, make coffee, use the kitchen or even keep an electric hot plate in their room. In addition, an Arab along with several other foreigners are forced to share a single. The racist and discriminatory attitude towards foreigners in Sweden is implied as the landlady describes the Arabs as “usually [being] so dirty and unreliable” (Sjowall and Wahloo 101), although she says about this tenant that “for an Arab, he was quite nice” (Sjowall and Wahloo 101). Readers get a vivid picture of how immigrants are both abused and discriminated, by landlords, with many living in a single room for which they pay a high rent. Furthermore, although that the Swedish welfare state was supposedly designed to provide more opportunities and better living conditions for all people, the commentaries on unemployment and working conditions in Sweden show that this is not the case. There is a good deal of commentary on unemployment conveyed in Chapter 24 of The Locked Room through its description of the difficult

25 life of a young single mother Monita, who carries out a bank robbery at the beginning of the novel. In the description of her past, there is a statement indicating severe unemployment conditions in Sweden: [U]nemployment had become steadily worse, and the lack of jobs was so severe that even academically educated and highly qualified professional people were fighting over ill-paid jobs that were far beneath their qualifications. (Sjowall and Wahloo 181) The bad economic conditions in Sweden directly affect Monita’s life after her divorce: she receives only a small amount from unemployment insurance, which is not enough to pay rent, food or clothes, while the money that she received from her former husband only covered her debts. As a result, Monita became deeply disillusioned with the Swedish welfare system: the education system, from her point of view, is worthless as it only gives her “the dubious satisfaction of having slightly enriched one’s store of knowledge”; seeing how the system has degraded, Monita believes that in order for her hard work to have a purpose, “something more than high wages and pleasanter working conditions would be needed” (Sjowall and Wahloo 182). This criticism is effectively portrayed through Monita’s individual perspective as she is shown to live in poverty, struggling to survive financially and suffering from depression. She meets a man Mauritzon, who seems pleasant but is a criminal, and she worked at a restaurant only to lose the job again as it is converted into a pub: it “lost its former customers without managing to attract new ones”, was forced to fire the staff and turn it into a bingo hall (Sjowall and Wahloo 190). This is an indication of how small businesses fail to sustain themselves and are forced to reduce themselves into even smaller businesses to attract customers. Through Monita’s personal experiences, the readers are able to form a picture of the flawed Swedish welfare system. Furthermore, Sweden is portrayed as increasingly plagued by crime, violence and growing drug trade. The Martin Beck series emphasise the shortcomings of the welfare system itself and the inability to cope with financial problems, leading to crime. In The Laughing Policeman Kollberg refers to what he calls “a typical welfare state crime” (Sjowall and Wahloo 139): a man murdered his “status-poisoned wife who kept nagging at him because he didn’t earn enough” (Sjowall and Wahloo 139) and “couldn’t afford a motorboat and a summer cottage and a car as swell as the neighbours” (Sjowall and Wahloo 139). The scale of crime in Stockholm is explored vividly in The Locked Room where it is said that public assaults have increased with ordinary people are being attacked and robbed more and more often. Then there are observations by characters: in the same novel, Martin Beck waits for a train in the metro station, which is shown to be heavily vandalized: “its seats were slashed and anything that could be removed, unscrewed, or ripped off was gone” (Sjowall and Wahloo 213). The novels also show the police is shown to be often ineffective to combat crime due to many issues: shortages in personnel, incompetence of the highest authorities, conducting 220,000 investigations out of which only a quarter were cleared up (Sjowall and Wahloo The Locked Room 26

73) and planning unrealistic solutions like the prevention of beer drinking. The clearest example to illustrate that the situation si getting out of control is in The Locked Room where the media publicizes the escape of fifteen bank robbers from Kumla Prison over a wall considered to be escape-proof. The drug trade is also shown to be very rampant, especially among young people. In one episode of The Fire Engine That Disappeared, Larsson encounters a young schoolgirl who picks up ten white tablets, later revealed to be drugs from a dealer. Another example of widespread drug distribution is in The Abominable Man where Ronn is said to have been hunting for a murderer who killed a drug pusher and searching through “no fewer than eighteen drug hangouts in different parts of the city, each one filthier and more repulsive than the one before” just because “some bastard who sold hash mixed with opium to school kids on Mariatorget had got a bump on the head” (Sjowall and Wahloo 25). These instances indicate the immense scale of drug dealing and usage especially in schools. It is also pointed out that attempts at reform are ineffective in solving the problem; in The Fire Engine That Disappeared a woman questioned by Ronn insists: “it’s an accepted fact now that our reform schools and institutions act as a sort of introduction to drug-taking and crime” (Sjowall and Wahloo 115) and that the treatment “isn’t worth a cent” (Sjowall and Wahloo 115). Moreover, in The Locked Room criminal organization are mentioned to be engaged in smuggling, and while The Customs Office is engaged in the pointless persecution of travelers who only have a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of whiskey. All of these give readers an image of a rapidly degrading Swedish society. In addition to its frequent ineffectiveness, the Swedish police is portrayed as becoming more controlling and even semi-totalitarian. The novels emphasize the nationalization and centralization of the police in 1965 as one of the major factors in this decline. One of the first signs of the controlling police trying to root out what is considered to be amoral is in Chapter 17 of The Laughing Policeman is a raid on kiosks and tobacco shops to confiscate pornographic literature in The Laughing Policeman. There are several indications in The Locked Room that the police are becoming more totalitarian: the new police headquarters building at the heart of Stockholm is described as an attempt to allow to the police “extend their tentacles in every direction and hold the dispirited citizens of Sweden in an iron grip” as “they couldn’t all emigrate or commit suicide” (Sjowall and Wahloo 173). For too much time is spent by a security branch of the police quelling dissent from people with political ideologies like communism and “averting their eyes from various more or less exotic fascist organizations” (Sjowall and Wahloo 163). The prison system is also criticized: Kumla Prison is said to be “the most inhuman and personality-deadening in the whole world” (Sjowall and Wahloo 78) despite being clean and proving good food as it enforces a lack human contact. In one instance Martin Beck reflects on “a system that gave the police and other authorities unrestricted access to people’s private affairs” (Sjowall and Wahloo 226), implying the effort to conduct mass surveillance on

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Swedish population, though at least grateful because it allows him to see important data on a criminal case. Another problem is police brutality when dealing with demonstrations and protests against Vietnam War is where the police’s controlling and dictatorial nature is clearly displayed. It is described at length at the beginning of The Laughing Policeman where the police force are guarding the American embassy against unarmed demonstrators; the protesters are shown to be dealt with in a very harsh manner: they are beaten with truncheons, their signs torn to pieces and the protesters violently dragged into cars. Another anti-Vietnam War protest is dealt with in a similarly brutal manner in The Locked Room with a better armed police which is also shown to rely on far-right fascist organizations for information about leftists who are among the protesters. This suggests that the police is also a tool for the authorities to suppress political dissent and preserve the existing order in Sweden. The examples from The Locked Room give a grim picture of a semi-totalitarian system quelling political and social unrest to preserve itself. Other features of growing totalitarian control in Swedish society are named, especially the manipulation and censorship of public information. The government is concerned to hide the fact that, as stated in The Locked Room that “the so-called Welfare State abounds with sick, poor, and lonely people, living at best on dog food, who are left uncared for” (Sjowall and Wahloo 48). One of the methods used is the manipulation of statistics to hide significant problems Sweden is facing, including that Stockholm has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, as well as that the highest police authorities, including the National Police Commissioner, keep quiet about the problems the police are facing, including the serious shortage of men and supplies. In The Abominable Man, there is a mention of an attempt to monopolize and maintain strict control over Swedish news services, which Larsson regards as censorship. It is implied that, like the police, the mass media is in the process of being centralized to make it easier for the government to control the news and most likely to hide the failings of the welfare state. The criticism of the Swedish state system by Sjowall and Wahloo is intermittent but strong, especially in the latest of the four novels The Locked Room. The readers are provided with a dark image of a Swedish society being ridden by poverty, unemployment, crime, incompetent but also very controlling police and political unrest. The writers show the welfare system, from a Marxist- Leninist perspective, not only as a failed experiment but also as a system used to preserve the economic exploitation of the lower classes.

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6. CONCLUSION The results of the analysis of four novels indicate that the Martin Beck series usually follows a basic formula of the police procedural genre but this is not always the case. The novels by Sjowall and Wahloo have several features that stand out from other famous police procedurals: varieties in narrative structures and the criticism of the Swedish welfare system. The most evident basic characteristic of the police procedural is the attention to the police characters, their relationships and working life. The characters have different personalities, relationships and investigative skills. Some of the characters are calm and logical, like Ronn and Melander, while others, like Larsson, are more emotional or even lazy and incompetent, especially Kvant and Kristiansson. In terms of relationships, a close friendship between Martin Beck and Kollberg is the most prominent and the character who is mostly disliked is Larsson. Despite different strengths and weaknesses, Martin Beck and the homicide squad are shown as very efficient, competent and hard-working police officers who manage to work as a team in solving a crime. The working life involves a general door-to-door questioning, gathering evidence including scientific information from fingerprints, autopsies, analysis of a murder weapon and looking for other clues at a crime scene. However, each novel has different narrative structures. Some novels do not show a crime itself at the beginning, only the aftermath when a crime scene is discovered. Beginnings of other novels include an action of a crime often in great detail, especially in The Abominable Man where the process of committing a murder covers the first two chapters. There are instances, as in The Locked Room, where two separate cases are involved and later connected at an end. The criminal investigation is mostly comprised of features mentioned in the previous paragraph and are basic to the police procedural. However, the endings, that although usually involve a crime being solved and a culprit both caught and dealt with, are varied in each novel. The Abominable Man is the only novel to include a long and intense action scene at the end. The Locked Room ends with a criminal who is guilty of a murder but is sentenced for a bank robbery he did not commit while a real culprit escapes. The very important feature of the Martin Beck series is the criticism of the Swedish society and the welfare system from Marxist-Leninist point of view. This criticism stands out, especially in The Locked Room, in its portrayal of a dark reality of Sweden. The welfare system is seen as a failure as many people are still unemployed living in poverty; crime, violence, drug trade are plaguing Sweden; police are usually portrayed as ineffective and incompetent. In addition to problems of providing general welfare, the Swedish society is shown to become semi-dystopian with police becoming more controlling, brutal measures employed in putting down anti-Vietnam War protests and apparent attempts to control mass media. The comments on Swedish society are usually provided

29 by a narrator but several characters like Martin Beck and Kollberg are aware of the problems through witnessing violence and how police is becoming too weak to deal with a high crime rate.

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