A Darker Shade of Sweden (3 page)

Let me add, for clarity, that my point here is not to denounce these writers, but to give an intelligible background to the specific direction in which Swedish crime writing has developed: already in their teens or early twenties, the writers maturing in the 1960s and 1970s learned to view society from a principled standpoint, in a dialectical manner, and to attribute both social problems and individual actions to political and economic factors. I have no doubt that very similar forms of social criticism would have appeared if a number of leading Swedish writers had been guided by equally strong liberal or libertarian views, but such views are seldom part of the consensus-driven Swedish political discourse. On the other hand, there are certainly examples of politically conservative writers using crime fiction to criticize Swedish society.

By the mid-1990s, a new generation of leading writers had established itself, with Mankell, Håkan Nesser, who began writing crime in 1993, and Åke Edwardson, with a first crime novel in 1995, as its most important authors. Both Nesser and Edwardson to some extent broke with the social realist tradition. Nesser placed his highly literary novels in a fictitious city, Maardam, in an unnamed country which is a composite of Sweden, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands, with his emphasis largely on the psychology of his main characters, not least his police protagonist Van Veeteren. Most of Edwardson's novels feature his Gothenburg Detective Inspector Erik Winter, but Edwardson as well has chosen to deal primarily with existential and psychological issues, also in a highly literary fashion. Mankell, Nesser, and Edwardson brought the Swedish crime novel to a level of literary accomplishment that made it not only accepted as potentially serious fiction, as indeed it already was since the 1960s, but viewed as a potentially important part of contemporary Swedish literature.

What was largely lacking, however, were female authors.
With the exception of psychiatrist Åse Nilsonne, virtually all of the f
oremost Swedish crime writers were men. The turning point came towards the end of the nineties, when Inger Frimansson, Liza Marklund, Helene Tursten, and Aino Trosell all published their first novels in 1997 and 1998. They also brought a much needed renewal to the forms of Swedish crime writing. Frimansson from the start concentrated on psychological thrillers with few recurring characters; Marklund wrote about a journalist investigator, Annika Bengtzon, and Aino Trosell featured crime-solving female “anti-heroes” in her largely proletarian realist novels. Of the four, only Helene Tursten, a registered nurse and dentist, writes about a police officer, Detective First Irene Huss at the Gothenburg police.

Despite this, the police procedural is alive and well in Sweden. Among those still writing in that tradition, the most important newer writer may well be Arne Dahl (penname of Jan Arnald), who introduced his fictitious “A Group,” specialized in internationally related violent crimes, in 1999 and, after eleven books, in 2011 began writing about Opcop, a fictitious secret operational unit within the European police organization. Other impressive police procedural writers include Anna Jansson, who introduced her police protagonist Maria Wern in 2000; Mons Kallentoft, writing about the brilliant but damaged and heavy-drinking Detective Inspector Malin Fors since 2007; Carin Gerhardsen, who began writing about the police in Hammarby, a part of southern Stockholm, in 2008; and Kristina Ohlsson, with protagonists Fredrika Berman and Alex Recht, introduced in 2009.

Nowadays, however, many of the most highly regarded Swedish crime novels fall outside the police procedural field. Camilla Läckberg published her first novel about writer Erica Falck and her police boyfriend Patrik Hedström in 2003, and quickly became one of the most popular authors in Sweden. Her novels, as do those of many of her later followers, emphasize the personal lives and relationships of her main characters while the crime story, though central to the plots of her novels, is not always the most important element in them. This kind of “crossover” between relationship novels and crime fiction has become a standard part of Swedish crime writing, in a sense harking back to the structure used in Maria Lang's 1950s novels, but written in a decidedly more realistic fashion. Others successfully writing in this vein include Mari Jungstedt and Viveca Sten; it also has attracted male writers like Jonas Moström.

Among those writing about lawyers, Åsa Larsson may be foremost. Her first Rebecka Martinsson novel was published in 2003 and was considered that year's finest first novel; two of her later four books have won the Crime Fiction Academy award for Best Novel of the Year. In her novels, regional traditions and religious and psychological conflicts play major parts; she is among the most accomplished, as well as original, current Swedish crime authors. A recent lawyer writing about a lawyer and using her novels to criticize or question aspects of the Swedish justice system is Malin Persson Giolito, daughter of the previously mentioned Leif G. W. Persson, who published her first crime novel in 2012. Among the finest of current crime authors are also Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström, writing together since 2004. Roslund is a journalist and previous TV crime reporter; Hellström a former criminal, now engaged in helping criminals readjust to society. Their novels are closely tied to the Swedish tradition of using crime fiction to discuss and criticize social problems, and have a traditional police protagonist, but rise above most similar work through their literary skill, their wide range of themes, and their level of ambition—all of their six novels vary greatly in plot, form, mood, and style.

In 2005, the first of Stieg Larsson's novels was published in Sweden, and by the time the second appeared in 2006, their success was already enormous. By the turn of the century, crime fiction in Sweden had been a thriving field, with a growing number of new writers adding diversity to what for almost thirty years had been a form strongly dominated by male authors writing about largely male police collectives. After the Stieg Larsson novels, the annual number of original Swedish crime novels has increased to an unprecedented number, currently around 120. A negative aspect of this is that since the total number of crime fiction titles remains largely unchanged, a diminishing number of foreign crime novels are translated into Swedish, making Swedish readers miss out on important new writers and trends, as well as depriving Swedish crime fiction writers not conversant in other languages the inspiration of new literary and thematic developments. On the other hand, by now it also seems obvious that the Stieg Larsson novels themselves led to lasting changes in Swedish crime writing.

Since the early part of the twentieth century, Swedish literature as a whole was dominated by the notion that, to be taken seriously, a literary work should be realistic, deal primarily with either psychological or social issues, and show restraint in its portrayals of characters and events. This view of literature spread also to include “good” entertainment literature, while works not conforming to it were more or less automatically considered inferior by reason of their insufficient realism. Perhaps one result of this is the fact that science fiction never managed to get a lasting foothold in Sweden; by not dealing explicitly with the here and now, it was viewed as primarily “escape” fiction, which was by definition neither good art nor worthwhile literature. When applied to crime fiction, the result of this view was that the field as a whole can be characterized by its restraint and by its lack of imaginative freedom: in a field where social concerns and down-to-earth realism are primary virtues, there is no room for villains like Hannibal Lecter, heroes like Jack Reacher, or plots like those of Mickey Spillane.

Perhaps it took a writer like Stieg Larsson, whose favorite reading was American and British science fiction and crime fiction, and who paid no particular heed to the traditions upheld in the Swedish literary establishment, to write a work so completely
un
-Swedish—in its main characters, its action, its graphic sex and violence, and its sheer joy of imaginative storytelling—as the Millennium trilogy. The critical and popular triumph of the novels meant that later writers were suddenly freed from many of the previous taboos, which in fact hark back to the early-twentieth-century modernist rejection of the linear plot structure, heroism, moralism, and romanticism of earlier literature, which the modernists considered outdated and unsuited to cosmopolitan and urban civilization.

Consequently, in the last few years, Swedish crime fiction has suddenly been enriched by innovative authors writing in totally new ways. Karin Alfredsson and Katarina Wennstam, publishing their first novels in 2006 and 2007, write on the subjects of men's subjugation of women and homophobia, and are perhaps the two current writers whose main concerns are closest to the underlying theme of Stieg Larsson's novels; Alfredsson, using her physician protagonist Ellen Elg as a unifying link in her first five novels, has examined the horrifying situation of women in five different countries; Wennstam, in her highly accomplished crime novels, has dealt with trafficking, police brutality towards their domestic partners, sexual harassment in the movie business, and homophobia in sports. Lawyer Jens Lapidus, writing since 2006, is stylistically and thematically inspired by James Ellroy in his depictions of gang violence and corruption in the Stockholm suburbs, and has brought a unique voice to Swedish crime fiction. Johan Theorin, whose first novel was published in 2007, is a highly literary writer often combining crime plots with both regionalism and elements of fantasy, mythology, and horror. Dag Öhrlund, making his debut in the same year, writes violent crime thrillers much in the American hard-boiled tradition, and has created the first genius serial killer in Swedish crime fiction. Starting in 2009, the writing team Alexandra and Alexander Ahndoril, under their joint pen name Lars Kepler, write fast, imaginative, and moody action novels featuring both heroes and villains larger than life. Security expert Anders de la Motte's crime novels, starting with [
geim
] in 2010, are characterized by intricate, mazelike plotting and by a nerdy, half-criminal, and computer-savvy slacker protagonist who is anything but typically Swedish. Håkan Axlander Sundquist and Jerker Eriksson, under their joint pen name Erik Axl Sund and debuting in 2010, have so far published only one huge, three-volume novel; an intricate, hypnotically enthralling story of obsession, vengeance, psychoanalysis, and redemption which is an unmistakably central work in current Swedish crime fiction. Even later, Christoffer Carlsson is a highly unconventional, noir-inspired author whose three novels so far show huge promise, while writer team Rolf and Cilla Börjlind published their first crime novel in 2012: dark, atmospheric, and with one of the most original protagonist couples since that of Stieg Larsson; the Börjlinds, in creating their two detectives, are both playing with, parodying, and rising above the conventions of the form.

Given the proliferation of new writers; its sudden freedom from earlier restraints on themes, style, and elements; and its great popularity among readers, Swedish crime fiction today is at both an enormously exciting and a chaotic stage of its ongoing development.

Ancient controversies have resurfaced—how much graphic description of violence, murder, or sex should be “acceptable” in fiction; how much literary experimentation should be “condoned” in a crime novel; how much adherence to the field's traditions of rational deduction should you “demand” of a crime novel; can supernatural events or plot elements be part of a crime novel? This makes for often heated and fascinating discussions, not least in the awards committees of the Swedish Crime Fiction Academy.

But despite the controversies, and despite the fact—not previously stated, but nevertheless fundamental—that the majority of crime novels in Sweden (as in all countries) remain both fairly undistinguished and are written in one or other of the already established traditions of the field, the future of Swedish crime fiction seems bright. And considering its sudden global appeal, there is also reason to believe that it will continue to attract talented, innovative, and original writers who will widen and enrich it even further.

After that optimistic thought, I won't keep you any longer. In the following pages, you will meet many of the writers who have shaped the Swedish crime fiction field as it exists today and a few who I believe will help shape it tomorrow. I hope you will enjoy getting to know them, and reading the stories they have to tell.

John-Henri Holmberg

Viken, July 2013

REUNION

T
OVE
A
LSTERDAL

Before publishing her first novel in 2009, Tove Alsterdal worked mainly as a journalist and playwright. As with most writers, her experiences are many and varied. She was born in Malmö but has lived mainly in Stockholm; nevertheless, she also has roots in the far north of Sweden, in Tornedalen, an area close to the Swedish border with Finland and largely north of the Arctic Circle. This was where her mother grew up, and Tove Alsterdal returns there for summers. It is the setting of her latest novel,
I tystnaden begravd (Buried in Silence),
runner-up for the 2012 Best Novel of the Year Award given by the Swedish Crime Fiction Academy. She walked horses at the Stockholm outdoor museum Skansen and worked as an aide in the closed wards at Beckomberga mental hospital. Later, she was a radio and TV news reporter, and she wrote scripts for TV dramas and a feature film, stories for computer games, stage plays, and an opera libretto. A close friend of crime author Liza Marklund, she has edited all except the first of Marklund's crime novels.

Tove Alsterdal's writing is psychologically acute and full of the settings she knows and loves to re-create on the page. There is often a strong streak of the mystical, seemingly inexplicable, in her work—but one of her great strengths is that she leaves the choice of how to interpret such elements to her readers, as in this story of a late reunion of teenage friends.

SHE STEPS OUT OF HER CAR AND SLOWLY WALKS DOWN TOWARDS THE
lake. It draws her. The paved walkway disappears between a couple of birches and becomes a path. A dizzying feeling of time rushing off, back to then.

Its black waters.

It is the same lake, the same time of summer as it was then. Just before midsummer, before the heat has permeated the ground and the greenery is still tender and young. The water as dark and tempting as in the nightmares she has had ever since. Not always, to be fair. There have been weeks, even years, when she has managed to sleep calmly, as when Lisette was just a baby.

“Ohmygaawd, it's been so long! Marina! Piiiaaaa!!”

“Agge!”

Two other cars have driven up and parked next to hers. The women yell loud enough to make the famous birdlife flutter up from lake pastures and reeds, take cover deeper into the woods.

She forces a smile and turns to meet them.

“Jojjo, is it really you?” Marina takes the last few steps at a run and hugs her. Watches her face, pushes back a strand of hair. “Shit, you look just the same. You haven't changed a bit.” She turns to the others, who are unloading baskets and bags full of food from their cars. “Have you seen who's here already? Johanna!”

They laugh and shout and soon she is wrapped in everyone's arms, they hug and agree that all are just as they were.

And it's fabulous to meet again! After thirty years! And you don't look a day over twenty-five! Well, neither do you! They laugh at absolutely everything. And as they tumble into the tiny scout's cottage she thinks, how great that I decided to come after all. That I didn't give in to that feeling of just wanting to hide. There is a warmth between them she had forgotten. They have known each other since such an early age that those thirty years are shed in just a moment. Or so it feels at that particular moment when they are jokingly chattering about who slept in the upper beds that time.

Johanna watches them and wonders which one of them actually came up with the idea of a reunion. She has just assumed that Marina did. Her parents had some kind of connection to the scout organization that owns the cottages. Marina, her hair almost black, though by now she surely must dye it—there are only slight touches of gray that paradoxically make her look younger. Almost more beautiful than she remembers her.

“Didn't you bring a sleeping bag, Jojjo?” Agge asks when the others are throwing their overnight things on the bunk beds.

“No, I'm not sure if I can
. . .
” She feels all of their eyes. It was a long time since anyone called her Jojjo. “I have to get up early and
. . .
”

“What are you saying, aren't you going to stay the night? Wasn't that the whole thing?” Agge's deep voice, always sounding as if something was self-evident. She has put on at least sixty pounds and it's still impossible to disagree with her. “I've got blankets in my car,” she says, “it'll be all right.”

Johanna nods and smiles. Why did she agree to this? Her first reaction on seeing the invitation was a ringing NO. And yet. Just that someone invited her, remembered her.
Pia already has the coffeemaker going. Just as back then she slides in without saying much but still ends up at the center, the prettiest of them all. Tiny, attractive wrinkles around her eyes when she laughs.

“What the hell,” Agge says, “let's have some champagne.”

And the cork bounces against the ceiling.

The fire is burning, a genuine campfire. Their faces glow. The midsummer dusk is blue and transparent. They pull their sleeping bags around themselves. She knows that she is drinking too fast and too much.

Marina's idea: that they toast each other, all round. They have toasted Marina's new executive position at the staffing company and Pia's new lover who has proposed, third time lucky! They have toasted that Marina has run the women's six-mile race and that Agge has retrained as a gardener; at last she is living her dream! Here's to our dreams! Marina has been married for eighteen years and still loves her husband—
skål!
—and Pia has gotten new tits after her pregnancies—
skål
to them!—and to all their kids who are all doing so well in school—
skål! skål! skål!
—and particularly to Agge's eldest who has been picked for the junior national swim team.

“And what about you, Jojjo, out with it!”

She knows it was a mistake to come here. Her life is nothing you hold up for inspection at reunions. She manages a toast to her daughter, Lisette, getting a job after graduating high school, then slips away, saying that she has to take a trip into the forest.

Nowadays there are toilets behind the cabins, but she does it the way they did back then. Squats down behind a spruce.

A little urine squirts on one of her shoes. Between branches she sees the fire die down to embers and the silhouettes of the ­middle- aged women around it.

What else could she toast? That she's divorced and has been unable to find someone new? That her apartment is mute now that Lisette has moved out? She can't even do Internet dating, since it makes her feel like the last passenger on the late-night bus going home from town, where everyone is desperately grabbing whatever is offered. And she knows that thousands of people are finding love on those sites, so of course it's all her fault. Like missing the last night bus and being left standing outside in the cold. A toast to that! She sleeps badly, because there will be more cutbacks and nobody knows who will be laid off. And here's to the body going downhill while time runs out,
skål!

As she is pulling her pants up she hears a sound. Branches creaking. Somewhere down by the lake. She breathes silently and stands immobile, her hand on her zipper. Seems to see a shadow between the spruces, a shift in the weak light.

A voice. And everything within her is suddenly cold as ice.

“Have you saved me anything to eat?”

Someone is standing where the spruce forest ends and the shoreline begins. Thin and short. Her hair a flowing blonde tangle. Her green sweater.

“What is it?” Lillis says, laughing. Her face is unnaturally pale. As it was already back when they were playing with death. “Didn't you think I'd show up?”

I'm dreaming, Johanna thinks, I'm more drunk than I think. It can't be the same sweater!

“Don't you want to talk to me?” The figure steps closer to her, head a little askance. “And I always thought we were friends.”

Johanna steps back. “I'm going back to the others,” she says, half running through the forest, a branch scratching her face.

She doesn't turn round until she is sitting by the fire again. Then she stares at the forest, so long that the others also have to turn around.

“But what the hell . . .” Marina stands. “Lilian! I didn't even know . . . who managed to get hold of Lillis? Why haven't you said anything?”

Johanna doesn't even realize that the question is put to her. She sees the woman come closer. A smile animating her face. Now all the others are standing. Johanna feels that she has to stand as well.

Lillis' body is cool and thin in her arms. A quick hug. A darkness sweeping in from the lake and night has fallen.

“God, how great to see you.”

“Where did you go? Didn't you disappear even before we started our senior year?”

Distantly she hears them toast Lillis, as if inside a glass jar. Now, for the first time, she actually sees the others. They aren't at all as unchanged as they fancied; they have aged. Their skin has lost its grip and is hanging loosely from their chins; the years have dug furrows even in Marina's once-perfect face. You can tell that they all dye their hair. Only Lillis is still young, entirely smooth and as dangerously and strangely beautiful as she was then. That tiny little squint.

“My God, you haven't aged a day!” Agge yells. “
Skål
to that!”

Johanna sees their mouths move and laugh. Lillis' face is so white that it shines, despite the embers having gone out and everything is cold.

Can't they see that it's wrong?

Lillis, who for a short while was her closest friend. The unreachable whom she incomprehensibly reached, the great happiness of being seen and being allowed in. Lillis, who was an adventurer and a center, one of those around whom the moon and the earth and the boys revolved, while Johanna was a vapid planet at the rim of the solar system. Vaguely she had understood that Lillis needed her, or someone, anyone, by her side. Johanna had never entered the competition, just followed. The first cigarette, the first high on beer and aspirin, the play in the hut where Johanna mostly waited outside while Lillis was making out inside, but anyway. Afterward she was allowed to share her secrets.

Johanna feels the scream grow inside of her, it wants to burst and escape, but she can't, it isn't possible. The silence is too huge. It has lasted for thirty years.

Wants to tell the others: But can't you see, don't you get it?

She pinches her arm, hard, and it hurts. It's no nightmare, it's happening. She has to project it when she looks into Lillis' pale-blue and slightly squinting eyes. Project her words, silently, across the dead fire that is now all ashes.

You don't exist. You're dead.

And then she can't stay there any longer, because she is sucked into the pale blur and it makes her shiver. She has to rise and walk down to the lake.

There is a
story about the Upper Lake. Have you ever heard it?

It is Lillis' voice, but is it then or now? They have walked along the water's edge, away from the others, because Lillis is tired of the endless competition between Marina and Pia. Johanna is thinking that Lillis is also competing, but she never says it out loud. They are sixteen years old and will sleep in the cabin all the weekend and tomorrow—Marina has asked some boys—they'll have a party.

Come on, let's swim. Aw, come on, now! We'll have to see if it's true what they say about the Upper Lake. That somewhere out there, there's a bottomless spot. Where those who have drowned live. They say that if you go down deep enough you can be caught in their trailing hair. Down there are those who died willingly, the suicides, and they're all women, unhappy and full of despair. Men shoot themselves, but women drown themselves, that's how it's always been. It's their hair you can feel under your feet, if only you dare swim out there
.

Lillis throws her clothes into the high beach grass and starts wading out in the lake. Johanna has to do the same. Everything they share becomes meaningful and the more dangerous it feels, the more alive they become. Lillis has taught her that. They often play with death, strangle themselves with scarves until they pass out. It's become an addiction to them, an obsession, they have to do it every day. Johanna is panicky as she pulls the noose tight, yet she pulls it until all air is gone, her temples start throbbing and it feels as if her eyes were forced out of her skull. She sees pinpoints of light and outside sounds disappear and then everything goes black. There's no danger as long as you don't make a knot in your scarf, Lillis has promised her, since it loosens when you pass out. Before you die.

There is a moment in every person's life when you decide whether to walk with the living or with the dead. That time is now, before we go rigid. After, it is too late.

She can see that Lillis has started swimming out there and is pulling away. They are closing in on the middle of the lake. The cool water caressing her skin, so present and naked. She thinks that some boy may be standing somewhere on the beach, watching them, and it feels exciting, and then just a little bit shameful as she thinks about Lillis naked under the water maybe thirty feet ahead of her, her strokes powerful even though she is so thin and so cute, but it's not like that. Nothing sexual, that is, between them, or that's what she constantly tells herself even though it sometimes feels that way when Lillis snuggles into her arms on the couch or wherever. Like a puppy, sort of. But that's how Lillis is, without any boundaries against what is dangerous.

And they're alone under the sky, in the night, and they don't give a rat's ass for anyone else.

We have to know something about death to be able to choose, right? Otherwise, we'll just be victims
.