Per Wahlöö is one of Sweden´s most famous crime writers. Together with Maj Sjöwall he revolutionized the swedish crime novel in the mid-sixties with the Martin Beck-series. Before that he was working as a reporter in the fifties and started writing novels about the oppression of man, power and totalitarian mentality in the end of the decade. Those novels (1959-1968) are called “The dictatorship”-series. This paper has focused on his contemporary writings about Spain where Wahlöö lived for a couple of years in the mid-fifties. How did the fascist Franco regime take place in his writings between the years 1951 to 1962? The material investigated is both journalism articles and fictional writings with the two novels The Wind and the Rain (1961) and The Lorry (1962) as the prime motives. This paper shows that the dictatorship of general Franco is quite invisible in Wahlöö´s early writings. On the other hand it takes almost the entire thematic space in the novels from the sixties. Per Wahlöö´s ideological agenda is also moving from being rather bleak and invisible in the 1951-articles to be more concerned with the class discrimination and fascist oppression in the later pieces. Spain is also an interesting paradox with it´s exploding tourist industry in the fifties and sixties while the ruthless fascist government still controlls the poor people in the country. The relationship between the individual man and the overall social structure is also something that Wahlöö is writing about. The dictatorship-man in Wahlöös novels is someone who is programmed by a fascist structure which in turn creates their own antithesis; the (socialist) dissident, an anti-heroe who´s only way out is armed rebellion proclaimed by an awokened class conscousness.

This paper investigates the science fiction novels of Swedish crime writer Per Wahlöö, most famous for his collaboration with his writing partner Maj Sjöwall on the ten Martin Beck mysteries. During two important years, 1964 and 1968, Wahlöö wrote the novels Murder On the 31st Floor and The Steel Spring, set in a near future land ruled by a social fascist power structure where political opposition is eradicated. The pretexted notion of this paper is that these novels consists of extensive quantities of criticism against the Swedish welfare state and the monopoly-capitalistic Swedish press during the sixties. Through the lens of science fiction theory and the notion of the novels as historical sources this paper concludes that Per Wahlöö´s science fiction becomes a bridge between the classic Swedish detective novel and the new social critic crime fiction in the style of Sjöwall-Wahlöö and others. The novels are also representations of the historical process in the mid-sixties during the radical turn: the sci-fi novels as social criticism of the contemporary society – an utopian flare. Other conclusions of this paper are the connections between Wahlöö´s novels and marxist critical theory as well as their relation to the Swedish labour literature´s view on the individual in the modern society. Especially Murder On the 31st Floor forebodes a lot of the radical marxist criticism so widely spread in the latter part of the sixties.

No description available.

(in English): The thesis deals with the topic of social criticism across the genre of detective stories from the 1960s in Sweden. The theoretical part describes how social criticism is constituted in this genre and how it contributes to its specificity. Based on a selected cross-section of five works, it presents not only the various topics which these authors work with, but also the changes in this critique over time. The analyzed works are: The Man on the Balcony (1968) by Sjöwall and Wahlöö, who establish this genre with clear social criticism, the first part of the trilogy Millennium The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008) by Stieg Larsson, who, according to many experts, successfully completes this era, The Stone Cutter (2008) by Camilla Läckberg, The Sandman (2012) by Lars Kepler and Those Who Failed (2015) by the duo Hjorth and Rosenfeldt, that is the works by three contemporary authors of this genre.

Detektivromanen är en genre som på senare år blivit omåttligt populär. Idag kan man köpa en deckare i nästan varje kiosk och matbutik. På detta följer att omslagen i de flesta fall måste sticka ut ur mängden för att boken ska bli såld, vilket sålunda gör det intressant att undersöka vilka metoder man använder – och har använt – för att locka läsare.

This thesis reexamines the beginnings of Swedish hardboiled crime literature, in part tracking its lineage to American culture and unpacking Swedish identity. Following the introduction, the second chapter asserts how this genre began as a form of escapism, specifically in Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s Roseanna. The third chapter compares predecessor Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep with Roseanna, and how Sweden’s greater gender tolerance significantly outshining America’s is reflected in literature. The fourth chapter examines how Henning Mankell’s novels fail to fully accept Sweden’s complicity in neo-Nazism as an active component of Swedish identity. The final chapter reveals Helene Tursten’s Detective Inspector Huss engaging with gender and racial relations in unique ways, while also releasing the suppressive qualities found in the Swedish identity post-war. Therefore, this thesis will better contextualize the onset of the genre, and how its lineage reflects the fruits and the damages alike in the Swedish identity.