I was a latecomer to the world of crime fiction. Despite being a Sherlock Holmes fan from childhood, it took a long time to get a peek into modern crime novels. It was rather accidental. On a wintry night in 2010, during a casual discussion on books at my hostel room in university, an economist-friend asked me whether I had read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo . The Millennium trilogy of the late Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson had already become a sensation. When my friend told me about the broad social settings of the mystery series, I thought I would read it. Larsson’s female protagonist, the asocial, rebellious Lisbeth Salander, came first as a shock and then as a realisation of the social realities that still plague Swedish society. The modern Scandinavian crime genre is popular not just because of the depth of mysteries, but also because the books largely place crimes in history or in a social context. Faceless Killers , the first book in the Kurt Wallander series by Swedish author Henning Mankell, for example, raises serious questions on post-Soviet immigration, racism and nationality. The Man from Beijing , a stand-alone novel from Mankell, is a strong critique of post-Mao China. In Leif G. W. Persson’s Another Time, Another Life , the sinister plot unravels in the background of the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986.
The protagonists, despite their complicated lives, possess a moral superiority compared to a corrupt or rotten system — be it the Oslo police department of Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series or the Swedish government bureaucracy in the Millennium trilogy. This complicated realm of modern Nordic crime emerged from the Martin Beck series of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Sjowall and Wahloo, the Swedish partners who were also Communist Party members, blended 19th century realism with Leftist social criticism in Swedish mysteries. Mankell and Larson expanded the genre they invested in, while Nesbo looked for “the pure evil of proactive individuals”. It’s perhaps this complex mix of history, mystery and social criticisms that intrigued me. But most titans of this genre have either parted or have stopped writing. Martin Beck lives in memories. Mankell had announced the end of the Wallander series before his death. The fourth Salander book was a big let-down. Nesbo is not writing the Harry Hole series these days. So, the question Nordic noir faces now, despite its popularity, is, who will take the baton from Wallander and Salander?
