Maj Sjöwall, co-author with her partner, Per Wahlöö, of the 10 Martin Beck crime novels that are widely credited with founding Scandinavian noir, died on Wednesday at the age of 84, the Guardian reported.
Beginning with Roseanna, first published in Sweden in 1965, the Beck series focused on Swedish police detective Martin Beck, part of the National Homicide Bureau, and the books appeared annually until The Terrorists in 1975, immediately after the death of Wahlöö at 49. The series has been honored around the world, been the basis for many TV series and feature films (including a Hollywood production of The Laughing Policeman, which also won a best novel Edgar in 1971), and was a precursor for many later masters of Scandinavian noir, including Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson.
After meeting in 1962 while working as journalists and translators in Stockholm and "influenced by the crime novels of Georges Simenon and Ed McBain," Sjöwall and Wahlöö conceived of the series, the Guardian wrote, "with each of them writing alternate chapters (30 in each book), which when completed could be seen as a single, Marxist critique of Swedish society. They wrote in the evenings after work, sometimes throughout the night, passing drafts across the kitchen table...
"Not only were the novels painstakingly researched and unflinching in their descriptions of horrific crimes, but each chipped away at an aspect of contemporary Swedish life to reveal (as the authors saw it) a growing materialism and heartlessness. In the character of Martin Beck, their dogged, dyspeptic, chain-smoking policeman, with a gloomy marriage and a son he admits he doesn't like, Sjöwall and Wahlöö set a new template for fictional detectives, and not just Swedish ones. A DNA trace on many of today's troubled detective heroes worldwide, both on page and screen, could well turn up Swedish ancestry."
In his foreword to the 2008 Vintage Crime/Black Lizard edition of Roseanna, Henning Mankell wrote in part, "I think that anyone who writes about crime as a reflection of society has been inspired to some extent by what they wrote... Of particular importance was the fact that Sjöwall and Wahlöö broke with the hopelessly stereotyped character descriptions that were so prevalent. They showed people evolving right before the reader's eyes."