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Swedish Cops

From Sjöwall & Wahlöö to Stieg Larsson

Michael Tapper considers Swedish culture and ideas from the period 1965 to 2012 as expressed in detective fiction and film in the tradition of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Believing the Swedish police narrative tradition to be part and parcel of the European history of ideas and culture, Tapper argues that, from being feared and despised, the police emerged as heroes and part of the modern social project of the welfare state after World War II. Establishing themselves artistically and commercially in the forefront of the genre, Sjöwall and Wahlöö constructed a model for using the police novel as an instrument for ideological criticism of the social democratic government and its welfare state project. With varying political affiliations, their model has been adapted by authors such as Leif G. W. Persson, Jan Guillou, Henning Mankell, Håkan Nesser, Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström, and Stieg Larsson, and in film series such as Beck and Wallander. The first book of its kind about Swedish crime fiction, Swedish Cops is just as thrilling as the novels and films it analyzes.

335 pages | 6 halftones | 7 x 9 | © 2014

Film Studies


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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
 
Preface
 
Introduction
 
1: The Crime Genre
 
Origins
 
Crime and the Law
 
2: Enter the Police
 
A Genre is Born
 
The Police and the Welfare State
 
Backlash
 
Dirty Harry
 
Crime and Civilization
 
Crime Dystopia: The Psychopath and the Serial Killer
 
3: Crime Scene: Sweden
 
A Beginning
 
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft and the Nation
 
Crime and Nationality
 
The Young Savages of the Asphalt Jungles
 
The Hoodlum Film
 
The Politics of Crime
 
From Punishment to Reform and Back Again
 
Moral Panics and Crime Journalism
 
Print the Faction!
 
4: The 1960s and 1970s: Sjöwall and Wahlöö

 
Liberal-Conservative Criticism of the Welfare State
 
Criticism from within the Labour Movement
 
New Left Criticism of the Welfare State
 
Eco-Humanist or Green Criticism of the Welfare State
 
Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall Before Sjöwall and Wahlöö
 
Story of a Crime: Sjöwall and Wahlöö from Freud to Marx
 
The Film Adaptations
 
5: The 1980s: Leif G.W. Persson and Jan Guillou
 
Leif G.W. Persson
 
Jan Guillou
 
6: The 1990s: Henning Mankell and Håkan Nesser
 
Henning Mankell
 
Håkan Nesser and the Eurocop from Neverland
 
7: Millennium Cops
 

Crime and Punishment in the Age of the War on Terror
 
“Europudding” Police
 
Son of Dirty Harry: Beck and the Iconic Rise of Gunvald Larsson
 
Roslund and Hellström
 
Stieg Larsson
 
Leif G.W. Persson: Downfall of the Welfare State
 
8: Into the Twilight
 
Cops and the Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft Dichotomy
 
The Vigilante Cop and Right-wing Extremism
 
The Vigilante Cop and Fascism
 
The Challenge of Evil
 
References
 
Index: Names
 
Index: Titles of Works

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