Swedish Cops : From Sjöwall and Wahlöö to Stieg Larsson.

FrontCover -- Half-tilte -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 The Crime Genre -- Origins -- Crime and the Law -- Chapter 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 -- Chapter 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! -- Chapter 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 -- The Story of a Crime: Sjöwall and Wahlöö from Freud to Marx -- The Film Adaptations -- Chapter 5 The 1980s: Leif G.W. Persson and Jan Guillou -- Leif G.W. Persson -- Jan Guillou -- Chapter 6 The 1990s: Henning Mankell and Håkan Nesser -- Henning Mankell -- Håkan Nesser and the Eurocop from Neverland -- Chapter 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 -- Chapter 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 -- BackCover.

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 analyses.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.