The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö (trans: Joan Tate), 1966 (May 2014)

  Combining the everyday drudgery of police detective work with the daily life of a police detective who has a hard time making the two fit together was, according to the notes, a departure for the genre in the 1960s. Certainly this novel, interesting if low key, is far from the English parlour detectives or the hardboiled American ones. By comparison with the flawed detectives of modern fiction, this is a slow, even plodding, story, although filled with detail that seems typical for the times. The procedural and psychological detail gives the story interest, in spite of its lack of action. Instead of a gruelling cross-examination, for example, the detectives sit in the suspect’s room for half an hour saying nothing, as the suspect grows increasingly nervous and finally accepts that he has to explain what he did. Since most criminals are not masterminds, I think that is a more likely outcome in the circumstances than the notion of a criminal toying with the detectives, leaving clues or holding out until the lawyer comes to save him.

  I thought the homey details were interesting – ironically, except for the place names, the Stockholm scenes could have been taking place in London or its suburbs. However, the picture of Budapest, an urbane tourist destination even under the Stalinist regime of the 1960s, with an efficient and helpful police department, was slightly surprising (possibly because of the authors’ Marxist interests). They make Budapest seem more attractive than Stockholm, which perhaps it is.

  Another reflection of the authors’ Marxist thinking lies in the crime and the perpetrators. There are no clever criminals here, just an unlikeable victim who got pretty much what he deserves, and a bunch of ordinary, competent people who get caught up in some unplanned violence. This is what the vast majority of crime involves. The attention that crime writers give to masterminds and elites reflects their own job as entertainers, and I do find it absurd and a little tiresome when improbable criminals are the main focus of crime writing. Interestingly, a theme in some modern crime fiction is not so much the elites committing crimes against each other, but the crimes perpetrated through pharmaceutical or industrial companies to generate wealth for the elites. Such stories, however, reflect a contemporary sentiment of mistrust against corporate elites rather than a mistrust of the corporate system. Sjöwall and Wahlöö seem to be more interested in exploring the circumstances of realistic crime and how decent, self-respecting police officers respond to it.

 It will be interesting to see what themes they develop in their other novels.