Abstract
In a recent newspaper article, the journalist John Crace states that there is a sense of “the other” in Scandinavian crime fiction which makes it distinctive (Crace 2009).1 Indeed, in attempting to identify this “other”, John Lloyd (2011) suggests that, “Certainly we can read the darkness, violence and anarchy that erupts in these crime novels as forming part of the subsoil of life in Scandinavian countries”. Arguably, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s police procedural novels have contributed to expanding the parameters of traditional mainstream crime fiction, by tapping into this Scandinavian distinctiveness and by re imagining the police procedural subgenre. This chapter explores the renewal of crime fiction generated by Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s ground breaking novels, and examines issues surrounding definitions of “authorship” in the light of their collaborative writing practice. I discuss Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s interrogation of the function and role of the individual as well as the relationship between individual and collective, both in their approach to the police procedural format, and in devising a collaborative writing voice and sensibility.2
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© 2012 Charlotte Beyer
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Beyer, C. (2012). “Death of the Author”: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s Police Procedurals. In: Miller, V., Oakley, H. (eds) Cross-Cultural Connections in Crime Fictions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016768_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016768_10
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