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Book dated but definitely worth reading
Book Review
By Derryll White
Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (1970). The Laughing Policeman.
This is another Martin Beck novel. Immediately on opening the book I am struck by the irony employed by the writers and the very advanced social criticism. This is 1970 and most crime fiction is still very hard-boiled gangsters and other criminals facing off with the forces of truth and justice. Any child of the ‘60s like myself knows what a load of crap that is. I guess that is Sjowall and Wahloo are credited with transforming the mystery genre.
Throughout this work I remained astounded that it was written more than 40 years ago. Even then Sjowall and Wahloo had their fingers on the penchant for gun violence in America. What is even more amazing, the causes and conditions they enumerate have not changed in all that time.
They deal harshly with Sweden’s latent tendency to assume privilege. The upper middle class often assume that they are above the normal rules of law even now. Sjowall and Wahloo have little time for this and, at the end of the novel, make it the culminating factor. All of this is not so different from Canada where people also assume that money and status has its special privilege.
I enjoyed this novel. What is more, I am very appreciative of the change this team of writers brought to the European mystery genre. Their influence is now very clear with writers such as Henning Mankell and Stieg Larrson, and is filtering into North America with writers such as Dennis Lehane and Giles Blunt. Certainly the book is dated but is definitely worth reading.
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Excerpts from the novel:
IRONY – Outside the American embassy on Strandvägen and along the streets leading to it, 412 policemen were struggling with about twice as many demonstrators. The police were equipped with tear gas bombs, pistols, whips, batons, cars, motorcycles, shortwave radios, battery megaphones, riot dogs and hysterical horses. The demonstrators were armed with a letter and cardboard signs, which grew more and more sodden in the pelting rain.
POLICE – A small girl was bearing a sign with the memorable text: DO YOUR DUTY! KEEP FUCKING AND MAKE MORE POLICE! Three 190-pound patrolmen flung themselves at her, tore the sign to pieces and dragged her into a squad car where they twisted her arms and pawed her breasts. She had turned thirteen on this very day and had not yet developed any.
STOCKHOLM – “Why don’t they blow the whole of Stockholm to bits in one go instead of doing it piecemeal? They ought to do what Ronald Reagan or whatever-his-name-is said about Vietnam: Asphalt it and paint on yellow stripes and make parking lots of the goddam thing. It could hardly be worse than when the town planners got their way.”
AMERICA – “Mass murders seem to be an American specialty,” Gunvald Larsson said.
“Yes,” Melander agreed. “And the compendium gives some plausible theories as to why it is so.”
“The glorification of violence,” said Kollberg. “The career-centered society. The sale of firearms by mail order. The ruthless war in Vietnam.”
CHRISTMAS – The consumer society and its harassed citizens had other things to think of. Although it was over a month to Christmas, the advertising orgy had begun and the buying hysteria spread as swiftly and ruthlessly as the Black Death along the festooned shopping streets. The epidemic swept all before it and there was no escape.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
