18. Sweden

“The Man Who Smiled” Henning Mankell.  Translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson.

I havered for a long time over a book for Sweden.  As I trawled through online lists recommending The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and other thrillers I admit to wondering if there wasn’t something rather more heavyweight in the pantheon of this old European power.  Eventually I was won over by the frequent exaltations of Scandi-noir and thought it was a genre I should probably try, especially as it includes the Wallander series – the subtitled version of which I enjoy watching on the BBC.  After happening upon a stack of Wallander books in my second-hand bookshop I took the plunge.

Sweden, along with Holland and Denmark, is often eulogised by Anglo-American progressives as a wonderful example of social democracy: tolerant with high social welfare and somehow immune to the sort of populist convulsions that the rest of Europe seems to experience. It should therefore come as something of a surprise to English speakers that it is such a paid up member of the dark-themed crime thriller.

“The Man who Smiled” started in classic detective tropes: Wallander is washed up after the death of his daughter, depressed, drinking too much, visiting prostitutes.  He his hauled back out of this slumped retirement after the death of one of his friends in a car accident, a friend who had approached him a few weeks before, claiming he was in fear of his life.  Behind it all a charming and mysterious millionaire is up to no good on a remote island.

From here we encounter corrupt officials, evil magnates, explosions, car chases and gloomy Swedish landscapes. But amongst the drama is a rather mundane account of working with different colleagues in a small Swedish town. Much of Wallander’s thoughts are preoccupied with how his colleagues will react to him returning to the station, morning case meetings are elaborated and reflected upon as we drive with him through the grimy winter weather. He reflects on the generational differences that make him less likely to question one of Sweden’s richest men. It’s this empathetic and collaborative side of the narrative that enhanced the otherwise predictable detective story for me.

I often feel detective stories can be quite evocative of the national character: English crime fiction tends to have an eccentric or complex central detective solving parochial murders in a country house or village; Americans seem to have hard-bitten inner-city cops and car chases.  Sicilians bask in the beautiful architecture and baroque plots of  Inspector Montalbano. Considered in this way Wallander seems to suggest a Swedish character of humanity and empathy.  “The Man Who Smiled” was a calm, considered Wallander who himself was surrounded by rather mundane but entirely believable colleagues, all striving to solve crime while dealing with families and normal other life issues generally left out of crime novels. The only fictional sounding things were the villain and his crimes. This is what gave the book it’s rather slow and methodical charm, which matched my experience of the TV series, I cared far less about Wallander catching the criminal than I did about spending time with him and his colleagues. Perhaps it’s not what everyone looks for in a crime novel, but for me it was no bad thing.