Beck and Call

I’m reading the Martin Beck Swedish police procedurals by the husband and wife writing team of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Because Beck is such a glum son of a bitch, and the books take their cue from his mordant attitude, I’m alternating them with the jollier (and far less realistic) Nero Wolfe mysteries of Rex Stout (favourite crime writer of both P.G. Wodehouse and his creation Bertie Wooster). So that’s my fiction intake covered for a while. There are forty Wolfes but only ten Becks so I can retire Wolfe and his smug secretary/legman/Boswell Archie Goodwin for a bit once the Becks are exhausted.

I guess the Beck novels are copoganda. The authors were Marxists, but this oddly translates into them being very keen on their detectives, as caring professionals in a flawed society, but quite contemptuous of the ordinary patrolmen, embodied by the comic double act of Kristiansen & Kvant, lazy, bickering bumblers who trash crime scenes and occasionally succeed by pure luck.

The books were intended to form one gigantic ten-volume novel, serving as an examination of Swedish society and its discontents. This is arguably rendered imperfect by the books’ need to invent serious crimes that Sweden was comparatively untroubled by at the time: a serial rapist-turned-sex-killer, a serial child killer, a mass shooter. But it’s easy enough to separate the crime novel conventions from the social commentary.

The books have a slightly contrived prose style, an exaggerated flatness. Martin Beck is always “Martin Beck,” they never abbreviate him. And when the first killer is caught, he’s always “the man who was called ***” with his full name. But it’s clear why this was done: Wahlöö was an established author and Sjöwall a newbie. They each had distinct styles. Preparing the novels in detail, they each wrote alternate chapters, working at night as they had kids and day jobs. The contrived style was created to unite their approach so the reader wouldn’t feel jolting changes.

All ten books have been filmed and there’s currently a long-running TV show, so I’m going to do a partial review of the cinematic/televisual material, comparing it to the books. The books started transferring to the screen quite early on, and one of them was even adapted by Hollywood (THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN). Versions of Martin Beck have been played by Walter Matthau, Derek Jacobi, Russian Romualds Ancans, and various actual Swedes including notably Gösta Ekman. And, of course, the directors, a diverse squad including Bo Widerberg and Stuart Rosenberg, along with their screenwriters took the stories into areas not planned by the original authors.

Oh, and Per Wahlöö, who died almost immediately after he and Sjöwall finished the tenth and final book, also wrote the novel basis for KAMIKAZE 89, the bizarre scifi cop movie starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder, so I should certainly watch that too… It looks amazing.

I don’t think I’m going to explore the Nero Wolfe adaptations, though, even though there are surprisingly few of them. The fact that they got Lionel Stander to play Archie Goodwin, TWICE, tells me that they didn’t really have a handle on the series.

TO BE CONTINUED