Wrexham Library Authors of the Month – Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo met in the summer of 1962, Wahloo was nine years older than Sjowall, and married with a daughter. A former crime reporter, he’d been deported from Spain by Franco. Sjowalls background like Wahloo was middle class – oppressive and chilly. They first met through their work and wrote together for 13 years before Wahloo died in 1975. In 1963 Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo published the first of their series of 10 police novels featuring Inspector Martin Beck and his team. Written during a time when Stockholm saw demonstrations against the Vietnam War, the arming and reorganisation of the police force and stresses on the welfare state, the Beck novels deliberately used the crime genre to depict changes in Swedish society. They won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1971 – The Laughing Policeman. “The decalogue about the Swedish Chief Inspector Martin Beck created by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo during the 1960s and 1970s are indeed classic police fiction. They changed the genre. Whoever is writing crime fiction after these novels is inspired by them in one way or another” said Henning Mankell.