Swedish Cops

by Michael Tapper

Michael Tapper considers Swedish culture and ideas from the period 1965 to 2012 as expressed in detective fiction and film in the tradition of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Believing the Swedish police narrative tradition to be part and parcel of the European history of ideas and culture, Tapper argues that, from being feared and despised, the police emerged as heroes and part of the modern social project of the welfare state after World War II.

Establishing themselves artistically and commercially in the forefront of the genre, Sjöwall and Wahlöö constructed a model for using the police novel as an instrument for ideological criticism of the social democratic government and its welfare state project. With varying political affiliations, their model has been adapted by authors such as Leif G. W. Persson, Jan Guillou, Henning Mankell, Håkan Nesser, Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström, and Stieg Larsson, and in film series such as Beck and Wallander. The first book of its kind about Swedish crime fiction, Swedish Cops is just as thrilling as the novels and films it analyses.

559 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 13, 2014

About the author

B. 1959. MA in journalism, PhD in Cinema Studies, associate professor and affiliated researcher in Cinema Studies at the Centre for Literature and Languages, Lund University. I have been a freelance journalist since 1989, working with encyclopaedias such as the Swedish National Encyclopaedia and the Swedish Filmography. From 1998 to 2002 I was the chief editor of the film journal Filmhäftet, and from 2003 to 2005 its English successor Film International (published by Intellect in the UK). I have also been a member of the editorial board of Cinema Journal. Since 1999 I have a contract to work as a film critic for Swedish daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet, which from 2015 also includes Helsingborgs Dagblad. My books in Swedish are: Clint Eastwood (2011) and Snuten i skymningslandet: Svenska polisberättelser i roman och film (2011, dissertation).
My books in English are: Swedish Cops: From Sjöwall and Wahlöö to Stieg Larsson (2014) and Ingmar Bergman's 'Face to Face' (2017).
I have contributed to a number of anthologies, including (in English): 1001 Movie You Must See Before You Die (originally published in 2003), Lars von Trier: Interviews (2003), Scandinavian Crime Fiction (2011), Nordic Genre Film (2015) and Ingmar Bergman: An Enduring Legacy (2021).