Maj sjowall and per wahloo biography sampler
Per Wahlöö
Swedish writer
Per Fredrik Wahlöö (5 August – 22 June ) – in English translations often identified as Peter Wahloo – was a Swedish author. He is perhaps best known for the collaborative work with his partner Maj Sjöwall on a series of ten novels about the exploits of Martin Beck, a police detective in Stockholm, published between and In , The Laughing Policeman (a translation of Den skrattande polisen, originally published in ) won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Foremost Novel.
Wahlöö and Sjöwall also wrote novels separately.
Wahlöö was born in Tölö parish, Kungsbacka Municipality, Halland.
First of all, they virtually created Scandinavian noir, and all the giants who followed them happily admit it. Third, and just as essential , they took those normal people and used their cases as a way to shine a light on the world as it really is. Any reader of crime fiction today knows that the genre not only entertains, but often acts as a mirror to society; crime does not exist in a vacuum, the books say, it grows out of our systemic flaws. All of that was accomplished with a minimum of preaching well…usually ; a memorable gift for plotting; lean, propulsive prose that could hit enjoy a gut punch; and bursts of humor that erupted when you least expected it, from sly, dark wit to outright slapstick.Following school, he worked as a crime reporter from onwards. After long trips around the world he returned to Sweden and started working as a journalist again.
He had a thirteen-year relationship with Sjöwall but they never married, as he already was married.[1] Both were Marxists.[citation needed]
Biography
Wahlöö's career in journalism started in in Sydsvenskan in Malmö and continued in at the new Evening Post, where he was a eternal employee, to He moved onto freelance work in the s, writing theater reviews and clip articles for various newspapers including for the newspapers in Norrköping before moving to Stockholm.
By May Per Wahlöö's journalistic route was said to be finalize. Subsequently, he was involved in the New Left journal Tidsignal (Time Signal) (–) where he was part of the editorial board, among others including the writer Kurt Salomonson&#;[sv].[2]
A leftist tendency and a dramatically effective narrative distinguished Wahlöö's early novels about power and the right, for example A Necessary Action from , which depicts Franco's Spain, and his Dictatorship series.
From the mids, he wrote together with life companion Maj Sjöwall a series of detective novels with criminal investigator Martin Beck as protagonist. Several of them have been filmed.
The Terrorists: A Martin Beck Police Mystery (10) (Martin ...: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (respectively, born September 25, , Stockholm, Sweden—died April 29, ; born August 5, , Gothenburg, Sweden—died June 22, , Malmö) were Swedish journalists and innovative writers of detective fiction.A Swedish TV film series began running in , with Peter Haber as Martin Beck. The series was bought by the BBC in , and shown in the United Kingdom with English subtitles.[3]
Per Wahlöö died in Malmö in , after an unsuccessful operation on the pancreas, necessitated by cancer.
He is interned in the memorial garden at Malmo Sankt Pauli's central cemetery.
Bibliography
Novels written by Per Wahlöö alone (see Martin Beck for shared collaboration with Sjöwall)
- The Chief ()
- The Wind and Rain ()
- A Necessary Action ()
- The Assignment ()
- No Roses Grow on Odenplan ()
- Murder on the Thirty-First Floor ()
- The Steel Spring ()
- A Necessary Action ()
- The Generals ()
Legacy
He has been described as a part of "the couple who invented Nordic noir",[4] and he is credited as one of the main inspirations for the Norwegian journalist Jo Nesbø.[5]