Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (respectively, born September 25, 1935, Stockholm, Sweden—died April 29, 2020; born August 5, 1926, Gothenburg, Sweden—died June 22, 1975, Malmö) were Swedish journalists and innovative writers of detective fiction.

As a team, Per Wahlöö and his wife, Maj Sjöwall (married in 1962), wrote a series of detective stories in which Martin Beck and his colleagues at the Central Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm were the main characters. From Roseanna (1965) to Terroristerna (1975; “The Terrorists”), the series consists of 10 novels, all of which are translated into English and a number of other languages. In their psychological characterization and use of a police collective instead of a mastermind, the works bear similarities to the writings of both Georges Simenon and Ed McBain. What sets the series apart from other books in the same genre is the conscious use by Wahlöö and Sjöwall of the popular form of the detective story as a vehicle for social criticism. The crime itself, however intriguing, plays a subordinate role in each novel. Both the police force and the criminals mirror the shifting social forces within the Swedish welfare state. The authors strongly criticized the many abuses of power and the systematic use of propaganda in society. Many of these motifs recur in Per Wahlöö’s novels of the late 1950s and early 1960s.