Sunday, March 29, 2009

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Who?!?

Or Whö?!?

Or Oogly-Woogly and Woogly-Oogly, as I call them.

A wife and husband team that wrote some the best detective fiction I have ever read. In the classic locked-room format even though it is so much more than that.

An excoriating exposé of the "welfare" state during the inflationary 1970's; a searing portrait of police corruption in Sweden; and a depressing Scandinavian portait that things are not always what they seem; and a clear intellectual child of film noir.

It's all worth reading in as much as you can find translated. Worth reading "in order" although this is not quite strictly necessary unlike a lot of more contemporary detective fiction.

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