Popular Culture in Nordic Noir A Study of Selected Works of Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo, Henning Mankell and Steig Larsson

Book excerpt: This book discusses that the genre of crime fiction is suitable for the presentation of the crises, conflicts, and indeterminacies present in the plot of the selected works. This book exposes the darker side of Scandinavian countries, particularly Sweden, as the writers and works selected for the book are based on Swedish society. Though as a matter of fact, Scandinavian countries are considered to be the most egalitarian and progressive welfare societies all over the world. The present book explores how popular culture may prove to be a significant thematic approach to studying Scandinavian crime fiction (also called Nordic Noir). The Swedish authors use popular culture as a tool through which they try to convey their concerns regarding various serious issues like anti-immigration, racism, xenophobia, violence against women, the violence of human rights, crimes like the drug trade, human trafficking, etc. By assigning the central place to Sjowall and Wahloo’s Roseanna (1965), The Laughing Policeman (1968), The Terrorists (1975), Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers (1991), Sidetracked (1995), The Fifth Women (1996), Steig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005), The Girl who Played with Fire (2006), and The Girl who kicked the Hornets’ Nest (2007), this book enunciates the notion of popular culture and crime fiction genre in the propagation of the socio-critical reflections of life in the welfare state. Hence, this work also analyses the plot, characters, and themes in the aforementioned works to locate the elements of popular fiction in Scandinavian crime novels by representing this genre’s ubiquitousness in the twenty-first century.