home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
- Path: sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!gatech!concert!samba!joan
- From: joan@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields)
- Subject: Re: Sjowall & Wahloo and other series
- Message-ID: <1992Dec30.205213.25688@samba.oit.unc.edu>
- Sender: usenet@samba.oit.unc.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: icard.med.unc.edu
- Organization: UNC-CH School of Medicine
- References: <1992Dec28.141208.22661@samba.oit.unc.edu> <1992Dec29.001118.10561@eff.org> <1992Dec30.155425.8247@speedy.aero.org>
- Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 20:52:13 GMT
- Lines: 52
-
- In article <1992Dec30.155425.8247@speedy.aero.org> nadel@attatash.aero.org (Miriam Nadel) writes:
-
- >In article <1992Dec29.001118.10561@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
-
- >>Many people compare Ed McBain's police procedurals to the Sjowall/Wahloo
- >>books. Me, I like McBain, but I believe that much more planning went into
- >>the Swedish novels, which were conceived and executed as a 10-book series.
- >>I strongly recommend that they be read in chronological order, starting
- >>with ROSEANNA. Those who want to sample McBain's 87th Precinct novels can
- >>do no better than to start with ICE.
-
- >To be fair, Sjowall and Wahloo were journalists who set out to use the
- >crime novel as a way to explore what they saw as the deterioration in
- >Swedish society caused by the welfare state.
-
- They did a damn good job of it as well. I enjoy the series because of the
- well-developed characters they aren't always one way or another ie:
- sometimes Lennart Kollberg can be an ass and sometimes you just want to
- shake Martin Beck - Gunvald Larsson is a very interesting character, a lot
- more complex than most of his fellow policemen realize. There's very
- little "preaching" (one of the reasons Nicholas Freeling's books turned me
- off) - it's shown more often that told. I like the plots, they hang
- together and sometimes come out messy. No one is perfect, there are blind
- allys and times when they ignore their imagination (Melander mentions this
- in _The Fire Engine that Disappeared_) and doggedly go after what seems
- closest at hand (ie: in the aforementioned book, the search for Bertil).
- I recommend them to anyone interested in a good psychological profile -
- appreciation of good characters, an excellent police procedural, and very
- good writing.
-
- Heather mentioned the Janwilliem Van der Wetering series again. I really
- liked these. They're much lighter in tone than the Beck books but they're
- good stories just the same. They are vey Zen. _Mr. Sati's Satori_
- (spelled something like that) is also a good one. _The Sergant's Cat and
- Other Stories_ is also very entertaining though darker than the novels,
- some are boarderline horror.
-
- Another is Georges Simeon's Maigret series.
-
- All in all, though, I prefer the Martin Beck books. I've tried some US
- police procedurals but have never really gotten into them. I don't know
- why I like the European ones so much....
-
- Oh, almost forgot - anyone know anything about Robert J. Randisi? He
- writes or wrote some US police procedurals and private detective novels.
- I read one of his short stories in a collection I ran across. The short
- story was good so I thought I'd give his novels a try.
-
- Yours in wet fishes and near misses,
-
- Joan
-
-