Ben guessed the "1452". MW ( vaguely) guessed the "sjowall."" "

[Archive]

Posted By: julie

married Per Wahloo (again, a missing umnlaut) in 1965. As sort of part of their getting married, they agreed to write a series of 10 murder mysteries (Maj had been a poet, Per a newspaperman--who had written one DREADFUL mystery), police procedurals, the protagonist being one Martin beck, the chief of detectives of the Stockholm police. While Martin Beck slowly found his way to salvation (better health, a woman he loved, etc), Stockholm, in fact all of Sweden, was going to the dogs. This sociological aspect was in ALL of the novels--again, part of their agreement. In 1975, right after they finished their last novel, Wahloo died of "pancreatic disease." (I don't know if this means cancer of not.)

Maj never wrote any more. She is exactly my age (give or take a few months).

"The Laughing Policeman," a middle novel, won the Golden Dagger award as best mystery of the year. All of the books are intelligent, and the characters are interesting. If you don't like murder mysteries, you probably wouldn't like any of them.

MW came up with most of this information about 2 hours before Ben (who actually went to a bookstore and found one of their books--but then, he had MW's "a Swedish author" to prompt him.)