Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 – The Crime Genre

Origins
Crime and the Law

Chapter 2 – Enter the Police

A Genre is Born
The Police and the Welfare State
Backlash
Dirty Harry
Crime and Civilization
Crime Dystopia: The Psychopath and the Serial Killer

Chapter 3 – Crime Scene: Sweden

A Beginning
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft and the Nation 
Crime and Nationality
The Young Savages of the Asphalt Jungles
The Hoodlum Film
The Politics of Crime
From Punishment to Reform and Back Again
Moral Panics and Crime Journalism
Print the Faction!

Chapter 4 – The 1960s and 1970s: Sjöwall and Wahlöö

Liberal-Conservative Criticism of the Welfare State
Criticism from within the Labour Movement
New Left Criticism of the Welfare State
Eco-Humanist or Green Criticism of the Welfare State
Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall before Sjöwall and Wahlöö
Story of a Crime: Sjöwall and Wahlöö from Freud to Marx
The Film Adaptations

Chapter 5 – The 1980s: Leif G.W. Persson and Jan Guillou

Leif G.W. Persson
Jan Guillou

Chapter 6 – The 1990s: Henning Mankell and Håkan Nesser

Henning Mankell
Håkan Nesser and the Eurocop from Neverland

Chapter 7 – Millennium Cops

Crime and punishment in the Age of War on Terror
'Europudding' Police
Son of Dirty Harry: Beck  and the Iconic Rise of Gunvald Larsson
Roslund and Hellström
Steig Larsson
Leif G.W. Persson: Downfall of the Welfare State

Chapter 8 – Into the Twilight

Cops and the Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft Dichotomy
The Vigilante Cop and Right-wing Extremism
The Vigilante Cop and Fascism
The Challenge of Evil

About the Author

Michael Tapper teaches film at Lund University. He has been a contributor to the Swedish National Encyclopaedia since 1989 and has served as film critic at the daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet in Malmo, Sweden, since 1999.