I should have posted about this sooner, but forgot to link to this February 24 article from the UK’s Guardian online about the social realism of Scandinavian crime fiction. Of course, with all the noise surrounding Sweden’s Stieg Larsson and his Millennium trilogy, attention turns to other Scandinavian crime writers. No mention of Norway’s Gunnar Staalesen, alas. He’s a great writer, and a definite socialist, so would have fit this narrative perfectly. Certainly there are more Scandinavian socialist crime writers, because virtually every member of the literati there grew up a socialist or Marxist-Leninist. Socialism is part of the culture of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Still, there might be some anti-authoritarianism there, and crime fiction written from the perspective of non-police people lends itself more to question authority.