It is not possible to imagine a Swedish deck tour without the authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. For 10 years, from 1965 to 1975, Deckard Duon published 10 crime novels that were groundbreaking in several ways and reached far beyond Sweden's borders.
You could almost see the books as a kind of recipe that contains all the ingredients we associate with the Scandinavian decker wave that a few decades later would take the world by storm. First of all, the social-critical perspective was new. Sjöwall and Wahlöö renamed their cover series in ten parts to Roman about a crime, and according to May Sjöwall, the crime was "Social Democrats' betrayal of the working class". It says a lot about the perspective they wrote from the outside.
Deckarduon also established a whole new type of personal gallery. They were not interested in heroes who solved mysteries. Their police officers were people with privacy, problems and doubts - and they were a collective. Their personal gallery has over time proven to start living a life of its own. Today there is probably no Swede who does not have a relationship with Martin Beck or Gunvald Larsson.
The books also received an international impact and have been translated into 40 languages and sold in millions of copies. When Maj Sjöwall visited Babel in conjunction with the publication of the books again in 2012, international writers like Dennis Lehane, Micheal Connolly and Jonathan Franzen wanted to join a writer who broke new ground and together with Per Wahlöö created a whole new genre.