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There must be something in the Swedish
climate that favours the police procedural. Whether those short
winter afternoons and long nights instil a dour persistence in the
real-life detectives, they certainly do in their fictional
counterparts. The country has produced some fine examples of the
genre, from the Wahloo and Sjowall series of the 1970s through to
Golden Dagger winner Henning Mankell in his Wallander books. Liza
Marklund’s The Bomber deserves its place in this honourable
line even if her central character works for the press rather than
the police. Annika Bengtzon is crime editor for a Stockholm
tabloid. Summoned in the middle of the night to cover a bombing in
the city’s Olympic stadium, she soon finds herself caught up
in the investigation. What appeared to be a terrorist attack is
revealed as cover for a more personal assault on the powerful
woman who heads the Olympic Organising Committee. As Bengtzon gets
closer to the truth she inevitably finds her own life under threat
from the perpetrator, and there is a show-down scene - a carefully
managed and convincing one - between the two.
So far, so standard, perhaps. What makes
The Bomber different is that it is written from a reporter’s
perspective (Marklund is, herself, a journalist). There is plenty
of office in-fighting - the central character must deal with the
whispers suggesting that a woman isn’t up to the job of being
crime editor - as well as interesting background on editorial
priorities, circulation battles, the ethics of press intrusion.
Bengtzon isn’t the standard heroine-in-peril either. She’s
often ratty, insecure, and fairly unscrupulous in pursuit of a
story. Marklund doesn’t gloss over any of this, although she
does indicate how Annika Bengtzon and the other principal women
characters lead lives that are distorted by male pressure and
prejudice. The Bomber may not quite live up to its hype (bought by
one in every 16 Swedes, a year at no.1 in that country’s
bestseller lists) but it is an involving, well-plotted slice of
Swedish realism - and that’s not faint praise.
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