Trend spotters in Leif GW’s new novel – Expressen

In Leif GW Persson’s new novel takes a modern professional woman in the main role of the Security Service Manager.

Maria Edström is skeptical about the portrayal of Muslims, but is delighted when the characters start talking to the professor himself.

This summer I I do not know how many times reading about Leif GW Persson debut novel” Grisfesten “who came in 1978. And once again impressed by the novel Open reasoned form, the depiction of a softly, lingering Stockholm. And by Persson credible figures that are already here are in place, as Lars Martin Johansson. There already thrown dark shadows ahead to the trilogy of the murder of our prime minister – also ready for the classics shelf.

While Persson has been the professor of the Swedish people have new cards are mixed in the literary game, like Anna Holt and Linda Martinez. But most attention in recent books have “the little fat accident,” male pig Backstrom had – initially amusing but more like a skit that’s been too long.

And despite Persson cultivation of a kind of “motvalls persona” as it seems that he is now almost 40 years after the debut is still keen to be in step with the times.

So now Lisa Mattei , who has previously appeared in the scenes appear on the scene as COO of SAPO in the new book “Bombmakaren and his woman.”

Lisa Mattei is a comprehensive and intelligent woman in her 40s, with an eye on diet and weight, very moderate with alcohol and with constantly feel guilty for his daughter, even though she has a husband who is reminiscent of the 1950 wife-ideal in the large upstairs in Östermalm. Lisa likes sushi and think that female colleagues who are old, ugly dressed and eating that whole men are clearly suspect. Mattei is not easy to become so where over fond of, if you say so.

For her defense should said that he is neither a computer genius or have a diagnosis but probably should have the role of a modern competent professional woman who can take care of itself. Just as Frank Motoele – “black, Muslim, gangsta” which he in itself unlikely enough presents itself – the police colleague who has the role of the “dark-skinned” police the corps suffers a critical shortage of.

Persson, in publicly expressed their concern about the risk of a terrorist attack in Sweden, so the action moves logically around the investigation against a suspected terrorist; Swedish-Somali Abdullah Mohammed Khalid, 28, who lives in Eskilstuna with its large and deeply religious family where the father has four wives.

A tip from the “English colleague,” pointing to a terrorist attack during the royal family’s celebrations National Day at Skansen. The questions that may be history’s engine purr is: is the tip? Or there’s a mole within Säpo?

As usual Persson best when he describes the laborious and tedious investigative work, ignoring contemporary interception and allows the different employees hold presentations which sounds suspiciously like the author’s own. Which keeps Persson championship in the gray nuances, far from the spectacular and action-breaking that otherwise eating into the Swedish police prose.

Although the book hints of gray areas in the West’s fight against terror and that it is mainly Muslims victims of Islamist terrorism, so landing unfortunately “Bombmakaren and his woman” to the end in a kind of “us against them” story of Hollywood Cut where little sloppy attributed to both September 11 and Breivik .

And where the image of Muslims did not feel completely comfortable. The search conducted on the family Khalid’s house is reminiscent of his distance of a drone sniffing around and increases only in a sort of general alienation. Not much is otherwise to modify the picture – the life that the Swedish majority of Muslims live shows barely a trace.

“Look for faderulingen to be on time” may Lisa Mattei say completely style criminal and one need not directly be shrink to wonder if Persson really misses his old protagonist Johansson – “a profoundly convinced humanist with a strong primitive traits” as they say.

Now you can hardly Persson let Johansson resurrected, but a new suite of a retired professor who has been involved since pig feast days and investigate “cold cases” – it would in any case not me Neja myself hoarse to.

Maria Edström

kulturen@expressen.se

Leif GW Persson’s employees in Expressen. Therefore, his book is reviewed by Maria Edström, critics of the Swedish Radio “Culture News”.