the Police, Charlie is actually Charlene, and have lived in Stockholm all his adult life. When she grew up, she wanted nothing more than to leave the Greatly, the small town in the outskirts of town, Charlie and her mother lived, both literally and figuratively.
In the big city, no one knew who Charlie was, she could be who she wanted.
But when a girl many years later lost Greatly, it is Charlie who becomes ditskickad. Back to old friends, past wrongs and painful memories.
Lina Bengtsdotters detective story ”Annabelle” (2017) and ”Francesca” (2018), and Charlie is one of very many in today’s deckarvärld who return to their childhood with adult eyes.
the Police Malin makes a similar obstinate travel in Camilla Grebes prized ”Pet”, but the theme is common even outside of Sweden. The police Fin Macleod go home to the Hebrides after many years in Edinburgh, Peter Mays Lewistrilogi, miljöjuristen Abby Williams in Krysten Ritter’s ”Smokescreen” live in Chicago but returns to the small town of Barrens (the English word barren means infertile), the police by Aaron Falk will back to avfolkningsorten Kiewarra in Australia in Jane Harper ”Heat”. They investigate all new crimes, but also receive a reason to re-evaluate his childhood.
Why is barndomsmiljöerna so important right now? Maybe it’s our time, the gap between urban and rural areas. Maybe it’s environmental issues, in a world where nature is becoming increasingly unpredictable and dangerous.
often become a skräckmiljö, and not only of the terrible reason that mobile phones may lack coverage. Most city dwellers have no idea what to expect beyond the tarmac, and the unknown is, as always, the most frightening.
Gillian Flynn, Åsa Larsson and Peter May. Photo: Dana Rossini, Thron Ullberg, and Gerraint Lewis
It is not logical, of course. It is far more dangerous to stand on the Stureplan in Stockholm on a Saturday night than on the mountain Fröksnipan in the Valley, but it doesn’t help: we are saviors when there are other people in the vicinity. It is man’s merriment, now and in the past. That is a man’s bane is a truth we have the more difficult to bring to us.
the back Country is also multicultural, we all have come from, it is not even particularly long ago. The countryside is described dismissively by the city folk as old-fashioned, slow, slow – but in hemvändardeckarna relates to the bands with greater understanding. We need both our past and all parts of Sweden.
In hemvändardeckarna get all the suppressed emotions well up, on several levels.
the City rootlessness functions both as a discourse and at the individual level. For the novel is essentially the story of to understand what has happened. Nowadays, it is the behavioral therapy which is dominant in the public discourse, but when not even the therapists want to know of our tangled memories, where will they go?
to the popular culture. In hemvändardeckarna get all the suppressed emotions well up, on several levels. Usually it is that in Gillian Flynn’s ”Sharp objects”, it returns with the adult’s strength to heal childhood wounds.
Sometimes it is rather as in Åsa Larsson’s crime novel about Stockholmsjuristen Rebecka Martinsson, where the Rebecka Martinsson escapes to the security of barndomsbyn outside Kiruna. The dream of the quiet life in the country, raggsockor on the iced floor, sofa, kitchen, and the clock is ticking. Where can one be healed, far from the stress of modern life. And very real: Rebecka Martinsson goes from fragility to strength, from confusion to clarity. It is the same thing in Ninni Schulmans Värmlandsdeckare (especially the ”Welcome home”, which revolves around a reunion for the mainstream classes), where the journalist Magdalena Hansson moves home to Hagfors with his son after a sore divorce.
There are many perspectives in the novel and every reader chooses their own, but the basic is to look back and understand what actually has happened. With ourselves, with our country and with our time.
Read more about the detective story
