The Steel Spring, by Per Wahlöö

Per Wahlöö's Murder on the Thirty-First Floor was one of my five-star reads of 2011 but The Steel Spring is not so impressive.

In Thirty-First Floor, Wahlöö imagines a society shaped by The Accord, where people are healthy and content, but have been dehumansied by 'progress'. They turn to alcohol, and the police spend most of their time arresting and incarcerating drunks, many of whom end up in vast intoxification units, many of whom commit suicide

We rejoin Inspector Jensen -  'a man of normal build and ordinary appearance with short grey hair and an impassive expression' - as he about to return to this unnamed homeland after travelling abroad for a liver transplant. During his confinement, something terrible has happened to the country and it is somehow cut off from the rest of the world.

On the instruction of an exiled Minister, Jensen crosses the border and tries to piece together what has happened. People are dying from a mysterious epidemic, and the institutions of state seem to have been taken over by paramilitary medics. 

The landscape is familiar, the country vaguely Scandinavian, or Baltic. The political edge is sharp, exposing a consensual dictatorship that allows Wahlöö, a Marxist and a Swede, to stretch the weaknesses of social democracy to breaking point.

In recent years the city had turned increasingly into one huge traffic flow system, an apparent jumble of flyovers and criss-crossing motorways. Virtually all the older buildings had been pulled down to make more living space for automobiles, a planning solution that has resulted in a city centre apparently consisting of glass, steel and concrete.....

Many years earlier, when this city plan was being implemented critical voices had been raised to say that the system would make the city inhuman and uninhabitable. The experts had brushed off the criticism. They argued that a modern city should be built not for pedestrians and horse drawn carriages but for cars. As on so many other issues, both had subsequently been proved right. This was entirely in the spirit of the Accord.

The style, as translated by Sarah Death, remains crisp and direct. 

"Let's just stick to facts," Jensen said, amiably. "Plain and simple facts." 

"Facts. There are no plain and simple facts."

"What your job is, for instance?"

"I am a sociologist. Used to work at the alcohol research unit."

It is a tough interrogation as the crippled and pain-wracked man keeps needing sedatives that knock him out for an hour at a time

"We collated figures that came in from the alcohol retailers, the police and the detox clinics. Our statistical tables were sent on to higher authorities, where they were worked over. That's to say they were put through the mill, over and over again, and sent from one authority to another. When they finally got to whoever they were meant for, they were distorted beyond all recognition. Improved, if you like." 

Part of the challenge with Steel Spring is that there is not much detection involved, rather the narrative comes in longish expositions, arising from often chance encounters. It was published four years after Thirty First Floor, by which time after Wahlöö and partner Maj Sjöwall had delivered three exceptional Martin Beck novels, and his dystopian vision had become much darker, still less credible, and it has to be said, rather less satisfying. 

Comments

[Maxine]

Sounds fascinating, even if not as satisfying as it might have been. I read Murder on the 31st Floor and found it fairly good but not compelling in the sense of the Beck books. I liked the right and wrong guesses about what a future world would be like.

[Philip]

Maxine, I suspect one of my five review stars came from the many references to journalism and the perversion of media by the Accord.

[Dorte H]

I have tried one or two of his, but I must admit that compared to the Martin Beck series his books seem a bit dusty to me.

[borse furla]

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