To exact revenge for yourself or your friends is not only a right, it's an absolute duty.
Stieg Larsson
I know what kind of things I myself have been irritated by in detective stories. They are often about one or two persons, but they don't describe anything in the society outside.
I have been threatened occasionally. But that happens to everybody who is writing this kind of things. Threats will come without fail. It might happen to the most 'innocent' texts. If it gets too much we call the police.
I will write a couple of books and become a millionaire.
In ordinary detective novels you never see the consequences of what happens in a story in the next book. That you do in mine.
Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature.
I'm a fast writer, and crime novels are easy to do. It's much harder to write a 1,000 word article, where everything has to be 100 per cent correct.
I've read crime fiction all my life. A thing that's bothered me about crime fiction is that it's generally about one or two people, but there's not much about society. I want to get away from that particular pattern: a lead, a supporting role and backdrop characters.
Some of the writers I've praised are Sara Paretsky, Val McDermid, Elisabeth George and Minette Walters. Strangely enough, almost all are women.
I abhor crime novels in which the main character can behave however he or she pleases, or do things that normal people do not do, without those actions having social consequences.
In real life, people are integrated into society. That's what happens in my books as well. Minor characters don't just walk in and spout lines, they interact and have an effect on the events. It's not an isolated universe.
Every year Swedish society produces a new generation of threatened women who can testify to the lack of legal rights and the lukewarm interest shown by the police and other authorities.
Crime stories are, as you know, one of the most popular forms of entertainment that exist. If you then try to have something to say... that I have, of course.
I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.
I am not altogether confident of my ability to put my thoughts into words: My texts are usually better after an editor has hacked away at them, and I am used to both editing and being edited. Which is to say that I am not oversensitive in such matters.
In many respects I have gone out of my way to avoid the usual approach adopted in crime novels. I have used some techniques that are normally outlawed - the presentation of Mikael Blomkvist, for instance, is based exclusively on the personal case study made by Lisbeth Salander.
I have tried to create main characters who are drastically different from the types who generally appear in crime novels. Mikael Blomkvist, for instance, doesn't have ulcers or booze problems or an anxiety complex. He doesn't listen to operas, nor does he have an oddball hobby such as making model airplanes.
