Sjöwall and Wahlöö deliver all that you want from a thriller. This would be enough to recommend "The Story of Crime," but what Auden wrote about Raymond Chandler is true of them — they are "interested in writing, not detective stories, but serious studies of a criminal milieu." Perhaps that should be amended to read that they are interested in writing detective stories so as to study a criminal milieu. For Sjöwall and Wahlöö, the milieu is not organized crime, not the Mafia or Whitey Bulger and the Winter Hill Mob. They studied the nature of criminal violence, what men and woman are willing to do to each other to achieve what they want. That this violence — personal and for sex, revenge, or profit — is an expression of who we are and how we live now, that a society is defined as much by its criminals as by its laws, has particular resonance for Americans in 2008.
Related:
Review: Watchmen, Conscientious objectors, Review: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009), More 
- Review: Watchmen
When Watchmen concentrates on violence, it comes alive. When it meanders into metaphysics, which it does frequently and at length, it loses its way.
- Conscientious objectors
How do people become fanatics? When does individual conscience take a stand?
- Review: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)
This meticulously detailed update of the 1974 cult-favorite heist drama retains some of that film's taut pacing and dry humor, and it even boasts some decent performances.
- Photos: Bonnaroo 2009
Bruce Springsteen, Wilco, Elvis Costello, and more at Bonnaroo 2009 in Manchester, Tennessee
- Review: The Kindly Ones
Those put off by the soft-pedaling of the SS in the movie adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's The Reader might be wary of Jonathan Littell's memoir of fictional war criminal Maximilien Aue.
- Review: Dollhouse
Joss Whedon continues to fight the darkness
- Art in America
The legend of the Old West's cowboys and Indians, flinty pioneers and buffalo killers, sheriffs and gunslingers started with the tall tales that cowboys themselves told of their glorious exploits.
- Cursed films
At some point while watching the features in the Harvard Film Archive's "Le Film Maudit" ("cursed films") series — perhaps during the "Circle of Shit" chapter in Pier Paolo Pasolini's SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM — you might ask yourself, which is more cursed, the movies or anyone unfortunate enough to be watching them?
- Nobel Son
On its surface, this quirky thriller from Randall Miller has indie-style appeal, with Alan Rickman in a delicious role as a gluttonous, philandering, narcissistic physics professor whose Nobel Prize win is deflated by the kidnapping of his rebellious philosophy-major son.
- Pray the Devil Back to Hell
Remember the old "essentialist" argument that women are by nature pacifist and nurturing whereas men are aggressive and warlike?
- Seeking Relevance
Here in Maine we're used to living in a mediated landscape. Painters have been reframing how we see the shore and woods for generations, defining what's worth looking at for a larger audience.
- Less
Topics:
Books
, Crime, Organized Crime, Hieronymus Bosch, More
, Crime, Organized Crime, Hieronymus Bosch, James "Whitey" Bulger, Raymond Chandler, Augusto Pinochet, Michael Ondaatje, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Less
