When I saw The Steel Spring in a bookshop and noticed that it was written by a co-author of the Martin Beck crime series, I snapped it up.

Set in an unnamed country, the novel centres on Inspector Jensen, a patient who is about to go abroad for a transplant operation. His last official act before leaving is to issue warrants for the arrest of a number of doctors, including his own.

When Jensen recovers, he is contacted by some government figures who advise him that there is something mysterious going on at home and communications are down. They order him to go back to find out what is going on, and report back. When he returns, Jensen soon discovers that the country seems to be in the grip of a massive epidemic, and society is falling apart.

Per Wahloo wrote this dystopian novel in 1968 when the Beck series was at its height - the same year of publication as The Laughing Policeman. It's nothing like the Beck novels though, being far more polemical in nature. Wahloo and Sjowall were both Marxists, and they used the Beck novels to convey their criticisms of Swedish society at the time. Where the Beck novels did this subtly, Wahloo goes in hard here; The Steel Spring is an unsubtle diatribe against capitalism and right-wing politics only barely disguised as a mystery novel. Probably too unsubtle for me. ( )

This was the last novel that Per Wahloo wrote on his own. (see Fantastic Fiction) All the later ones, the last six in the ten title Martin Beck series, were written in partnership with Maj Sjowal. THE STEEL SPRING is the only one of his stand-alone novels that I have read so far, although I have some more on my radar.

Although crimes have obviously been committed, the plot is not really crime fiction, but rather is dystopian, emerging from his Marxist-based vision of where Swedish society is headed. It is heavily infused with disillusionment and scary messages. In contrast to other dystopian novels that I have read, it is not a world apocalypse that will destroy Sweden, but rather it will self-combust.

He does not name Sweden in the novel, probably to escape some sort of prosecution, but every one who read the novel at the time would know which country he was referring to. Hakan Nesser uses a similar ploy in his novels set in an unnamed Scandinavian country, although I don't think his have the political overtones of THE STEEL SPRING (and perhaps others by Per Wahloo).

Although there is at least one mystery strand, the tone of the novel is polemic and didactic, and will not suit some readers. On the other hand it reminded me of FAHRENHEIT 451 (Ray Bradbury), NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Cormac McCarthy), and Chris Womersley's THE LOW ROAD. And it is not unknown for crime fiction writers to convey social messages through their work (think about Ian Rankin, Henning Mankell and others). ( )

Sverige, i en ikke altfor fjern fremtid
Foregår fire et halvt år efter Mord på 31. etage.
Kriminalkommisær Jensen er ca halvtreds og nyopereret for noget alvorligt med leveren. Lige inden han stoppede, fik han en arrestationsliste over 43, alle læger, som skulle anholdes. Det nåede han dog ikke at blive færdig med.
Operationen foregik i udlandet og her opsøges han af regeringschefen og et par andre spidser. De kan ikke komme hjem fordi alle forbindelser er blevet afbrudt, mens de var bortrejst.
Jensen venter tilbage til Sverige på mission for regeringen for at finde ud af hvad der er sket. Der er ikke mange mennesker tilbage i storbyen, hvor han lander, hvilket skyldes en mystisk epidemi. Der har været et oprør mod socialisterne i starten af november, men så snart det var ovre, begyndte epidemien.
Jensen vender tilbage til en næsten tom politigård, men finder dog en politilæge, der fortæller at det er en ny, men ikke smitsom sygdom og at Jensen bør finde ud af hvad "Stålspringet" betyder. Sygdommen bevirker at huden bliver gennemsigtig, kønsorganerne svulmer op, blodet bliver som fløde og så dør man.
Politilægen er en af de overlevende socialister, som nu har taget magten efter at hær og politi er faldet fra hinanden.
Politilægen får narret en minister til at vende tilbage og Jensen afhører ham. Sammen finder de tre ud af hvad der er sket. Statsapparatet har tilladt et storstilet eksperiment med stoffet D5H, som er blevet tilsat klæbemidlet på et klistermærke, som en masse mennesker efterfølgende har fået tilsendt.
For sent opdager man at det udover nogle tilsigtede virkninger også forårsager en dødelig leukæmiagtig sygdom. Landets læger er også ramt, men de kan kortvarigt holde sig selv i live med blodtransfusioner og forsøger desuden desperat at finde en kur.

En underlig dystopi, hvor samfundet går under uden at nogen egentlig har villet det og hvor socialisterne nærmest får foræret magten bagefter. ( )