From Wallander to Montalbano: A Study of Police Cultures and Policemen in European Fiction Books

• In Event: Narratives of Police Work

Abstract

In recent years a remarkable amount of scientific literature on the representation of crime and the criminal justice system in the media and in culture (or popular culture) has been produced. Most studies investigate how crime is re-shaped in a variety of media communications, especially in movies and newspaper. Some explore how police cultures and policemen are represented in movies and tv series. Most do not take into consideration, however, what is probably becoming, in current times, one of the most powerful means of communication of the image of police and policemen: works of fiction. Fiction books on police in Europe have become very successful in recent years, thanks in part to the spread of some notorious Scandinavian books on police, and they are now reaching a far larger public than in the past. This paper examines the representation of police work and culture in police fiction, with reference to some celebrated characters (for example, Kurt Wallander in Sweden, Salvo Montalbano in Italy, John Rebus in Scotland) using interpretative theoretical keys of cultural criminological analysis in a comparative perspective.

Author

• Rossella Selmini, University of Minnesota