--- JIM DOHERTY <
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Jeremy,
>
> Re your question below:
>
> > What did you make of the
> > book [PETROVKA 38]?
> > I have it in hardback on the shelf, but
haven't
> got
> > to
> > it yet.
>
> I liked it. It kind of reminded me of the
> Sjowall/Wahloo books.
Really? Now that's interesting. I have quite a few of these
at home to be read, in English and Swedish (my girlfriend's a
fan), and have nodded along to a few of the Beck TV films,
both old and new. I hardly speak a word of Swedish, but I
managed to pick up quite a bit nevertheless.
I also recently bought a copy of Jan Guillou's Enemy's Enemy,
the only one of his Coq Rouge series to be translated. This
was after I saw a film starring Stellan Skarsgard, a lot of
which was in English, called Den Demokraten Terroristen. Carl
Hamilton, aka Coq Rouge, is "the Nordic James Bond", but this
seemed much more like Matt Helm. In the film, Hamilton
infiltrates a German terrorist cell. While travelling with
two of them in Syria I think, they are captured by a
Palestinian cell. All three are about to be shot,when
Hamilton admits thaf he is a Swedish agent. The Palestinian
gives him the chance to prove it: kill the other two or be
killed himself. There aren't many films that would show such
a dilemma. He grits his teeth and shoots them. This is, I
realise, a little similar to the Semyonov scene I recently
described. I'm not obsessed with cold-blooded murder or
anything
- it just seems that this is rather hardboiled - and quite
taboo in most modern fiction. James Bond is often described
as a ruthless, cold-blooded killer - but he rarely is, even
in the books. Jeremy
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