ABSTRACT
This case study reads Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s 1967 novel The Man on the Balcony as an example of radical crime fiction, and as an exception to the conservative politics of the police procedural. The novel details investigations into two crimes committed by two criminals. One can be read through the lens of positivist criminology, while the other resonates with theories linking crime to the failure of social bonds. However, in both cases the crime is embedded in a criminogenic social context; the crimes investigated here are part of the novel’s overall attack on bourgeois society and values.
