Background
Wahlöö was born in Tölö parish, Kungsbacka Municipality, Halland.
journalist screenwriter writer
Wahlöö was born in Tölö parish, Kungsbacka Municipality, Halland.
Wahlöö and Sjöwall also wrote novels separately. Following school, he worked as a crime reporter from 1946 onwards. After long trips around the world he returned to Sweden and started working as a journalist again.
Both were Marxists.
He died of cancer in Malmö in 1975, aged 48. Wahlöö"s career in journalism started in 1947 in Sydsvenskan in Malmö and continued in 1949 at the new Evening Post, where he was a permanent employee, to 1953. He moved onto freelance work in the 1950s, writing theater reviews and film articles for various newspapers including for the newspapers in Norrköping before moving to Stockholm.
By May 1964 Per Wahlöö"s journalistic path was said to be complete.
Subsequently, he was involved in the New Left journal Tidsignal (Time Signal) (1965-1970) where he was part of the editorial board, among others including the writer Kurt Salomonson. A leftist tendency and a dramatically effective narrative distinguished Wahlöö"s early novels about power and the right, for example A Necessary Action from 1962, which depicts Franco"s Spain, and his Dictatorship series.
Several of them have been filmed, and a successful Swedish television film series ran from 1997-2015, with Peter Haber as Martin Beck. The series was bought by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 2015, and shown in England with English subtitles.
Per Wahlöö died after an unsuccessful operation on the pancreas (necessitated by cancer) and is buried in the memorial garden at Malmo Sankt Pauli"s central cemetery.
He has been described as a part of "the couple who invented Nordic noir", and he is credited as one of the main inspirations for the acclaimed Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø.