City of borders

We meet in Slussen, a posh side of Stockholm, dotted with boutique shops, and traversed by men in red sneakers and women in artisanal clothing. “If you have the Taliban on one side, then on the other you have Slussen,” says Jens Lapidus. It is a catchy statement and one that sets up the world in extremes. If the Taliban with its draconian regime exists on the extreme right, then on the other side you have neighbourhoods of Sweden, such as this, where inclusion and freedom are lived principles. Here everyone is decidedly equal. Lapidus, father of children aged seven, five and two, says that here you will be greeted with disdain if you dare keep a nanny or even hire help to spring clean.

Forty-year-old Lapidus however is not interested in this all-too-perfect face — which the rest of the world looks up to with equal disbelief and aspiration — of Sweden. As a criminal defence lawyer and crime fiction writer, the world of drugs, the psyche of the mafia, the posterior of a city intrigue him more. If Stockholm is one of the safest capitals in the world, Lapidus says it is also one of the most segregated. “If you are in Slussen you will see mostly ethnically Swedish people. But if you take the tube and get off eight stations south or nine stations north you will think you are in Somalia or the Middle East. Stockholm is built on islands. You are either on the island or outside the island. The boundaries are very clear — because of water — socially and psychologically,” he says, slowly sipping his coffee.

Author of the Stockholm Noir Trilogy , Lapidus in his profession and his fiction, delves into worlds that seem un-Scandinavian to the outside world. In Easy Money (2006), the first part of the trilogy, he lays bare the anatomy of the criminal world, and not merely the crime. The book is abrasive with cusses, dizzy with action and descriptions of “the rings that divided and ruled the city… the movement of money involving placement, concealment and laundry.” But it is also deeply invested in its characters — JW the social climber, Mrado the crazed Serbian thug and Jorge, a Latino convict on the run.

And that is the biggest strength of Lapidus. He knows his characters. Not by pilfering the traits and personalities of his clients, but by probing the question ‘why do people choose crime?’ In interview after interview, he has recounted the exact incident that sparked off his writing career. Three young men had been accused of armed robbery and were facing long prison sentences. At the end of the trial, the judge asked them, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” He wanted to check whether they envisioned themselves as upright citizens. Instead of answering they stood up in their chairs and guards had to hold them down. They said, “You don’t understand anything. This is the only way to live a life.”

For Lapidus the judge’s incomprehension smacked of society’s ignorance about the crime world. That night he got home and started writing. He explains, “I go to my job at nine in the morning, they go at nine at night. They commit crime. This is something they choose. This is how they make their living. These are normal people in some sense…”

Lapidus ‘normalises’ the criminals of his world by giving them rich family lives. In Easy Money , if JW is obsessed with finding his missing sister Camilla, then Mrado is desperate to get custody of his daughter. These people might be moving cocaine and smashing skulls against sinks, but they are also vulnerable to the pulls of family and home.

This emphasis on character is also Lapidus’s method to move away from the typical crime fiction trope. He says, “I wanted to take the Scandinavian (crime fiction) tradition and turn it 180 degrees.” There are no cops in his books. These aren’t whodunits premised on discovering the murder and motive. Instead they capture the conflagration when different worlds collide. Sweden, Lapidus elaborates, is a society that believes in status quo. Unlike in the US, where people climb up and down the social ladder, in Sweden — “you stay where you belong”. Characters such as JW in Easy Money fascinate him as they attempt to “create a camouflage, to fit in…and be accepted.”

But Lapidus isn’t one to pick apart philosophical questions with his clients. His personal understanding of justice is legal rather than moral. He makes very clear: “the courts should not and are not interested in justice or truth. Courts deal with what can be proved… Being a defence lawyer you defend this system. And this system is supposed to be a just system.” His lawyerly ability to stay clear of judgements is probably why he is a popular writer amongst the underworld. His books are also the most borrowed in the prison library system. An undercover cop, working mainly on drugs, once told him that every time they made a bust, or broke into a house with a warrant of a gang member in south Stockholm they would find two things — the poster of Al Pacino from Scarface on the wall and one of his books on the shelf. This troubled Lapidus because he does not wish to be accused of glamourising violence. What he is guilty of is being authentic to details and true to life. And if his reader, sitting in his/her armchair, feels empathy for his characters then he believes he has succeeded as a writer.

(The author was in Stockholm on the invitation of the Swedish Institute.)

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