Women who kill men: Gender, agency and subversion in Swedish crime novels

The article discusses how women murderers embedded in the victim-turned-avenger narrative function as vehicles of social criticism in three contemporary Swedish crime novels, Henning Mankell's The Fifth Woman, Hakan Nesser's Woman with Birthmark and Fredrik Ekelund's Nina och sundet [Nina and the Strait]. The murderers' performances of murder, based on parody and irony, question masculinity and its institutionalized practices. By rendering vulnerable the discourse of hegemonic masculinity, these performances prove their subversiveness and critical potential. At the same time they renew the crime fiction genre and particularly the feminist crime novel in which female agency is identical with the agency of the detective.