Mal Fletcher comments

Writing in recently in The Times, Professor John Sutherland of University College London discusses the impact of the new breed of Scandinavian crime writers on the great British detective novel.

The proliferation of Scandinavian crime stories in our bestseller lists and on TV listings, he suggests, is evidence of a 'growing-up moment'. Now, he says, British crime writers may stop pretending that evil is something foreign to civilisation and, instead of 'taming the tiger' within, actually confront it.

Swedish writers such as Henning Menkell and Stieg Larsson, he says, have been doing this for quite a while. Menkell has given the world the Wallander novels, a favourite of mine. The main character, Kurt Wallander, could not be described as a religious figure, but he is quite philosophical.

He often ponders how, in a supposedly civilised society, in which liberal ideals were supposed to have wiped out barbarism, individual people can display violence of the most horrific kind.

John Sutherland says, 'There is one thing [the Scandinavians] believe, in their Calvinistic way, that you can never put right. The old Adam.'

'Beneath the peace, prosperity, culture and education, is the evil that no welfare state, however benign, can eradicate.'

The professor was addressing detective fiction, not events in Norway. But his words have a resonance here.

Politics alone cannot solve the problem of evil, or acts of evil. The fact is that at its most fundamental level evil is not primarily a societal problem, but an individual one.

Science can play its part in tackling this challenge, particularly through psychiatry and psychology and to some degree sociology.

But religion, so often cast as the villain of the piece, can play a role. Particularly religion which recognizes the latent potential for evil within human nature itself, the need for justice in the face of atrocities and the possibility for regeneration and redemption.

Our thoughts are with the people of Norway who've suffered their worst crime since the Second World War. We should also pause to reflect on how thin is the veneer of civilization and how much we each need to play a role in guarding its freedoms.