Carl Hamilton novels

The Carl Hamilton novels is a book series by Swedish author and journalist Jan Guillou centered on the fictional Swedish spy Carl Gustaf Gilbert Hamilton. The main character is an elite intelligence officer working for the Swedish Security agency and Intelligence agency during the end of the Cold War, residing in Stockholm but active internationally.
Carl Hamilton has been called "Sweden's James Bond", but the plot of Guillou's novels also has a heavy focus on politics and journalism. One commentator said the books "... place besides John le Carré and Len Deighton". The first novel was published in 1986 and the series is a best-seller in Sweden, with more than 10 million sold copies. The character of Carl Hamilton has also appeared in a number of film and television adaptations.

Novels

Carl Hamilton is the main character of the first ten novels released between 1986 and 1995. He makes a return as a supporting character in the novels Madame Terror and Men inte om det gäller din dotter. He also makes a short appearance as a minor character in De som dödar drömmar sover aldrig and Den andra dödssynden.

1986 – Coq Rouge
1987 – Den demokratiske terroristen
1988 – I nationens intresse
1989 – Fiendens fiende
1990 – Den hedervärde mördaren
1991 – Vendetta
1992 – Ingen mans land
1993 – Den enda segern
1994 – I hennes majestäts tjänst
1995 – En medborgare höjd över varje misstanke
2006 – Madame Terror
2008 – ''Men inte om det gäller din dotter''
Other appearances
1995 – Hamlon
2018 – De som dödar drömmar sover aldrig
2019 – ''Den andra dödssynden''
Concept and creation

While working as a journalist in the early 1970s Jan Guillou had been convicted of espionage for exposing an illegal secret spy organization inside the Swedish military. During his prison sentence in 1974, he read the crime novels about Martin Beck, written by his friends and fellow left wing writers Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall, and this inspired him to write his own political crime novels. But instead of writing about the police he would write about the world of intelligence and counter-intelligence from the viewpoint of a Swedish spy, making use of his vast research and journalistic experience in this field.
Guillou had published his debut novel "Om kriget kommer" in 1971, some years before the IB affair, where the main character is also an officer in the Swedish military intelligence. But he didn't begin writing on the new spy project until the mid-1980s, when a personal encounter with Norwegian security police in Oslo inspired him to the plot of the first novel. Many years after the IB affair, Guillou had also befriended the former chief of the Swedish military intelligence, who came to serve as a sounding board for the plot of the novels and be the inspiration for the character of the retired spy chief DG.
The inspiration for the main character Carl Hamilton was a left wing speaker that Guillou had seen giving a speech during a political manifestation in Stockholm in the late 1960s. This person was named Oxenstierna, an old name from Swedish nobility, and was referred to as 'Comrade Oxenstierna' during the manifestation, which greatly amused Guillou since he found the idea of a Swedish Count who was also a Socialist to be very entertaining. The reason he changed the name to Hamilton, another old name from the nobility, was because there were so few living people from the family of Oxenstierna and Hamilton was more common and easier to use anonymously.

Writing style

Jan Guillou uses an intended journalistic style for his prose, making the series serve as a contemporary chronicle for Sweden and the end of the Cold War. Each novel in the series has its intended political theme, often depicting the use of un-democratic methods to protect democracy.
Several characters in the books are based on actual people, often slightly disguised. For example, real life Swedish spy Stig Bergling becomes 'Stig Sandström' and real life intelligence chief Ulf Samuelsson becomes 'Samuel Ulfsson'. Many real life politicians feature such as Carl Bildt, Yasser Arafat and Mikhail Gorbachev. Jan Guillou himself is the basis of a character named Erik Ponti, which was the alter ego he used in his autobiographical novel Ondskan from 1981.

The character of Carl Hamilton

Early life

As a teenager from the Swedish upperclass in Stockholm, Hamilton was an active member of the intellectual Maoist organisation Clarté and pro-Palestine groups. When entering Sweden's compulsory military service as an attack diver for the Navy, his political intent was to infiltrate the system in order to strengthen it against the threat of Soviet imperialism and at the same time reduce the traditionally right wing tendencies of the armed forces. While being trained by the Navy, at 22 years old, he is recruited by the spy chief DG, with an offer to become a new kind of secret field operator for military intelligence. Instead of attending the Swedish Naval Academy, Hamilton is sent to the US to be secretly trained by the CIA and the Navy SEALs. The cover story for his additional time in the USA was that Hamilton was studying computers at University of California, San Diego. He spent five years in California, completing both college and his secret military and intelligence training in the Mojave Desert. He returned to Sweden in 1981.
A young version of Hamilton also makes brief appearances in the novels De som dödar drömmar sover aldrig and Den andra dödssynden that takes place in the 1970s and 1980s.

Career

At the beginning of the first novel, Coq Rouge, Hamilton has been misplaced to a desk job at the Swedish security service, SÄPO. Because of changed political policies and military union rules, and not least his radical past, his old mentor and recruiter DG has not been able to get him into the military intelligence as was intended. Only after the events in the second novel does he actually get to join the military intelligence, called OP5, after having proved his superior skills in the field. As a secret field operator he is used to gather intelligence, infiltrate, lead rescue operations and commit assassinations. After his cover has been blown in the fourth novel, Fiendens fiende, he is often used for political PR purposes and becomes internationally famous, even named Time Person of the Year.
When he first starts making a name for himself in the secret world of spies, during the events of the first novel, he is given the international codename Coq Rouge, which has been used as a title of the main series. This codename is ironically derived from a conversation between Näslund, his chief at the Swedish security service, and an Israeli counterpart during a meeting between security officers in France. Näslund, who hates Hamilton, says that Hamilton is as proud as a rooster and a communist. During the conversation, they are drinking wine from a bottle with a red coq on the bottle, and the Israeli officer says: "Why don't we call him the red rooster, "Coq Rouge?". The real codename that Hamilton himself uses with his military colleagues is Trident.
Hamilton works for many years in the Swedish military intelligence until he is appointed chief of the Swedish security service in the tenth novel, En medborgare höjd över varje misstanke.
Ten years after conclusion of the main series with the tenth novel, Hamilton makes an unexpected return in the novel Madame Terror, as the commander of a Palestinian submarine with a mission to destroy the Israeli navy. Guillou had stated in 1995 that the series had ended and could not continue. However, when he was working on Madame Terror, he realised that he needed Hamilton to fill in a specific role for the plot to work. After that, Hamilton makes yet another appearance in the novel Men inte om det gäller din dotter, where he is again forced to take up arms.

Personal traits

From his conservative upperclass upbringing, Hamilton has a great interest in wine and classical music. In the first few novels, he lives in an apartment in the Old Town of central Stockholm. Later in the series, he moves to a castle outside Stockholm. As a teenager he was a Communist, while as an adult he considers himself a Socialist.
Before he went to the USA he inherited shares, and when returning this has made him a millionaire on the stock market. Since he has always despised economy built on speculation, he moves his money to funds and property, which to his disliking makes him even richer.
When Hamilton wears his Swedish Naval uniform he wears the insignia of the Navy SEALs, and during the series he is awarded an impressive collection of medals and military decorations.
His preferred weapons are a Beretta 92 and a Smith & Wesson Combat Magnum. He owns a Beretta pistol with a grip in nacre, inscribed with the family weapon of house Hamilton, which he got as a parting gift from his American instructors in California.
He has no fear of darkness, harbouring a well-grounded conviction that because of his superior military training he is the thing to fear in the night. Since a young age he has a particular talent for sharpshooting, which comes to be his personal method for self-meditation. No matter how chaotic his emotional or physical situation, he becomes calm when aiming a gun, "blanking out everything except the line between eye, sight and target".
Throughout the series, he becomes increasingly tormented and troubled by his work experience, and sometimes visualizes his inner demons as "blocks of black ice surfacing in a raging river", and routinely suppresses them. In the early books, his mentor DG, who is a trained psychologist as well as a military officer, acts as his sounding board.