Questions: This personal ID sounds like a relatively-easy-to-fake version of the U.S. Social Security number (which is also easy to fake). And these are faked for employment in the U.S. all the time by criminals trying to evade capture over the long term, or for other reasons, such as anonymity. Is there something about the personnummer that makes it impossible to fake?metoo wrote:Yes, it has, and I don’t believe it would realistically work. Now, you might object that being a vampire is already unrealistic, which of course is true. However, stories by JAL are generally very realistic, with just a small amount of supernatural horror added. You might say that there usually is a realistic realm and a supernatural one, where the realistic realm is completely plausible. This method to obtain blood resides firmly in the realistic realm, where I think it fails. I have to stretch my belief too far to accept it. A blood loss of one litre is considered dangerous, see Wikipedia, and would plausibly be detected by hospital staff. Oskar wouldn’t be able to continue doing this for long.
Another trouble with this particular story is that Oskar is able to get a job at a hospital using a fake identity. That is not very realistic, since in Sweden you need to hand over your so-called personnummer, “personal identity number”, when being employed. The personnummer is a code that is used everywhere to identify an individual. An employer such as a hospital uses the personnummer for its own administrative purposes, and it is needed for taxation. Swedish employers pay the income taxes of their employees directly to the authorities, and then they need the personnummer to indicate for whom the tax is paid. To fake an identity is therefore not that simple, since a fake personnummer would be discovered rather quickly.
And, of course, Oskar would want to get paid for his work at the hospital. For which he would need a bank account. For which he would need a personnummer, again.
Oskar seldom works anywhere for more than a year in a low-level janitorial-type position. And, if the woman in the story is the norm, Oskar seems to pick relatively young, healthy victims. By the time a pattern could be established in a normally-trusting environment, they'd be gone. (In the U.S., there was a case where a nurse regularly murdered patients, and it took years to track her down.) In any case, once suspicions were aroused they'd leave immediately.
income taxes: I'm not sure why Sweden's methods would have to be any better that those in the U.S. at detecting fraud. And working criminals here can evade the authorities for years, even in the computer age, which was certainly not at its peak in those days.
Are all paychecks in Sweden deposited directly to bank accounts? Or can they be cashed at any bank by giving a fake personnumer or perhaps a drivers license. (also easily faked.)
In any case, even if you are completely correct, none of these 'weaknesses' have any effect on my ability to 'suspend disbelief' in this well-written and conceived tale of tragedy and loneliness.