Nordic noir is a genre that I think of as being present day, but Niklas Natt och Dag has shaken that for me with The Wolf and the Watchman.

Set mostly in 1793 in Stockholm, this is the investigation into a hideous discovery of a mutilated body in the water that sets watchman Mickel Cardell relucantantly off on an investigation with Cecile Winge, a lawyer and now a consultant for the police, dying of consumption.

We get flashes of the French revolution, and of Cardell's career in battle, when he lost his hand and his friends. We are shown the seedy underside of Stockholm, and of the people who prey off of each other.

This is quite a graphic book, and looks at how Cardell deals with his life after battle through alcohol and violence. It shows Winge's choices about how he is going to die, not in his home with his wife, but in a boarding house. It also looks at what lengths people can go to for revenge, and the joy of hurting others.

Definitely not a cosy crime novel, but, yes, nordic noir with a horror edge. It is a book that will make you keep turning the pages, and you'll be taken for a great ride!

The Wolf and the Watchman was published on 7th February this year, and is available on Amazon, and everywhere else you can find books!

I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to John Murray Press (the publishers) for this book.

Check out my GoodReads profile to see more reviews!

A dark and gruesome Gothic thriller, which reveals a formidable and disturbing portrait of Stockholm during the tumultuous period of the late 18 century. The Wolf and the Watchman is at times horrifying, often captivating and always brilliantly written. I love the title and from that alone, there is a sense of anticipation and danger. Often the most corrupt are those tasked with upholding the law.

The characters are brilliantly developed where the personalities and demeanour of each character have such wonderful depth and variation. The hardship each character faces, their place in this unforgiving society, and the demons and impediments they face, position this novel as a fantastic depiction of life during those fearful revolutionary periods in European history.

A body is found in the lake and recovered by a watchman, Mickel Cardell. The body is missing arms, legs, eyes, teeth and its tongue, and strangely the person didn’t die of those injuries, as they were healed long before death. Someone has brutally dismembered this person and kept them alive – what deranged reason lies behind this and who could be so soulless. Cecil Winge is a lawyer, dying of consumption, determined to see this last case through, and he works with watchman Cardell to uncover the motivation and the perpetrators of this crime. Winge is recognised as an honest man who will use evidence from all sources, particularly permitting defendants an opportunity to speak for themselves.

Kristofer Blix was an apprentice surgeon during the war and finds himself in Stockholm playing a carefree game with other people’s money until it all collapses and he is left destitute. The consequences are dramatic and hopeless, and his debt is bought by a cruel ruthless man, who now owns Blix until his debt is paid. When the story is told through Kristofer’s eyes it is done using letters to his sister and he relates his ambitions to the despondent reality he now endures.

Anna-Stina is a young woman who finds herself accused of being a whore and committed to the workhouse on the word of a spiteful priest. She finds life in the workhouse unbearable and run by a vicious sadistic man. Anna-Stina concocts an escape plan that will surely mean her death if she fails.

Each thread comes together in this captivating and chilling tale. The gruesome and uninhibited brutality is shocking but difficult to resist. While carefully written I felt the balance between descriptive elements and plot, to be slightly unbalanced, mainly with the sections devoted to Kristofer and Anna-Stina. I love reading beautiful vivid imagery and truly enjoyed that aspect of this book but at times I started anticipating the prose while the plot faltered. The story is, however, brilliantly drawn to an end, an end that signals deception and danger, with a few surprises still to play out. The truth, the physical condition of Winge, the perilous position of Winge and Cardell, and what is at stake for a society that is rumbling of revolution, is held in such a precarious balance as we reach an engrossing finale.

I would rate this book 4.5 stars and inclined to round up because it is such a unique, dramatic and powerful book. I would highly recommend it and I would like to thank John Murray Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC copy in return for an honest review.

More miserable than Les Mis, more frozen than a morgue and more disturbing than anything I have read in a long while! I read for pleasure and enlightenment so why give it a five star rating when it didn’t quite tick my boxes? I think it’s because the Wolf and the Watchman is as compelling as it’s gruesome. Set in Stockholm when the French Revolution is fresh in people’s mind we find a Sweden so alien to our modern view it’s incredulous it spawned Abba. Words can hardly relate the hopelessness of the poor wretches who lived during those times. One wondered why the discovery of a mutilated corpse piqued the interest of Cecil Winge over the daily suffering of those around him. Maybe he gained through the puzzle the corpse presented, sufficient to prolong his battle with consumption by more than his peers thought possible.
A grim, grimy, gripping read and not for the feint hearted.

I was initially interested in reading this book, however my tastes have shifted and I do not think I will be able to get to it now. Many thanks to the publisher for sending me a digital copy!

Found this a little bleak and grim, perhaps because of era, location, winter and the perpetual air of menace, corruption and brutality whenever prisons, nobility or authority are concerned. Nothing new there then. Main protagonist (who is on last legs) and a handicapped “assistant” seek the truth after the discovery of a limbless torso and delve into an ever deepening tale of intrigue that at times left me wondering if I was reading two different stories. It does come together and is well written but think would want a bit of a gap before reading another!

The Wolf and the Watchman ended up not being my cup of tea.

I think lot of people have a notion of what Scandinavian / Nordic crime fiction is like (which funny to me, being from that dark, cold, Northern corner of the world myself - it kinda makes perfect sense that all these terrible murders are bubling up from our psyche). The Wolf and the Watchman is, in many ways, a Swedish crime novel, but set in a historical setting. The writing style, the plot, and the characters echo the genre.

The thing is, while I really enjoy historical fiction, I'm not a huge fan of these kinds of crime novels, and therefore ended up not finishing this story. However, if you do like Nordic crime fiction in general, you are likely to enjoy this and its refressing setting.

The Wolf and the Watchman is a dark read, full of horror and depravity that leaves you wondering how any author could conjure up such a story. The detail is meticulous and the interlocking threads of the story brilliantly constructed. It is a magnificent literary creation. (Reminds me of Graeme McCrae Burnett’s masterful Booker Prize nominated ‘His Bloody Project’). Not for the faint-hearted but it is a riveting read with, thankfully, an uplifting ending! Thoroughly recommended.

Really not sure where to start with this book, except to say that finished it nearly a week ago and I'm still thinking about the characters.
I'm aware that many have gone into this expecting a historical mystery, like so many others. This is far more, it is earthy, raw and brutal. Nothing is alluded to, everything about Stockholm in this austere and deprived time is on show for us the most voyeuristic of us to devour. I don't think the story would work without this detailed characterisation and scenic description. We need to know just how desperate and depraved people were to be able to immerse ourselves in what is actually a cracking murder mystery.
It took me a while to become hooked but I felt this story got better and better as it progressed. The two main characters, were certainly no heroes, but I felt myself siding with them as they unravelled this mystery. I loved that the apparently separate story lines came together in ingenious ways but even then, the story still kept twisting and turning until the final lines. I'm not sure I could recommend this book to everyone due to the content but it's certainly going to be in my top ten for 2019

Mickel Cardell is a night watchman in Stockholm in 1793 summoned to pull a body out of the waste filled river. That might be a fairly common occurrence but this body has no arms or legs; they have been surgically removed one by one and the wounds sewn up as a form of extended torture. Wanting to know more, he finds himself involved with Cecil Winge, an ex-detective who is dying of tuberculosis and has been asked by the local police chief to investigate the case. So far we have a standard detective story trope; a body mutilated in interesting ways, a cerebral detective and a hard man sidekick with insights and local knowledge.

It's not a very pleasant story. Along the way to solving the crime Cardell is seriously beaten up twice although he already lacks an arm. Winge is steadily haemorrhaging and dying and Stockholm is buried in mountains and rivers of human waste. There are also only dilapidated buildings and slums, the supporting cast are villains and prostitutes and there is revolutionary unrest in the streets. You wouldn't want to watch this in smellyvision!

Just to make things worse, Winge has left his wife who he loves so that she is not subjected to his final disgusting illness and has gently inserted a potential lover into her company and created absences to further their relationship. You don't need more details but it's not fun.

There is also a suicide, a bungled public execution, a shadowy secret society and a series of graphic letters from the young man who is recruited to remove the limbs of the murder victim (and his tongue for good measure).

There is a subplot with a woman character who ends up being unfairly charged with whoring, is sent to the workhouse, brutally beaten, escapes, gets back to normality, fears she has been identified and will be rearrested and so buys some kind of acid to destroy her face. That's just to cheer the reader up between amputations.

It would be giving away too much to explain what finally happens to the mutilated man but it's pretty disgusting and when the detective and his sidekick track down the real killer it turns out his upbringing was to blame so they find a convenient way to have him executed without trial and Winge can die at peace.

And that's it really. It's not quite Scandinavian Noir but a rather stinking deep Scandinavian excremental brown. If you've got a strong stomach and you like violent detective stories this could be for you. And one other thing, you can read a lot of historical novels where the events and context are sanitised. At least this book gives you the real thing and if you can stomach the descriptions they are well described!

Here we have 18th century Stockholm in all its gory detail vividly described. I have to say this is not an advisable read for the squeamish.
In 1793 we find that Stockholm is a city where the lower classes are living in squalor and poverty and rebellion is rife on the continent and the upper classes are very nervous of it spreading to Sweden. The plot is relatively complex but comes together coherently as there are several threads to it. Four people living separate lives until something occurs which causes an interconnection between them.
A body horribly mutilated is fished from the lake by a one armed soldier Mickel Cardell and so it begins. The search for the identity and reason for the murder leads Mickel to uncover the very worst of Stockholm’s dark hidden world beneath the powdered facade of the nobility. Quite a difficult read for me due to its content however I will say realistic and well written.

I enjoyed this book a lot and would definitely recommend it. I did, at times feel the writing was a little 'off', which I something I have noted in other translated works and is probably just due to the shift from one language to the English.

I received an ARC from the publisher, through netgalley.

Dark, gruesome, fascinating and unique. Stockholm came alive to me and I loved the historical accuracy and the deftness of the plot.

Beautifully written too and well translated. A winner.

Sometimes it is more thrilling to know what's going to happen, than not to know.

This Swedish thriller set in Stockholm in 1793 is dark and wet and filthy and cold and creepy and sick and chilling and disgusting and dirty and muddy and bloody. It is excellent for a special type of escapism, being transported to a different country and time, to inhabit a world for a brief time each day that is 180 degrees different from your own.

This story ventures into many genres, historical fiction, thriller, crime fiction, horror and even true love and comes out on top in every case. The story begins in 1793 Stockholm when two children waken Mickel Cardell, to tell him that there is a body in the river. The one-armed ex soldier, known as the wolf, eventually retrieves the man. Well what is left of the poor bloke. He is without any limbs tongue or eyes. The police are called and ailing Cecil Winge, an ex watchman who has consumption, is a consulting detective to the police. He knows that this will probably be his last case so with the wolf at his side the watchman intends to discover who had kill this man and find out who he was in life.
The story drops back to a farmer’s young son Kristofer Blix, who wants better for himself so takes off to train as a doctor but he is ill prepared for the big city. Another tale follows the fortune of a young woman Anna Stina accused, charged and punished in the most horrendous way for something she had no part in. Four very different people, from very different backgrounds but each one will alter the lives of the others.
There are two more characters I have not mentioned, they are for the reader to find out themselves. If you ever wondered how a monster is made then you will find out in this book. This is an extremely gruesome story that some will really struggle with. It involves acts of deprivation and terrible cruelty. I was totally mesmerised with this author’s writing, brutal it was but what a story he told.
I really didn’t think that I could be shocked further but I was wrong. This is such an epic read where I became immersed in each persons story which were a catastrophe of errors. Absolutely outstanding, if you have the stomach for it!
I wish to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have reviewed honestly.

This dark historic thriller is set in Stockholm in 1793. In France the Revolution is underway and there are disaffected elements in Sweden who are inclined to follow the example of the French lower classes. Against this backdrop, a brutal murder is investigated, travelling back in time through the eyes of different characters to discover what happened.

In many ways this is a depressing read as the lives of the poor are so awful, but you have to keep reading to find out if there is light at the end of the tunnel. A challenging but worthwhile read.

Historical crime fiction novels typically lean towards the gentler end of the murder / mystery / suspense spectrum. Not this one. It is every bit as grim and grisly as a contemporary noir novel, and reveals characters as morally corrupt and callously cruel as any modern serial-killer thriller.

But there’s much more to this gory story than straightforward shock tactics – the bleak brutality of the time, the place and the prevailing personalities create an ideal backdrop to exhibit their exact opposite. In the worst situations, the light of the righteous shines the brightest.

However, I suspect that readers who enjoy less stressful historical whodunnits – like the Brother Cadfael or Shardlake series – might find The Wolf heavy going. It’s set in the squalid backstreets of Stockholm, during the final decade of the 18th century, amid a deprived population who’ve been impoverished by conflict and corruption. Our mismatched detectives are an antisocial intellectual with no future (he’s dying of consumption) and a crippled soldier who’s plagued by his past (alcoholic, violent, hopeless). Their gruesome task is to see justice done for a murdered man – tricky, as he’s been horribly tortured for months, mutilated beyond recognition. If that sounds pretty nasty… well, I did say it was strong stuff.

The storytelling, however, is simply superb. Author Niklas Natt och Dag abandons the conventions of a procedural investigation and instead presents a series of stunning character sketches. These propel the plot at a prodigious pace while vividly bringing to life the casual cruelty of the time, which in turn illuminates the lives of the pivotal players. A few of these people defy their destinies to prove Nietzsche correct – events do not overwhelm them and they are instead made stronger, tempered by pitiless adversity.

We’re shown the evolution of the mystery from multiple overlapping perspectives. Each episode reveals tantalising fragments of the truth but leaves other characters dangling in dire peril. This has to be the mostest page-turningest historical novel I’ve ever read.

Even so, there are moments when the story was all but submerged under a metric tonne of factual background. Some of it was crucial to understanding the subtle intricacies of the tale, especially the political situation which underpins the period. But the naval battle in particular was overlong, and added little to the narrative.

That flaw is more than counterbalanced by the simply brilliant final chapters. Many books are described as ‘unputdownable’ but in this case it was true: the ending is one of those conclusions where you can hardly bear to look but won’t sleep until it’s over.

Just for once, the people who hand out awards got it 100% right when they rated The Wolf as the best debut crime novel of the year.

9/10

Warning: Only read this book if you are of an extremely sunny disposition and not the least bit squeamish!
Stockholm, at the end of the 18th century: One-armed watchman Mickel Cardell is summoned to retrieve a gruesomely mutilated body from Larder Lake. Cecil Winge - unofficially appointed by Police Chief John Norlin and dying of consumption- asks Cardell to help him find the brutal torturer/murderer.
There are power struggles, poverty, squalor, corruption and old allegiances everywhere - life is cheap and expendable and the lucky (?) ones not yet dead or dying in the gutter are teetering on the brink of ruin. To quote: “Ragamuffins, paupers, vagrants and skeletal figures scurry around the corners, huddled as if to avoid the reaper’s harvest that draws ever closer.”
This is the bleakest book I have read since Coraghessan Boyle’s “Water Music”. Scandinavia is not usually known for its cheerful carefree nature, but take it back to 18th century Stockholm and you get a whole new dimension of “noir”. The only niggly bit is, that I would have preferred the Swedish place names used - e.g. Stadenmellanbroarna instead of the clumsy translation “City-between-the-Bridges”. I guess the publisher thought this too overwhelming for the reader, but it would have lent the story an extra dimension of authenticity.
This book presents a bloodcurdling stare down the well of human depravity and though one cannot really “like” it, it is an engrossing (and grossing-out) read.

Unfortunately I struggled with this book and could not get into it

I don't know whether it was the style of translation but the writing did not flow and didn't engage with me

I really struggled with this book and after several attempts at getting into it, sadly I gave up. It might be because it is translated from the original Swedish but the prose didn’t flow for me and I found it emotionless and unengaging. Not my cup of tea.

I found this book so hard to read at times and my attention was never fully on the story. I don't know if it was the style of writing or that there was so much to take in.
When you look back on the story as a whole you can see how all the pieces fit together. It obviously just wasn't for me hence only three stars given.