A dark and disturbing, very well-written and translated, novel set in late 18th Century Stockholm. King Gustav has been assassinated, paranoia is rife and, as the Revolution tears Paris apart, Sweden fears that the violence will spread from France. Against this background a city watchman pulls a body from the fetid lake, a corpse that has had his limbs amputated and his eyes and teeth removed. The watchman, Mickel Cardell, a one-armed veteran of Gustav’s ill-fated war with Russia, is thrown together with Cecil Wings, an investigator who is slowly dying from consumption, in a race to identify the mutilated man and bring his murderer to justice. This may not sound pleasant, and it is not, it is harrowing but also haunting and absorbing. The mis-matched investigators are compelling characters and the first section of the book is as good a procedural as I have read recently, albeit a very unusual one.
The novel is however, split into four sections. The second section takes the form of a series of letters as a young dandy chronicles his descent into poverty and squalor. The third section tells the story of a young woman, Anna Stina, mistreated and unfairly condemned to a workhouse prison. These middle sections of the novel are almost as gripping as the main story but, for me, they broke up the rhythm of the plot. The stories are intrinsically linked to the central one but I would have preferred to have had them as more regularly interspersed subplots rather than as distinct, separate ‘parts’.
I knew next to nothing about this period of Swedish history but Niklas Natt och Dag brings the period to life, the sights and smells, the trauma and atrocities. There is a description of a naval battle that is as vivid and frightening as anything I have read on the subject. So, while I have problems with the structure of the novel, its power is unavoidable. It will stay with me for a long time and I thank NetGalley and John Murray Books for the opportunity to read it.

DNF. A slow start and not very intriguing characters, I'm sorry to say I won't be finishing this book. While I feel bad for requesting and then not finishing ARC's, there are too many books out there for me to read instead of powering through with one I'm not enjoying. A slow pace, a plot that's taking too long to come to light, and I'm not gripped at all. Disappointing, but overall I think it's just not my type of book.

Fans of long unfolding litery fiction such as The Luminaries could really sink their teeth into this quicker, brooding atmospheric read.
The writing is solid, the story is solid and I can see it being a popular 2019 choice.

I was sent a copy of The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag to read and review by NetGalley.
I found this to be a very compelling read but it is certainly not for the faint hearted! There is a lot of content that is quite hard to bear, I almost had to read through my fingers at times and wanted to look away from some of the images conjured in my mind! The novel has an intricate plot told from the viewpoint of several characters, though never in the first person, and is laid out in four parts which all weave together as a whole. Set in Sweden in 1793 the author brings to life the baseness of the times with vivid descriptions that transport you easily into this world. A great story, beautifully told despite the unsavoury content – an engrossing historical thriller that will stay with you for some considerable time.

t is 1793 and over in France, the peasants are revolting. In Stockholm, unrest is fermenting. This is not surprising; the streets are full of excrement. Cruelty and debauchery abound. This is a world where thieves and brigands prosper and the only ones worse are the rich who preside over them, directing the action like puppet masters at a cruel feast.

This book does not stop short in its graphic and sometimes very hard to stomach description of the conditions on the streets, the brutality and the sheer horrendous life of the poor, the sick and the infirm. Mickel Cardell is a watchman, fit only for this lowest of jobs, clearing the streets of the worst of low- lifes and miscreants. Usually drunk, the one-armed watchman is stumbling through the streets when he fishes out a body from Lake Larder. This is a body like no other he has ever seen. Appallingly tortured, it is immediately clear that this person must have suffered terribly.

The police chief at Indebetou House assigns the case to Cecil Winge, a lawyer with a reputation for standing above corruption. But Winge is dying from consumption; this will be his last case.

Both Cardell and Winge know only too well that there will be forces at play who do not want them to succeed.

The book is in four sections. The first three tell a different story, and the fourth draws together the disparate elements into a whole.

As they begin their investigations the reader is introduced to a number of very striking characters. Kristofer Blix is a young man of pleasing disposition who has left his home in the country to go to Stockholm, with the aim of becoming a surgeon.

We meet him through the letters that he writes to his sister and learn of how he is inveigled into bad company and learns to gamble, trick and thieve with the rest of the town’s badly behaved young braggarts. It is this behaviour that will lead him down a desperate path.

Anna Stina makes the mistake of spurning a man’s affections and his revenge is to call her out as a whore. From that moment her life is doomed and she is imprisoned in a spinning workhouse where her gaoler is unremittingly sadistic and the women have little chance of ever going free.

Both Blix and Anna Stina will impact on the investigations varied out by Winge and Cardell, alongside the story of a man who must surely be the greatest villain to ever grace the pages of a book.

The relationship between Winge and Cardell grows and shapes itself into an unlikely friendship and esteem.

These two men, from very different backgrounds are the only hope for justice in an otherwise black, bleak world and it is watching that friendship and respect grow in the course of their investigation that provides a little hope for the future.

Niklas Natt och Dag has created what is undoubtedly the darkest, most gruesome book I have ever read. It is so dark that I am having difficulty deciding to recommend it. Yet the writing is excellent, the story-line exceptional and the rare moments of redemptive behaviour shine through like beacons of light in a dense fog.

He has an amazing eye for detail and his prose is cutting, his images stark and brutal. The pace of this book is slow but it pulls you in. Each character is another layer of the story. Every action has a consequence we later discover. Once you understand the story, you are sucked in and never able to let go.

Verdict. The most haunting, brutal, sadistic morality tale I have ever read. It goes onto my must read list, but be warned, this is not a book for unicorn lovers.

This was one hell of a bleak, dark and despairing read. I don't think its possible to 'enjoy' a book who's pages are crammed with the very worst of humanity, but nonetheless, this is an incredible read.

The writing is brilliant. Every page draws you deeper and deeper into the darkness and depravity of 18th century Stockholm. The story is led by two brilliant main characters, Cardell and Winge. One is dying of consumption, and is driven to find a murderer in his dying days. The other is driven to redeem what he feels is hole in his own soul.

The crimes committed are stomach turning. At times the reading becomes difficult - its very hard to comprehend the level of atrocities committed to these pages.

As the book progresses and the plot thickens, the cleverness of the writing becomes apparent. There's an interlinked of 3 separate stories which eventually lead us to the executioners block.

A brilliant read worth all the praise it has garnered. Genuinely look forward to whatever comes next from the author.

My thanks to John Murray for an eARC via NetGalley of this award-winning work of historical fiction set in 1793 (its original title) by Niklas Natt Och Dag.

It was translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg. I have read a number of Swedish novels translated by Segerberg and consider her very accomplished in not only translating the words but capturing the spirit of the original narrative.

Stockholm, 1793. One night a limbless body is recovered from the Larder Lake by Mickel Cardell, a watchman. Cecil Winge, a former lawyer who is now dying of consumption, is asked by the police chief to investigate the case. While brilliant Winge is limited by his health issues and so engages Cardell as his assistant.

The descriptions of life in 18th Century Sweden are very vivid and the author doesn’t spare the reader in terms of what are at times stomach-turning details of poverty, violence and illness. When the narrative moves back in time to a series of letters written to his sister by Kristofer Blix, a young man seeking his fortune, I thought that it might prove just too much.

Yet as graphic as some aspects were it was redeemed by Blix’s perspective. At one point he writes: “It is said that innocence, once lost, can never be regained, and this summer has stolen my dreams from me. How could I ever feel happiness or joy again after what I have seen and done?”

After we leave Blix we move further back to the tragic story of a young woman, Anna Stina, who after rejecting the advances of a suitor, is accused by his parents of prostitution and sentenced to a workhouse. Another harrowing tale unfolds. Finally, we return to Winge and Cardell and the original mystery that ties these narrative threads together. In the background is the awareness of the French Revolution and the effects that it had upon the rest of Europe.

Without doubt this is a graphic and gory novel but it is a magnificent work of historical fiction that does not hesitate to portray the past with a shocking authenticity and to consider the question of how monsters are created as well as the redemptive themes.

The publishers, John Murray, are an imprint that has been in existence since 1768. They know both quality and timelessness. Given its philosophical musings combined with a powerful visceral drama ‘The Wolf and the Watchman’ could easily become a classic. It certainly is a masterpiece.

It’s 1793. Sweden is a major military power in the region and has recently been at war with Denmark, Norway and Russia. Internally the king has been assassinated. Revolution is breaking out in France and there are fears it will spread throughout Europe. Life, it is fair to say, is not a bundle of laughs.

When the limbless corpse of a young man is pulled from the sewerage that pools in the rivers that Stockholm is built on, Mickel Cardell, a drunken watchman, ends up working with the lawyer, Cecil Winge, to find out who is responsible for the crime.

You could reasonably say that this is a detective story. In Winge it has a detective and, eventually, the crime is solved, but this is a detective story like no other I have ever read. Winge’s investigations take the reader into the underbelly of late 18th-century Stockholm with a degree of detail that means I would not encourage you to read the book too soon after a full meal. Sexual sadism, common or garden sadism, brutality, starvation, fraud, robbery, rape – these are the everyday facts of life and Niklas Natt och Dag spares us no details. Cardell and Winge are both, in their own ways, trying to be good people, but they admit that their city is, in truth, beyond redemption.

The story should be profoundly depressing, but somehow it is not. Cardell and Winge are both fascinating characters. Cardell has lost an arm fighting the Russians and is constantly haunted by the guilt of surviving a battle that saw his closest friend die. Winge is dying of consumption. Both seek some sort of redemption by solving this crime, the more so as they come closer to understanding the prolonged horror of the victim’s death.

Winge is a rationalist, convinced that some sort of order can be imposed on the world by logic. Cardell is more emotional. Neither alone has any hope of success, but together they make progress.

The characters they meet on the way are as crucial to the success of the novel as is the plot. There is the young would-be surgeon, who loses his money in a gambling fraud and is trapped into becoming complicit in the long slow death of the victim. There is the young woman who turns away a man's advances and, in revenge, is denounced as a prostitute. It is the meeting of these two which provides one of the few genuine opportunities for redemption in the book. (It's a measure of the general misery that the act of redemption involves suicide, but then we can't have everything.) And there is the evil villain – a man so comprehensively repellent that only a detailed back story including his even more repulsive father makes him at all credible. Sadly the quality of the writing means that he is all too credible indeed.

Yet, against a background of almost unremitting bleakness, The Wolf and the Watchman allows moments of light, the more intense for the darkness that they illuminate. Cardell finds the opportunity to save one innocent life, Winge discovers that sometimes rationality has to give way to the imperative to do the right thing. One of the guilty is punished, which is, as I’m sure Winge would argue, is better than nothing. One, at least, of the innocent is saved (as are several of the not-quite-as-guilty – but it’s the 18th century, what did you expect?)

Stockholm remains a mix of great beauty and incredible squalor. The corruption that taints every layer of society is about to be challenged as Europe trembles on the brink of Revolution and War (though an interlude in Paris makes us realise that one set of vices will simply be driven out by another). Winge, waking covered in blood will be dead in days, if not hours. Cardell, by contrast, may have found redemption in this life.

This is not a cheerful book, but it is a very, very good one. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

A stunning book. A body is found without arms, legs, tongue, teeth and eyes. Cecil Winge (the wolf) asks help of a Watchman in finding out what has happened. This takes us on a journey through their, the instigator, the surgeon, his wife and others' journeys through 1793 a time of revolution in France and the possibility of the same occuring in Sweden.

Loved it.

My thanks to Netgalley and John Murray for giving me the opportunity to read and review an advanced copy of this novel.
This is a historical novel based in Scandinavia during the 18th century.
It is a multi-faceted book well worth the read - if you have the stomach for it, I wouldn't recommend reading it in bed before sleep - you may not get any!
This is not from the same stable as Georgette Heyer or her ilk this is a deeply disturbing but gripping tale.
I give it 5 stars and look forward to more from Niklas Natt och Dag

This is not my usual genre but I was in the zone. I just had to keep on reading and turning the pages faster and faster. I just had to know hence another late night for me.
Aa historical crime thriller that is set in Stockholm in the 1790's. It features a lawyer who is suffering a slow and painful death by consumption and a one armed city watchman. They are investigating the bizarre and brutal murder of a man. The killer has removed his limbs. This writer brings this story to life, the atmosphere and the details, be warned some of it is very graphic. If this is a historical crime thriller then I definitely want to read more. I must also add that the translation of this book is exceptional. I loved this book and would definitely like to read more from this author. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

I don't think "enjoyed" is the right word for how I felt about this book, with its horrific descriptions of torture and the general despair of life in late 18th century Stockholm if you were poor.
However, the wonderful descriptive writing,
( congratulations to the translator) compelling mix of history and odd glimpses of friendship kept me reading to the end and feeling almost sad to leave Cardell and Winge.

A very interesting Historical Scandinavian crime novel . A dismembered body is pulled from the river by a Watchman who has been drinking , he then teams up with an investigator following the trail back to where and why the horrific amputations had been performed . A very good read.

Having read and enjoyed Wolf Hall, most of the Shardlake series by C J Sansom and many crime thrillers set in modern times, I am used to descriptions of vicious punishments and death. This book is in another league of violence. It has to be the most gruesome story I have ever read, full of the most sadistic scenes of torture and depravity. There are times when exactly what happens to someone under torture is best left to the imagination rather than described in gory detail. Shame because it starts well, the main story is a strong one and the tale is set in an interesting period of Sweden's history, when the country has been bankrupted by a recent war with Russia. The translation is also excellent.

The Wolf is Cecil Winge, an ex-lawyer, who has been given an unusual murder case by a friend in the Stockholm police. A badly mutilated body has been found immersed in a lake by local guttersnipes. It is discovered that the body was dismembered limb by limb over a period of time while the victim was still alive. Dying of consumption, Winge is determined to solve the crime before he dies. The Watchman (Mickel Cardell) is first seen as a drunken duty-shirker who has to be persuaded to visit the mutilated body. As an ex-soldier who has seen what people can do to each other in the name of patriotism, he is keen to assist Winge in his mission.

The first part of the book flows well but that changes in part two, when the focus abruptly changes to young ne'er-do-well and trickster Kristofer Blix, who starts narrating his story by means of a series of letters to his dead sister. This sudden change makes the book disjointed and his story soon takes an unbelievably sadistic turn. After a few pages of young Anna Stina's story of poverty and sickness on the shores of the Larder lake in part three, my interest was lost completely.

Although you could appreciate Winge's desire to find the murderer, there were no characters in this story to really relate to or even sympathise with because their stories are all so grim. There were no moments of light relief, just more and more scenes of struggle, illness and depravity. The frequent introductions of new characters, who did eventually link up, was disruptive and the whole story was deeply disturbing. Not for the squeamish!

I confess I found it difficult to make my way through the whole of this book.
For a start, I was thrown by the title, which led me to believe the book revolved mainly around the two characters of the wolf and the watchman, whereas they each occupy a quarter of the story, the rest following two other equally important characters. So most of the time I spent reading the other two sections I was also wondering when the story was going to get back on track from this rambling diversion. It's also slightly unfortunate that the book shares a title with a 2014 father-and-son CIA memoir.
The story itself is relentlessly bleak and disturbing - a tale of violence, corruption and oppression with no respite. Even Shakespeare knew to put a little light relief into his tragedies for contrast. These four people do not encounter a single character who will offer any kindness, compassion, charity or hope.
The book itself could do with some serious proofreading - I'm putting this down to it being an ARC yet to go through proofreading and formatting.
The translation by Ebba Segerberg is well-written and flows well: for me, it's the mark of an expert translation that you forget while reading that it is a translation. Personally, I think it would have helped retain a sense of place if the street names had been left in the original rather than all translated, but that's possibly a minor point.
Cruel, brutal, dark and relentless. Only read it if you have a strong stomach.

Received ARC from John Murray Press and Netgalley for honest read and review.

Set in Sweden in 1793 this centre's around a couple of dark characters in Nickel a Watchman and Cecil an Investigator.

This is quite a dark book set in a bleak time in Sweden and it had me hooked from the beginning. The two of them are trying to find a murderer and are having to look in all the most gruesome of places or meet with most unruly people in order to find the killer.

Really interesting characters and settings which made the book a joy to read.

The year is 1793 and we are in Stockholm. The story starts with the discovery of a mutilated corpse in a river. The corpse is eyeless, without a tongue, and the limbs have all been cut off. Cardell, a former watchman in the city of Stockholm pulls it out and together with Cecil Winge decides such a terrible death has to be avenged. The history of how the body comes to be in such a state is a complicated one involving several tragic tales including those of Klix, a young man seeking his fortune and Anne Stibe, a young girl wrongly accused of whoring.

An immense amount of research has clearly gone into this book. The detail is excellent about life in Sweden at that time. However there should be a warning on the cover. It is extremely graphic with detailed and gruesome scenes of torture. These are I think, quite unnecessary. It is bad enough knowing that a man's tongue has been cut out without having to read about the exact means by which this was done. Also I have never read such a scatalogical novel. There is shit everywhere and we are treated to descriptions of this which are truly disgusting. So it is with regret that I can only give this 3 stars despite it being a good story and well written. I can't imagine anyone actually enjoying the act of reading this book. If they do they must have stronger stomachs than me. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

I received a free review copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest unedited feedback.

Four years after the storming of the Bastille more than a year after the death of King Gustav III, paranoia and conspiracies are Stockholm’s daily bread. The threat of violence is all around as ordinary citizens feel increasingly vulnerable to the whims of the powers that be.

When Mickel Cardell, , finds a mutilated body floating in the city’s lake, he feels compelled to give the unknown victim a proper burial. For Cecil Winge, lawyer turned consulting detective to the city police, a body with no arms, legs, or eyes is a formidable puzzle and one last chance to set things right before he loses his battle to consumption. Together, Winge and Cardell scour Stockholm to discover the body’s identity Elsewhere in the city , Kristofer Blix leaves the family farm for the dubious charms of the city, with ambitions of becoming a doctor. In his letters home to his sister he tells of his wild times and misfortunes, events which will lead him down a treacherous path.
In another part of the city, a young woman is consigned to the workhouse after upsetting the parish priest, her plan to escape becomes urgent when a sadistic guard decides that she will be his next victim.
Over the course of the story, these characters collide and cross paths in unforgettable ways. Am exceptionally dark tale of 18th century Stockholm.

I am currently part way through reading this novel, but I have chosen to submit my review now as I am not sure I will be able to finish it.

I enjoy historical fiction and Scandi-Noir, so I thought that this novel would be right up my street.

I enjoyed the way the characters were depicted, and some of the historical details were well observed. However, I have found this novel to be just too violent and brutal for my tastes.

As I say, I am a keen reader of a variety of crime fiction, including both thrillers and police procedurals. The start of the novel was fine, a body is found, brutally mutilated and it’s the job of our protagonists to figure out what happened. So far, so standard. However, as they continue on their investigation and we discover the horrific and sustained torture of the victim I began to find it more than a bit distasteful. (This also follows some fairly brutal and and horrific violence happening in ‘real time’ - eye balls popping out, bones crunching and blood covering the floor for example).

However, it was what comes next that was the real nail in the coffin for me. The narrative abruptly stops and instead we are reading letters written from the feckless and immature character who is to become our tortured victim. Knowing what happens to him was just too horrific for me. I had no desire to read on and presumably discover the full and sordid details of his violent death. For this reason I think it is unlikely that I will finish reading this novel.

This book brilliantly well done as Scandinavian historical fiction, it was dark and grim and the central crime was weird and creepy. If you are a fan of detailed crime epics and period drama type novels you will adore this book.