A splendid story, with an excellent translator, which is definitely not for the faint of heart. Some parts need reading in a well lit room with one eye closed as the detail is, in places, the stuff of nightmares - truly. Seems from the story that Sweden was very like the cesspit England was in the 18th Century and that surprised me.

The characters and the places could easily have been plucked from England at that time. Overall, those characters and places are very well described and come very much to life, which, for me, added to the depth of the tale.

If you are reasonably robust, you will be engrossed by this book - I most certainly was.

The absolute best thing about this is the main protagonist - he is nearlyat death's door - the consumption that plagues him was fatal in those days of the early 19th century - and his brain power matches the allure of sherlock holmes' - his boss is about to be pushed, but relies on his out-sourced activity to help with a peculiar case - and, then he meets a watchman, a maintainer of the peace , ranked below police - a former soldier who recognises some of the features of the mysteriously dead corpse. Their pairing is great - both are intrigued and so are we. The plot is a little stretched, but really effective.

This novel is gripping, the people we read about have true depths of character and make you have feelings about them. There is horror, honour and loads of tension. Just a brilliant read, enjoy.

thanks to John Murray Press for the review copy in exchange for honest review.

A book like this does not come around often so when it does I"m so happy I don't want it to end. This story hits all the points a good book needs.

When I get a review copy of a book I generally avoid looking at information about the story before I read it. I'd rather find out for myself what a book is about. In this case I knew that it was a story about the investigation of a murder in 18th century Stockholm. For a while I found the story a little unclear but the characters seemed interesting and it was certainly enough to keep me reading.

There are two main characters here, Mickel Cardell and Cecil Winge. As the book develops they become increasingly interesting and well rounded characters. Cardell was a watchman , has lost an arm in war and is a somewhat physical man. Winge was a brilliant lawyer and is a consulting detective to the police. Cardell is the first person in authority to find the body - a somewhat unusual one! Winge is asked to look at into murder by the police and they work together on the case. As a team they work together very well indeed.

The book is actually split into four parts with the first and last part dealing with the investigation into the murder. Parts 2 & 3 deal with other people whose stories seem likely to come together. As I read through this story I realised just what a rich cast of characters it contains. Despite being a historical story - a genre I read less often - I became caught up in the events of the 18th century.

I guess this is something of a caveat. This book is extremely vivid in its depiction of life in the time and place. There are times when I think I would have to call it vividly unpleasant. It's not a book I will forget in a hurry. However equally there are some scenes I now have in my head that I would probably prefer not to have there. I must stress that the descriptive writing here is excellent but I do think that some people could find it too vivid.

I think this book will be appreciated by many. On the other hand there will be people who simply do not like the gritty nature of the narrative at times. I am a little unsure which camp I fall into however I have no regrets about reading it. The characters alone carry this book very well for me particularly Winge and Cardell.

A relentlessly bleak tale set in Sweden in the last decade of the 18th Century. The story opens with the discovery of a body in a swamp in the Swedish capital city of Stockholm. The body has been horrifically mutilated. It has no arms or legs and the eyes, teeth and tongue are also missing. Further examination shows that the injuries were inflicted over weeks, even months.
The corpse is dragged from the River Lander by a city watchman, Mickel Cardell, himself badly wounded, having lost an arm in the Russo-Swedish War of 1788–90. Since then, King Gustav III of Sweden has been assassinated and years of foreign wars have left the country bankrupt and ruled by an uncaring elite with Gustaf Adolf Reuterholm at its head. Sweden's rulers are paranoid about their subjects as it's only a few years since the Fall of the Bastille and the French Revolution.
The murder case is given to lawyer turned investigator Cecil Winge, who is dying of consumption. Aided by Cardell, Winge sets out to establish the identity of the dead man and discover the reason for this gruesome killing.
In the company of this unlikely pair, we enter into the dark underbelly of Sweden's capital city, taken from police stations and jails to bars and brothels, meeting city officials, thieves, barflies, mercenaries, prostitutes and their pimps and madams - and everywhere there is the stench of corruption.
Although there are glimpses of love, kindness and friendship, most of the narrative is filled with acts of cruelty, especially in the case of the two other narrators of this story, Kristoffer Blix and Anna Stina Knapp. Kristoffer is a young man, who has moved from his father's farm into the capital city. In letters to his sister back home, we discover that he is more given to drinking an enjoying himself rather than pursuing his planned career as doctor. His louche lifestyle and lack of money leads him to the threat of a debtor's prison. Kristoffer's only means of escape comes when he is told he can be free of all debts if he dismembers a body.
Anna is an independent young woman whose life is placed in danger after the death of her mother and she ends up in the workhouse, spinning thread as a means of gaining her freedom. After resisting the advances of a childhood friend, she upsets her parish priest who labels her a whore. Anna is sent to the workhouse where she spins thread as a means of earning her freedom. But one of the guards has marked her as his next sexual conquest and Anna plans a desperate escape.

This debut novel, by Niklas Natt och Dag, can be viewed as a historical noir mystery, but in many ways it is more of a social document, detailing the lives of the lowest of the low in 18th Century Sweden. It's a mix of disturbing Gothic horror story and 18th century picaresque novel. The language is rich and the writing captures the style of the era in which it is set. For me, it was a sometimes a struggle to read and the pace is noticeably slow, which makes it a book to be savoured rather than rushed.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers John Murray Press for an advance copy of this book in return for an unbiased review.


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