This brilliant Swedish debut - impressively translated by Ebba Segerberg - transports some of the atmosphere of Nordic Noir to a historical setting as a wounded veteran and a consumptive lawyer pair up on the trail of a monstrous murderer. From well-rounded characters to viscerally intense atmosphere, there’s much to admire in this gritty, filth-caked and gloriously gory historical thriller; plumbing the corrupt depths of 18th-century Stockholm.
The year is 1793, Stockholm. King Gustav of Sweden has been assassinated, years of foreign wars have emptied the treasuries, and the realm is governed by a self-interested elite, leaving its citizens to suffer. On the streets, malcontent and paranoia abound.
A body is found in the city's swamp by a watchman, Mickel Cardell, and the case is handed over to investigator Cecil Winge, who is dying of consumption. Together, Winge and Cardell become embroiled in a brutal world of guttersnipes and thieves, mercenaries and madams, and one death will expose a city rotten with corruption beneath its powdered and painted veneer.
The Wolf and the Watchman depicts the capacity for cruelty in the name of survival or greed - but also the capacity for love, friendship, and the desire for a better world.
Publisher: John Murray Press
ISBN: 9781473682146
Number of pages: 416
Weight: 280 g
Dimensions: 196 x 130 x 30 mm
A remarkable debut novel - Sunday Times
A gripping, shocking read - The Times
This gripping historical thriller surely announces the arrival of a fine new European talent. Vivid and absorbing - Observer
The latest Scandi sensation - Sunday Times
Niklas Natt och Dag takes the contemporary Scandinavian crime story and gives it a startlingly gruesome historical twist . . . Natt och Dag spares us nothing, detailing horror after horror in his unflinchingly muscular prose - Guardian
Natt och Dag's description of the rattling, lung-shredding tubercular cough is truly hideous - a haunting portrait of physical disintegration that's not easy to forget - Dan Jones, Evening Standard
Swedish noir doesn't get much darker - Herald
A superbly detailed historical mystery - Irish Times
A well-depicted historical murder mystery filled with cruelty as well as warmth and humanity - Best Debut, Swedish Academy of Crime Writers' Award 2017
A historical thriller that is unparalleled in suspense and literary quality. It's raw, beautiful, heartbreaking and extremely captivating until the very last page. The Wolf and the Watchman deserves a place among the classics of the genre - Erik Axl Sund, author of The Crow Girl
An unexpected masterpiece, a wild and unusual mix of genres that in one fell swoop succeeds in renewing the entire crime fiction genre - Arne Dahl, prize-winning and Swedish #1 bestselling author of the Sam Berger series
Brawny, bloody, intricate, enthralling - and the best historical thriller I've read in twenty years - A J Finn, #1 bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
This is a thrilling, unnerving, clever and beautiful story. Reading it is like giving a little gift to oneself - Fredrik Backman
An impressive thriller - well paced, well structured and deeply unsettling . . . political scheming and psychological angst, grand theories on the state of man, a fiendish masterplan and a love story all in one - TLS
Niklas Matt och Day's debut novel follows in the footsteps of the great Swedish crime writers. Uniting historical fiction and murder mystery, this graphic and brutal horror tale twists and turns towards its... More
4.5 stars
In chaos theory, there is something called the butterfly effect. The idea is that one small action can greatly affect the outcome of a later, seemingly unrelated event. This novel is full of little moments...
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Gritty, full of shit and piss, dark and twisting.
This is my favourite book of 2019, at the moment.
As I've probably gone on at length somewhere else, I'm not a thriller/mystery reader by nature, but this...
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