This will surely go down as a modern classic. Set in late eighteenth century Sweden, we are cast amongst the privations of humanity. With every page you can smell the stench of the city, taste it’s acrid spirit and shiver with its icy cold. This is a murder mystery like no other with bleak, yet rich characters to explore. A brutal murder, drunkenness, whoring, corruption and monstrosities all combine to make this a book I couldn’t put down.

What an immersive and fascinating historical mystery. This tells the story of Mickel, the titular watchman, who discovers a body in the river with amputated legs and arms, no eyes and no tongue and the subsequent investigation into the murder in 1790s Stockholm. The narrative is told from three perspectives and the present tense is used to wonderful effect to really place the reader within the action. I loved the friendship between Mickel and Cecil and the way in which they support each other to try to solve the case. The pacing is perfect, building to crescendo and then switching perspectives to leave the reader on somewhat of a knife edge. All in all, I thought this was a fascinating read and I really enjoyed it.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This story was the stuff of nightmares. It has graphic descriptions of the baser sides of life. I can't say I enjoyed it but it was well written.

Brilliantly written and atmospheric. However, it was too unrelentingly gruesome and miserable, even for me!

This was one dark and atmospheric read! This is a very dark version of Sweden in the late 18th century. The characters of this book were central to my enjoyment of it. The violence really is grim but quite in keeping with the tone of the book. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

A dark, grisly read that had me skipping over the more gruesome passages. It took me a long time to get into this novel as the first section didn't grab me at all - I couldn't relate to the main characters or the level of violence. But once I reached the other narratives I felt much more of a connection to the story and the pace really picked up, with a pleasing tying up of all the different strands by the end.

A great historical read, very dark in places. This book is full of twists and turns and kept me guessing, and on my toes, until the end!

Warnings: Murder, description of surgical procedure, blood, rape, suicide and mentions of abortion.

This is a very dark and grim historical murder mystery. It shows the deepest depravity that  humankind is capable of but it also shows the depth of love and friendship that we are also capable of. The atmosphere that the author creates is astonishing, you really feel that you are in 18th century Stockholm. I think the best thing about this book is the characters, which is great because that is what really makes a book for me. The main characters, Cecil and Mickel have different skills and personalities but they seem to compliment each other well. They start as strangers united by a common goal and I think they become good friends as they get to know each other and the events they go through together.

Cecil reminds me of Sherlock and Matthew Shardlake in different ways. His observation skills as well as his sense of justice. Mickel seems to be as tough as nails but he cares deeply for the victim and wants to make sure justice is done for them.

I did find that some of the clues and leads that they discovered seemed to come a bit too easily but this didn't effect my enjoyment of the story.

Anyone who likes dark historical murder stories with interesting and complex characters and character dynamics should read this.

Swedish historical events in 1793

Mikel Cardell, the watchman, found a corpse in the water. He thought it was leftover meat from the butcher!  Not only is Cardell a crippled war veteran but was intoxicated at the time he made the discovery. He called in the police. One of the police investigators was Cecil Winge. The two become involved in the world of gruesome crimes and conspiracies.

The King of Sweden was already dead when Cardell discovered the dead body. He was assassinated in the masquerade ball, and the Crown Prince was too young to rule Sweden. His brother, Duke Karl, was the prince regent until the heir to the throne came of age. There was a rumour of attempting to poison the Crown Prince. 

That story was written intelligently with thrills and excitement. I recommend this excellent historical fiction.

Caesar XIII

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

The Wolf and the Watchman begins in Stockholm in 1793. Sweden is weakened by war and corruption. The king is in terror of a revolution like that seen in France and clamps down ruthlessly on all opposition. The poor and the weak are brutalised and demonised. But even in this dark time, the mutilated corpse discovered by watchman and former soldier Cardell suggests a crime of exceptional depravity.

He agrees to work alongside Winge, a clever and eccentric investigator brought in by the police to solve the crime. Winge is a man of fierce intellect, brought low by disease. He clings to Enlightenment values and insists that rationality is at the heart of human behaviour despite all he sees around him, and the contradictions in his own history.

The Wolf and the Watchman combines realism with a number of conventions from novels of the period – the remote and sinister mansion, the implausibly long letter which makes up a significant section of the novel, the consumptive genius, the rakes living precariously on gambling and debt, the horrors of the workhouse.

As I was reading I wondered if I was focusing on these tropes to try and distance myself from the terrible suffering portrayed in the novel. It is a (literally) gut-wrenching book and one that forces you to confront the worst of human behaviour.

The Wolf and the Watchman is beautifully written and vividly evokes the place and the period. It throws a startling light on a decaying political order. It’s definitely worth the read, if you have the stomach.

I just couldn't get into this book; don't know why.  I really did want to read it, but sadly I had reader's block.  What I did read was well-written, but I just wasn't 'grabbed".

This is an excellent read. from start to finish. It twists and turns and doesn't reveal the plot until the very end.

The novel is arrestingly atmospheric and vivid in its rich descriptions of the stench, poverty, and squalor of Stockholm in the late 1700's. A horribly mutilated body is fished out of a lake by a one-armed watchman. A dying lawyer-cum-detective becomes obsessed with solving the hideous crime. Together they work to identify the body and discover who murdered the man in such a gruesome manner. I enjoyed the way in which a close and trusting relationship develops between these two very different characters. A bleak tale of a city rife with poverty and corruption, desperation and despair. Morose and grisly but morbidly fascinating this is not a book for the faint-hearted.

A different type of crime fiction set in Sweden in Stockholm in 1793 when a limbless body is discovered by Watchman Mickel Cardell in a swamp. The case is given to Cecil  Winge an investigator who is dying of consumption. 
Sweden is in a dreadful state after the assassination of King Gustav, year’s of war, empty treasuries and is governed by self-interested nobles.
Together the men get involved in the seedy world of thieves, mercenaries and madams and this death shows the city is full of corruption. 
Cruelty seems to permeate ever level of that society as folk try to survive, as well as greed but surprising the novel also shows the capacity for love, friendship and a desire for a better future for all. 
As the men unravel the mysterious victim and how he ended up in that swamp, the letters of a hopefully young man bring the story full circle when he writes home to his sister. Occasionally in all this gloom and corruption there are humorous touches. 
An original and inspiring tale!

"She, a schooner, her foremast shorter than her mainmast, is still tied with her starboard side to the quay. There is no activity that he can see. Evening flâneurs are visiting coffee houses and wine cellars, loaders and quay labourers have returned home, the sailors have disappeared up the Stadsholmen alleys in search of company and entertainment. He walks by the gangway. Only one man can be seen on deck. With a look of concentration, he is lowering a lead weight into an ironclad casket. ‘Joseph Satcher?’""

A Netgalley book.
A wonderfully dark trawl through Sweden c. 1793 (the original title of the book when published in Swedish). One of the protagonists is in end-stage TB and the other has lost his arm during a hopeless war and is doing his best to drown his PTSD in alcohol. In the last days of an ethical police chief, the dying lawyer Winge, miraculously still walking despite his bloodied hankies, is asked to solve the mystery of a limbless torso that has been found on the shore of Stockholm's slum. For backup, he recruits the watchman of the title. 

I've seen complaints on Litsy that the book was too violent, or that the plot was too meandering. For me, the violence reflected the experience of the urban poor in the time. Women are accused of prostitution by the wealthy church for trying to make money when they have not enough to eat, and sent to spin for the state. People fake wealth through gambling and debt in a bid to avoid debtor jail. Medicine is crude but in the process of changing, and political power is buyable and frequently bought. It's a wide-ranging book, from the experience of supposedly 'criminal' women in the poorhouse, to the streets of Paris during the Terror. I thought it thoroughly well done, and it was sufficiently gripping for me to be afraid at some points to carry on for fear of what might happen to the characters next... It reminded me of Andrew Miller's work (perhaps most well-known, Pure).

"Winge steers towards death by the same compass that has shown his way his entire life: reason . He tells himself that all men will die and that all are dying. This helps. But when the night sweats come and his thoughts race wildly, it is rather the particulars of his own demise that haunt him and not the general principle. All the clinical details of phthisis. Will the infection spread to all joints and bone as sometimes happens? Will he pass silently in his sleep or in spasms and paroxysms? What flavour of agony awaits to be his? When nothing else helps, he tells himself that most of him already died the last time he saw his wife. But this is also little comfort, as that part of him that has gone on living seems the one that most clearly perceives the pain."

A well written historical story of Stockholm set in the late 18th century. Early one morning a watchman learns of a body in the river that he goes in to recover. It’s a shocking find of a mutilated body devoid of all its limbs, eyes and tongue. He takes it to the chief of police who assigns his chief agent (the Wolf) together with the watchman to bring the perpetrator to justice. In following their investigations and the subsequent seemingly unrelated stories of other characters the culture of the city of the time is brought to light. It is not a pleasant time of greed, debauchery, injustice and crime where the innocent can be condemned without trial and welfare institutions are run by perverts sadists and paedophiles under the blind eye of those in authority. Not a pleasant tale that is however enlightened by a feel good  ending with the perpetrator going to his execution happy to atone for his sins with an accomplice finding salvation and others finding a happier future.

Set in 18th century Stockholm, this is a brutal tale- full of torture and plenty of faeces. Not for the faint hearted but if you can stick with it and see past it, this is a brilliant dark tale.

This just wasn't for me. It was far too grisly, bloodthirsty and gruesome. The blurb compares it to The Alienist, it has nothing on this book which is one of my all time favourites. I received this as an ARC from Netgalley and I stuck it out to the bitter end but it was just horrific. I am afraid this is one author off my list. Obviously this is a personal viewpoint and there are certainly several favourable reviews of the book.  I might have given this one star I disliked this so much but I can see that the author has built thrill and horror in an intricate narrative

When a body is found in the lake on the outskirts of Stockholm, watchman Cardell must bring it to shore.  However the body is barely that, missing limbs, eyes and tongue it is the remains of a young blond man.  Stockholm at the end of the 18th Century is fearful, the aftermaths of the great fire that razed the city to the ground are evident, veterans of the naval war against Russia throng the streets and all are watching the revolutionary events in Paris with fear and trepidation.  Behind all this the rich live their lives of indulgence and, in the case of the Eumenides, debauchery and evil while the poor fight poverty and accusations.  Teaming up with dying lawyer Winge, Cardell vows to solve the mystery of the torso and so he is drawn into the rancid underbelly of Swedish society.
At firs this seems a relatively straightforward piece of historical fiction but it takes ever increasingly dark turns.  The characters are all flawed and shaped by their lives - Cardell in the war, Winge by his illness, Anna by illegitimacy and betrayal, Blix by poverty - and all link together in this sordid tale.  The translation is clear and simple, the writing shines and the sense of time and place are outstanding.

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.

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