If the debut novel of the young Swede Niklas Natt och Dag should have been described in one sentence, one would have to say that "1793" is like one of the early novels about Erast Fandorin, only noticeably darker and perhaps somewhat better.
Anxious in the autumn of 1793, when the bloody glow of revolution burns brightly over Europe, and since the death of King Gustav III, who fell victim to conspirators, a year has not passed yet, Stockholm coat (something like a lower-level guard), the one-armed former sailor Mickel Cardell catches out of the city. unusual corpse. The body - or rather, the little that was left of it - belonged to a young man who, during his lifetime, had both hands, both legs and tongue amputated successively, and had gouged out his eyes. The torturers cut off the limbs one by one, patiently waited for the wound to heal and heal, and then cut it again - and so on until the unfortunate one didn’t give his suffering soul to God.
For this terrible crime, Cecil Winge is taken - a young lawyer and a truthful intellectual who occasionally assists the Stockholm police in investigating the deadliest cases. And to help him called the very big guy Cardell, fished the body out of the water. The feverish acuteness of their investigation comes from the fact that Winge is dying from consumption and, in the opinion of the doctors, he should have gone to that world a long time ago. As for Cardell, he suffers terrible phantom pains in the missing hand, drunkenness and bouts of uncontrollable rage. Worse, the patron and friend of Cecil Winge, the Stockholm police master, is expecting resignation from day to day for his incorruptibility, and his successor, the famous embezzler and bribe taker, will most likely withdraw Winge’s powers and close the inconvenient deal. In a word, the earth literally burns under the feet of the heroes, and for the beginning it is vital for them to identify the dead person - but this is what turns out to be the most difficult.
Unlike "The Secret Place" of Tana French and "Europe in Autumn" Dave Hutchinson, pushing the limits of the criminal genre, "1793" is just a detective story, but a detective of the highest class. Clearly following the classical canon of genre in all its significant details - from a pair of detectives who are not similar in temperament or in manners to the intrigue literally to the very last page (if not the line), Niklas Natt och Dag at the same time shows how wide space for the author's maneuver this canon leaves. Perhaps the only bad news is that, due to the poor health of the main character, there is little hope of a continuation.
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