The historical novel greens its old glories as a bestseller genre thanks this time to a Niklas Natt Och Dag Transformed into el Ken follett XNUMXst century while it seems to lead the world narrative of this genre of historical fiction.
It all started with that mesmerizing novel, 1793, and it seems to follow the same path with the new that Niklas' imaginary spills over us as narrative manna towards a brutal trilogy, the stockholm trilogy. The question is to provide that surplus value that confuses us beyond the very genre for which we feel predilection. It is nothing new that the combination can lead, when mixed just right, into great cocktails. Suspense is black in fashion, it always goes well.
In his thriller aspect (something that goes beyond the translation of the term "suspense" as it points to fear detached from evil), Niklas makes us feel the cold of other times like a frozen breath on which life or death depends ...
Niklas Natt Och Dag's Top Recommended Novels
1793
Remember well the date made as the title of this novel, because giving the name of the author you may be stuck for life. Nothing to see 1984, of the already more easily pronounceable George Orwell.
Jokes aside, we are facing one of those explosive discoveries of the black novel. And that for a Swedish writer to stand out in any branch of the police genre, the thing has to be impressive. And of course, the question is the historical aspect that delves even deeper into the darkness of the past, into the notion of a world subjected, in terms of criminal investigation, both to science and cabals as well as superstitions and myths.
Nothing better to talk about a psychological thriller that leads you to suffer that tension of a past world where justice could move along unpredictable paths between wars between countries and also internal struggles within each country. Because the context of the novel brings us closer to a crucial moment in the Sweden in the late XNUMXth century. The war with Russia and its subsequent famine ultimately led to the assassination of the monarch Gustav III, with the addition of lurking shadows of new revolutions from southern Europe.
Among such incessant movement we know who will be the conductor of the plot, the attorney Cecil Winge tasked with solving a murder with an unexpected ally Mickel cardell.
Cardell discovers a mutilated victim and turns the investigation over to Winge. But both end up, as I say, joining forces to determine the nature of the crime and the murderer in question. It is clear that the scenario chosen by the author is the best to feel in the flesh of the reader all those tensions from the social to the political that embark them in lurking dangers. Also taking advantage of the stereotype of the northernmost Europe to provide cold and chiaroscuro to the matter.
Duly placed in the antecedents and from the atrocious murder, the agility of the author serves us, with brushstrokes of brilliant historical scenery, the entire microcosm of characters in the disparate social strata of Sweden in those days. The underworlds intermingle with the most elegant palace spaces. The truth connects with the most evil interests and wills capable of everything for a vague promise of prosperity.
With the magical rhythm of this new author we go through moments of rapturous psychological tension, but we also enter a time that at times, perhaps measured in focus, is in tune with the same current human nature.
Since the world is world, reality needs its counterweights to find balances, sometimes petty, which are assumed to be buried in consciousness. At least on the part of those who want the state of affairs to move towards sustainability in moments of intense anxiety.
1794
Cardell is that eccentric character almost necessary in any plot that seeks a most sincere and precise mimicry with the reader. Because in the oddities we identify ourselves more than in the mediocrities of the standard behaviors and thoughts that no one really sticks to in their inner heart. Perhaps that is one of the great attractions of this series. Cardell for ever!
The reunions with friends (even more so these days) fill us with life and joy. Even more so when such special moments have been lived with them. We meet again with Jean Michael Cardell and Anna Stina Knapp in bustling Stockholm at the end of the XNUMXth century, a city absolutely marked by the bloody whirlwinds of the French Revolution.
Although the case of the mutilated body had given a certain meaning to his life during the previous year, Mickel Cardell is once again in a state of absolute prostration, from which he will only emerge thanks to an unexpected twist of fate. The intricate investigation of the cold-blooded murder of a young woman on her wedding night will drag Cardell into the turbulent abysses of a Swedish society more corrupt than ever.
1795
In the latest installment of Niklas Natt och Dag's acclaimed trilogy, evil stalks the winding alleys of Stockholm, embodied in the figure of the shady and vengeful Tycho Ceton, who prepares an astonishing and perverse plan to plunge the Swedish capital into infernal abysses.
Two lucid investigators have been trying to catch the sinister Ceton for more than a year: although Emil Winge dedicates all his efforts to solve the case, the ghosts of the past haunt him, the authorities have more important matters to attend to and his faithful squire, Mickel Cardell, is busy searching for Anna Stina Knapp, missing after the death of her twins.
Meanwhile, hell looms inexorably...
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