Bellman Noir is a is a trilogy of historical crime fiction, by Swedish author Niklas Natt och Dag. The three books are each titled after the year in which they are set:
- 1793, known as The Wolf and the Watchman in English.
- 1794, The City Between the Bridges.
- 1795 (no English title as of August 2022).
Stockholm during the final years of the 18th century is a wretched hive. King Gustav III has recently been murdered at a maskerade ball and his young son crown prince Gustav IV, is too young to rule. Gustav III's ill-adviced war against Russia has emptied the State's treasuries, and what little remains is soon squandered by his underage son's greedy guardian, the de facto ruler of the nation.
Mistrust and paranoia run rampant. From France come rumors of revolution. Life is hard, death is ever present, and blood runs as freely as the booze. As described under Carl Michael Bellman, from where the series takes its name, four major forces rule 18th century Stockholm; angst, lust, booze and death, and these books have plenty of all.
1793In the autumn of 1793 a body is found floating in Fatburen (the Larder), a lake fouled with all manner of waste, human, animal and anything in between. The body is horribly mutilated, its tongue, eyes, arms and legs all cut off. Even worse, the wounds seem to have healed, meaning the man was kept alive for months during the amputations and some time after.
Night watchman Jean Michael "Mickel" Cardell, a war veteran who is himself lacking an arm, is the poor wretch roused from his drunken slumber and tasked with retrieving the body from the foul waters. He leaves the body with a German undertaker and thinks his job done, but finds himself unable to let the victim's fate go.
Meanwhile, Stockholm's police force is occupied with chasing conspirators and revolutionaries, which the corrupt regime sees everywhere, and its watchmen rather arrest bread-stealing petty thieves and girls forced into prostitution, so the Chief of Police enlists Cecil Winge, a lawyer-turned-consultant detective to do one last job despite his declining health.
Mickel Cardell, unable to forget the fate of the mutilated man, teams up with Cecil Winge in the hopes of bringing the unknown victim's killer to justice.
Their paths cross with Anna Stina Knapp's, a young girl unjustly sent to the workhouse for fornication, a crime she did not commit. Her paths, in turn, cross with a young medical student fallen on hard times.
From these four perspectives a tale of murder, depravity, revenge, abuse, need and despair is uncovered, in a filthy, grimy era that seem like miles from the splendor of Versailles.
1794A mother mourns her daughter, brutally killed on her wedding night
1795Jean Michael Cardell, one-armed and badly burnt, stalks the City between the Bridges at night, a vigilante doling out his personal form of justice to rapists, over-controlling fathers, pimps and others he find deserving.
These books provide examples of:
- * The Dragon
- In 1793 Magnus, a huge, vicious dog, functions as Johannes Balk's dragon. He's the one keeping Blix from escaping: The dog is given Blix's scent, and Blix is told that Magnus will be let loose if he tries to escape. The dog has a taste for human flesh, since he's being fed the limbs that Blix amputate from Daniel Devall
- In 1794 Jarrick for Tycho Ceton.. He abandons Ceton at the beginning of 1795.
- In 1793, it turns out that Johannes Balk is the man behind Daniel Devall's mutilation, by buying up Blix's debt and
- In 1794, we have Tycho Ceton.
- * Handicapped Badass: Mickel Cardell, the one-armed night watchman. He lost his arm in Gustav III's ill-adviced war with Russia. He has a prosthetic arm made of oakwood in its place, which he uses as a
- In 1793, it turns out that Johannes Balk is the man behind Daniel Devall's mutilation, by buying up Blix's debt and
- In 1794, we have Tycho Ceton.
