The Wolf and the Watchman: A Novel

The Wolf and the Watchman is a novel about a crime that occurred in late eighteenth century Stockholm. The Wolf is a Sherlock Holmes figure, Winge. The Watchman is a war amputee named Cardell. The crime is a horrific mutilation of a young man, obviously done while he still lived. The book has four sections, the first and last are the two detectives uncovering the persons associated with, and the motive for the crime. The second is the tale of a man forced to assist, and the third is a tale of a young woman who is caught up in it. The squalor and stench of Stockholm in the 1790s is as much a character as any. It always seems to get worse and weighs on the reader as much as the tuberculosis does on Winge, who is dying slowing. The characters are always dirty, disease-ridden and barely able to keep one step ahead of starvation and death. That seems to be the main theme of the book. Life is unbelievably bad, mankind is coarse and duplicitous, and everyone can be trusted to take advantage of any weakness of any neighbor or acquaintance. In a word, we struggle in filth and then we die.