«1793» , Niklas Natt och Dag

What do you want from a historical novel, let's not say detective? Well, at least a little authenticity in the details and in morals, to understand that people living two hundred or more years ago, if they have cockroaches in their heads, they are other cockroaches, not modern, so that the characters do not look 100% popadans at once. Here even a modest knowledge of history rather hinder the reader to perceive the written, and if with the details of bygone eras author now, having the Internet on the side, much easier than the same author of the 20th or 19th century, some Flaubert, the features of manners described times must know, otherwise gets, speaking old-style, full confusion.

The situation is the same with this well-publicized book. At first, the first 100 pages are not bad at all. You walk with the characters through the streets and embankments of Stockholm. It's like the end of the 18th century, there's a bridge, there's a crossing, there's more wasteland, there's a wood, and this is a lake in which a corpse with severed limbs is swimming. Very nice - depressing, cold and nasty. But on page 101, there is a wake-up call, and not the first. One of the GGs, a consumptiony investigator, tells another GG, a former sailor and now a vice police "fighter" and volunteer investigator, how it is that he, consumptiony, became a volunteer bachelor with a living wife. Stop. Stop. Slow down! Late 18th century. Europe. A nobleman, even a lawyer, but a university graduate, a former schoolboy, catches his wife with an officer. What should be his actions, or even the actions of both men? Come to think of it. It is an undoubted challenge to a duel, and a duel itself, because the honor of both is violated, and so is that of the lady. She may even be there as an actress. You will object that nowhere does it say that Cecil Vinge is a nobleman, but he is a former schoolboy, and their morals regarding dueling were even more fierce. But the G.G. prefers to modestly pack his suitcase and retire, let his wife kind of enjoy life without caring about him, all the more morbid. Next is the reaction to the story of the sailor Mikel Kardel. Instead of cackling and asking, "And you chickened out, bro?" the sailor expresses sympathy. A manly hug and tears. Where did that drooling come from? That investigator, how does he catch criminals, if he does not dare to challenge the villain to a duel?

The reputation of the novel in my eyes began to decline rapidly. The detective element suddenly ends. Starts a completely independent story of a certain white-haired Johan, which not only begins six months before the main, so the only intrigue there is who this Johan, is not the victim from the first part? Again figuring out this not-so-important question, the reader is presented with the third part, the largest in volume, even less related to the first. Those who have read "Escape from Shawshank" or at least the episode of the escape from the Castle of If in "The Count of Monte Cristo" will not find anything new in the third part. The story is about a maiden sent to the Spinning House to serve her sentence for prostitution. The maiden denies the latter fact. The author believes the maiden. Then it occurred to me all the same to look in the book afterword, and then I was waiting for a surprise and unpleasant. And something like this all resembled from the beginning and how is it I did not see.

It turns out that the author is not filming the office with anyone, but with the very Fredrik Bachmann. And allegedly he and Backman discussed this future book almost every day for 10 years, as absurd as it sounds, until the author decided to transfer the discussed under one cover and publish. That is, Bachmann dug in decisively here, not stylistically, but with the plot and characters.

I'll explain that I've read exactly one and a quarter of Bachmann's book, which is enough to make me realize how cheap and faux-sentimental Bachmann is to the unassuming Swedish reader. That's where all the sentimental moments come from: the sickly and about to die investigator with his impossible principles that every gallows murderer must be listened to, pitied, "understood and forgiven" and then hanged, the English merchant who suddenly decided to drown himself, poor Johan, and the equally miserable maid and disabled vice cop Mikel Kardel, who is not ready to do his duty for the direct purpose of "well I pity those ladies". This particular absurdity is especially evident in the contrast after the third part, which tells of the terrible conditions in the Spinning House, where the workers are gagged to death, and do it with the same coats, in whose ranks our hero is a sailor, but here he is not, "I will get wages, but I will not touch girls", that is, he is as wimpy and clean-cut as his friend dying of consumption. Well, no one would keep a clean-cut guy like that on the police force.

But the girl, about whom half the book, suddenly does such an act (spoiler - killed a homeless man with quicklime), that you wonder why we even told about this girl, if it's like this, it's not a positive character at all?

Next we do get to the maniac, who is just as much of a sleuth as the others, but with peculiarities. But he, too, is "pitied" like the others. I'm sick of describing it all. He goes abroad to get an education, but instead hangs out in revolutionary Paris, returns home without a diploma, and his inheritance is stolen by his guardians, his father and mother's estate is in ruins, the roof is leaking, the peasants are gone, the barch is gone. And instead of running to the law and the king for help, the maniac works out the LGBT storyline. That's great!

And then there's the theme of human defecation. I must say that previously writers of historical novels somehow avoided this "important" topic because of aesthetic considerations, which modern authors now completely absent. So the contents of night pots are represented by this author in the widest range, even participating in the detective plot and unraveling.

To recap, to wrap things up. Potentially it could have been a good historical detective or moral history, but the author did not decide on the genre. I do not believe in the credibility of the described at all. I believe the author read a book about the Spinning House, but screwed up here too, as the only interesting historical character there, the police warden, who acted as a singer at the local opera, was left out of the story. But it's full of sentimental Bachmann-style nonsense. Full of plot bloopers for a detective book that are totally unacceptable.

For example, a half-ruined corpse from a year ago is mistaken for the body of a girl who escaped only yesterday. Yes, yes, that's right. Or poor Johan decides to fake his suicide as an accident. Sort of decides to cross from one Stockholm island to another on thin ice, falls through and drowns. So what does he do. Takes off and leaves his clothes on the shore and walks across the ice to the ice hole. Well, yes, immediately everyone decided that it was definitely not suicide. But he could have left a note among his things for "persuasion": "It was an accident, goodbye!"

Anyway, I was spitting by the end of the read. But in principle, readable, atmospheric and most importantly do not analyze the content.

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