The middle part of the trilogy of an aristocrat with a bloodthirsty appetite for delving into the wounds of Sweden's past.
Descend to the grave for the living, where only new wounds will cover the old scars!
Blood spurts from the bride's throat onto the chandelier after the wedding night, but is it really the fault of the deranged Count newlywed Erik of the Three Roses, whose cruel maturation in the Caribbean colony of rococo Sweden the author will recount first of all? Let that be investigated by Mickel Cardell, a bullfighter and tinker, who is as armless as the late Judge Winge - and as a war veteran, he has only one more! Luckily, Emil, the brother of his dead partner, shows up and would like to match him, but he doesn't have the insight or the stomach for it. Will they do as fearlessly in the new case as they did last year? And will the fresh mother Anna Stina, who has nothing to envy in the dens and dungeons, help them again?
In this eerie crime noir, the perpetrator is found sooner than usual, but it's a lot harder to figure out how to catch him. A quest lined with mazes, delusions and monstrosities merges into a sewer of ugliness carved perhaps directly from the canvases of Hieronymus Bosch. For the sick mind is above all Stockholm itself, the madhouse and grave of all hopes, profoundly immune to everything Enlightenment. The cold city of bridges has not the slightest interest in creating them even among the people, and so it remains a breeding ground of marasmus covered with sweaty glitter.
The middle part of the trilogy of an aristocrat with a bloodthirsty appetite for delving into the wounds of Sweden's past. The first volume, 1793 - The Wolf and the Drab, was named Book of the Year and Best First Crime Novel in his homeland.