The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag (John Murray, 2019, £9.99), the translation of a 2017 Swedish debut novel, is an historical horror novel as detective masterpiece. Set in 1793 Stockholm, its path to the whys and who is a brilliant one. It is shot through with the horror not only of the original particularly vile crime but, more generally, of a society presented as universally harsh, corrupt, bleak, cold and filthy. This is not a book to read if you want a comforting view of human nature. Betrayal of both purpose and individual is to the fore, as is cruelty, notably involving women. The savageries of “justice”, crime and war are to the fore, as are those of the treatment of the poor, the vulnerable and children.

The two protagonists, Mickel Cardell, a war-crippled watchman offering rage and shrewdness, and Cecil Winge, a consumptive investigator, find themselves in conflict with just about everyone. The prose is taut, the interaction of narratives and characters very skilful, the descriptions and set-pieces striking, and the pace takes you along. You do want to know what is going on. Be warned, though, this is not a comforting read, so make sure you are not depressed when you start. For visitors to Stockholm, the particularities of the 1793 setting are instructive as the city has known no war-damage since: “Night reaches over the waves towards the Quayside … Out of the alleys of the city, shadows rise in answer.” This writer is a strong one, but certainly not easy, and that lasts to the very last page. The turns of the plot are gripping.

A Corruption of Blood by “Ambrose Parry” [Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman] (Cannongate, 2022, £8.99) is the third in a series set in another historic city, in this case Edinburgh in 1850. The plot revolves around the fate of babies who are “farmed”, adopted or killed. There is also discussion of the harsh treatment of women, from inheritance to venereal disease. There is a mixture of real characters — notably the doctors Elizabeth Blackwell, James Simpson and James Syme — and fictional counterparts. The plot is very good and holds the reader’s interest although the writing fails adequately to capture the different social registers of accent. There can be a lack of tautness, in part due to excessive and unrealistic explanation as in:

“He thinks that the Church still has too much administrative power when it comes to dealing with the poor,” Sarah said, as though Raven was in need of schooling on the subject. “The Poor Law makes provisions for the infirm but not the able-bodied unemployed; abandoned women with children receive no special consideration. Mr Hamilton favours a secular system of standardised state relief,” she continued …

Fortunately, this constipated style of reported speech does not prevent more vigorous writing nor ruin the very good plot, which rewards attention.

Final Acts. Theatrical Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards (British Crime Classics, 2022, £10.99) is a first rate collection of fourteen short stories held together by the theme of theatre. A brief introduction ably sets the scene by discussing book-length works, before noting that short stories set in the world of the stage are not as plentiful. The first two were very pre-World War One in tone, Baroness Orczy and A.E.W. Mason separately offering different takes on jewel-thefts. Neither offers a great story, but these are happily competent. Prefiguring John Dickson Carr with Henri Bencolin, in the use of a wise French detective, Mason has dreams play a role: “It is curious the brain working whilst the body sleeps, the dream revealing what though cannot recall.” Anthony Wynne’s “The Dancing Girl” is a very clever misdirection largely set in the world of the aristocracy and their hangers on. The apercus include “Men who drank red wine habitually were ignorant as a rule of the profound simplicity of white, that quality which transcends all the vintners’ descriptions”. Marguerite Steen’s “In View of the Audience” takes us into a murderous living nightmare in a disused theatre. Brilliantly haunting, with the deadly ghost in the open.

Ably set in the tension between playwright and actor-entrepreneur, Dorothy Sayers’ “Blood Sacrifice” is an excellent story full of wry observation: “Mr Garrick Drury (Somerset House knew him as Obadiah Potts, but he was none the less good-looking for that) … had the luck to embark on his managerial career at a moment when the public had grown tired of gloomy Slav tragedies of repressed husbands … Mr Drury (forty-two in the daylight, thirty-five in the lamplight and twenty-five or what you will in a blond wig and the spotlight) … ”. Brandon Fleming’s “The Wrong Make-Up” is a genuinely clever and economical story that does not reveal its 1941 date. In another wartime story, Ernest Dudley deals with the theft of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Subsequent stories by Barry Perowne, Ngaio Marsh, Roy Vickers, Bernard Farmer, John Appleby, Julian Symons and Christianna Brand maintain the quality. Moreover, the range of material is impressive. I had read the Brand before, but not the others. Aside from items from the Evening Standard, that from the Gloucester Citizen (the Farmer piece, a gentle reveal) is typical of the ability to draw on unfamiliar sources. Psychology can be to the fore, as in Roy Vickers’ “The Lady Who Laughed”.

I prefer this series to his lighter and slighter Baby Ganesh Agency

The same series has produced an edition of John Dickson Carr’s (writing as Carter Dickson) 1934 classic of the impossible crime The White Priory Murders (£9.99). I had read it many years ago and it richly bears rereading. With references to detective plays and novels, there is an archness, but this is a triumph of the genre. Sir Henry Merrivale is the cantankerous detective. It might as well be Gideon Fell, as there is a similar perspective: “Do you believe in the devil as a human entity, that listens at keyholes and taps at doors and moves people’s lives like a set of dominoes? … ” Carr plays fair whilst offering an array of clues, confusions, solutions and problems. Timings, motives, a barking dog, deception and an outcome that works all add to the pace.

Martin Edwards appears here again, this time as author of Gallows Court (2018; 2020 edn, Head of Zeus, £8.99), a fiendishly complicated and very brilliant Rachel Savernake novel set in London in 1930. Again, there are comments about the genre, as when one of the characters suggests, “Brilliant amateurs belong to the storybooks”, and another remarks, “Only lately have I developed a taste for Mr Austin Freeman and Miss Sayers”. There is an apt reflection on the world of promotion and office in the person of the mediocre Sir Godfrey: “His own career was testament to a gift for exquisite timing worthy of a test match batsman. Having acquired more medals than wounds during the Great War, he had left the army before the ink was dry on the armistice, and secured a post as assistant commissioner at a time when active-service counterparts of similar ranks were too weary or flu-ridden to contemplate peacetime.” For the law: “Was it a family trait to patronise women, she wondered, or simply something lawyers couldn’t help?” For all-too-many of those we all loath: “Charm oozed out of him like sweat from a lesser man’s pores.”

Vaseem Khan returns in The Lost Man of Bombay (Hodder and Stoughton, 20922, £16.99) to his excellent Malabar House series, with his female police protagonist Persis Wadia navigating the complexities of the city in 1950. I prefer this series to his lighter and slighter Baby Ganesh Agency crime series. Malabar House is stronger on the personalities and politics of the police than on its personal dramas, but it provides interesting stories, in this case the discovery of a corpse in a Himalayan cave opening to a puzzle about a possible serial killer targeting Europeans in Bombay. Good period and place detail. The writing is good, and some of the remarks amusing, as with the Indian Chronicle: “From its inception, it had set its stall out for the masses. Its headlines were lurid, its reportage to be taken with a pinch of salt. It had found its niche early on and occupied it with the smug shrillness of a second wife.”