The Night Raven

The novel is set in Stockholm, Sweden, during the brutal winter of 1880, when shortages of food and firewood have pushed the city's poorest residents to the brink of survival.

Mika, a nearly thirteen-year-old girl who has grown up at the Public Children's Home and now counts as staff, is woken one night by knocking at the front door. A pockmarked boy hands her a newborn baby girl, still covered in the white, greasy film of birth. Before Mika can get his name, the boy warns that "the Dark Angel," a mysterious and feared figure, knows he took the baby, then flees. Mika glimpses a thin silhouette watching from across the street. Around the baby's ankle is a braided leather band decorated with tiny red flowers. Amelia, the woman who runs the orphanage, takes the baby. By the next morning, the leather band has vanished.

Mika works at the Chapel, a bar run by a man called the Priest. There she overhears two plainclothes policemen discussing a murder victim drained of blood whose dying words named "the Night Raven" as his killer. The Night Raven was a notorious serial killer who terrorized Stockholm for four years before being caught, tried, and beheaded in prison the previous November.

Constable Westerberg arrives to register the baby, and Mika provides remarkably detailed observations about the boy who delivered her. Days later, Detective Valdemar Hoff, a scarred, bearlike officer from criminal investigations, appears at the orphanage, drawn by Mika's mention of "the Dark Angel." He takes Mika to a cemetery crypt to view a murder victim named Augustin Roslund. Mika notes a ring still on the dead man's finger, suggesting robbery was not the motive. Valdemar explains that Roslund's killing resembles the Night Raven's earlier crimes: well-to-do men found with all their valuables intact.

Valdemar takes Mika to Långholmen Central Prison to examine Cell 115, where the Night Raven, arrested under the name John Almgren, was held before his supposed execution. A guard describes Almgren as skeletal despite being fed fatty pork and milk three times daily. The cell contains a sticky residue around the chamber pot cubby and a faint rancid smell, and the guard notes the prisoner repeatedly dislocated his own shoulders by throwing himself against walls. When Valdemar asks how Mika developed her sharp eye for detail, she erupts: She is an orphan girl whom anyone can do anything to, who would vanish into an unmarked grave if harmed. She pays attention because her life depends on it.

That night, the puzzle pieces snap together. The rancid smell is pig fat, saved from food the prisoner refused to eat. The sticky residue is grease. The dislocated shoulders are practice for squeezing through the narrow cubby opening. The greasy substance on the newborn shows Mika how fat protects a body from cold: A person smeared in pig fat could survive swimming off the island in freezing water. Mika suspects the Night Raven escaped before his execution. She leads Valdemar to Seraphim Hospital, where a doctor confirms the body from the prison weighed nearly 200 pounds and bore no injuries, contradicting the guards' account. The Night Raven escaped, and the authorities substituted another corpse to fake the execution.

Valdemar warns that if anyone discovers what they know, they will both be killed. He reveals the chief of police has deployed loyal officers to find and silently eliminate the Night Raven before the escape becomes public. Mika insists on continuing, and they shake hands on their partnership. For protection, she enlists Tekla, a seventeen-year-old former orphanage resident who leads a crew of young women involved in construction and criminal enterprise. Tekla agrees to provide backup but warns Mika never to ask anyone about the Dark Angel. She tells Mika she is "still a rabbit" and needs to learn to strike first, secretly slipping brass knuckles into Mika's coat pocket.

Amelia gives the baby her own surname, and Pastor Wangel christens the child Nora Ståhl. Meanwhile, in the orphanage archives, Mika and Valdemar discover that all three named victims served as foster parents to orphanage children. They find the record of Klara Lind, born in 1863, who was fostered in succession by each murdered man. Klara's first foster parents were Hannes and Maja Almgren, revealing that the Night Raven took the Almgren surname from his foster family. His real name is John Lind, and Klara was his sister. Hannes contracted tuberculosis, Maja sent Klara back to prevent infection, and both Almgrens later died. Klara never found another good home.

Hanna, a girl from the soap factory where Klara worked, visits the orphanage to reveal the truth. She and Klara cleaned cisterns together at night. Klara tripped due to her limp, was cut by sharp mixer blades, and bled to death on the factory floor. The foreman ordered Hanna to say nothing, and Klara's body was dumped in the woods. John did not kill his sister. When Hanna told him how Klara died, he vowed revenge against the foster parents who had exploited her.

Mika then finds her own file in the archives. A second document lists her full name as Mika Moonwind and shows someone has paid 100 crowns per year for her care, an enormous sum for a girl told she has no family. At the bottom of the file she finds a braided leather band with red roses, identical to the one from Nora's ankle. These discoveries link Mika and Nora in ways she cannot yet explain and reveal that Amelia has been hiding information about both of them.

Edvin, a young boy at the orphanage who earlier identified John Lind from a photograph as his father, has given Mika cryptic clues about where the man hides: "like a rat and a king at once," reachable by "walking on water," where there is "a fire that never goes out." Mika realizes this describes King's Tunnel, a sealed seventeenth-century passage beneath Norrbro Bridge built as a royal escape route from Stockholm Castle, where the castle's heating warms the tunnel walls.

Mika devises a bold plan. She instructs Valdemar to arrange a meeting at the police station with the chief of police and Warden Falk, the chief prison warden, and to have his old, deaf horse Rutger harnessed to a carriage stocked with a hacksaw, lamp, and handcuffs. She withholds the full plan, knowing Valdemar would never agree. At the meeting, they confront the officials with the truth. Mika offers to deliver John that day on one condition: He will be imprisoned under his real name, not executed. When the chief signals an armed guard, Mika places a stick of dynamite on the desk and claims 200 kilos more surround the building. The chief relents.

Outside, Tekla's team detonates a barrel on a nearby rooftop, panicking the mounted pursuers' horses while deaf Rutger stands firm. After a chase through the city, Mika leads Valdemar beneath Norrbro Bridge onto the frozen river. They saw through the grille of King's Tunnel and find homeless children huddled inside. In the farthest corner crouches an emaciated John Lind. Valdemar arrests him. John asks Mika to look after Edvin and admits Klara would not have wanted his revenge.

Valdemar departs with the prisoner while Tekla's crews guard the route from the rooftops. That night, he visits the Chapel to confirm the delivery succeeded and gives Mika half his monthly pay. Walking home, Mika notices the first signs of spring. The orphanage will survive. Yet much remains unresolved: her identity as Mika Moonwind, the leather bands linking her to Nora, Amelia's secrets, and the still-unknown Dark Angel. Mika declares herself no longer prey but a hunter.