{"id":4656,"date":"2013-08-02T22:03:41","date_gmt":"2013-08-02T21:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/?p=4656"},"modified":"2023-11-04T09:21:49","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T08:21:49","slug":"indrek_hargla_-_apteeker_melchior_1_to_3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2013\/08\/02\/indrek_hargla_-_apteeker_melchior_1_to_3\/","title":{"rendered":"Indrek Hargla – Apteeker Melchior, 1 to 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nI have trouble finding Estonian fiction to read. Last summer I bought Indrek Hargla’s “Apteeker Melchior” series (the first three books), and quite enjoyed them.\n<\/p>\n

\nMelchior is the town apothecary in Tallinn in the beginning of the 15th century. He has a strong sense of justice and a keen brain, and therefore cannot help but get involved in solving the occasional mysterious murder.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe books are a nice combination of well-crafted murder mystery and historical novel. Hargla’s descriptions of everyday life in medieval Tallinn are evocative and appear to be thoroughly researched: we get to read about everything from meals to bathing habits.\n<\/p>\n

\nI wish the books had a better map of the city, ideally with an overlay of Tallinn’s current geography. The streets that Melchior walks, the houses and the back yards are all described very vividly, but since I am not a native of Tallinn this is rather a wasted effort without a map.\n<\/p>\n

\nI read the three books out of order (just grabbing one randomly from the shelf when I wanted a book to read) but looking back now I can see a trend from a slightly teacherly manner to “wilder” stories. Book 1 dealt with the murder of a master builder and mostly takes place among worthy guild members. Book 2 had adulterous monks and sightings of ghosts; book 3 had a gambling den, more adultery, amnesiac foreigners etc.\n<\/p>\n

\nAll in all: nice, entertaining, well written.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have trouble finding Estonian fiction to read. Last summer I bought Indrek Hargla’s “Apteeker Melchior” series (the first three books), and quite enjoyed them. Melchior is the town apothecary in Tallinn in the beginning of the 15th century. He has a strong sense of justice and a keen brain, and therefore cannot help but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4656"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18091,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4656\/revisions\/18091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}