Jan Fabel thought he was finished with death. Instead, while he is preparing for a new career outside the police, a Cologne murder detective asks for his help in tracking down the Carnival Cannibal, a terrifying serial killer who has killed each year for three years at the start of Cologne's world-famous annual Carnival. Maria Klee, Fabel's deputy, is close to mental breakdown and on extended sick leave. Unknown to anyone, Maria also heads for Cologne to hunt down a different, even more dangerous killer. One with whom she has a score to settle.Taras Buslenko, a Ukrainian special-forces commander prepares his hand-picked undercover spetznaz unit for a 'black' operation into Cologne. Their aim: to end, with extreme prejudice, the rule of an ex-pat Ukrainian crime-boss of legendary cruelty. Their orders: to let nothing or nobody get in their way. Three paths converging on Cologne at Carnival at a time when the world is traditionally turned on its head and Chaos rules. And everybody hides behind a mask. Fabel finds himself on a trail of betrayal and vengeance, violence and death. And once more faces his greatest enemy: the true Master of the Carnival.





Two high profile victims - a former Left-wing radical turned environmental campaigner and a geneticist researching the possibility of inherited memory - are found murdered within 24 hours of each other. Both men have been scalped. Forensic tests reveal that single red hairs left at each scene belong to neither victim, but were cut from the same head - twenty years earlier. Jan Fabel and his murder team find themselves under political and media pressure to track down a killer whom the press has already christened 'The Hamburg Hairdresser'. Connections in the victims' pasts begin to emerge, but Fabel's team is working against the clock. Fabel is caught in a web of intrigue, obsession and revenge that seemingly spans sixteen centuries. He must discover the crucial link between an ancient mummified body, a long-disbanded terrorist group and its infamous leader and a killer who believes he has been reincarnated to exact a terrible revenge on those who betrayed him in a previous life.






A girl's body lies, posed, on the pale sand of a Hamburg beach, a message concealed in her hand. 'I have been underground, and now it is time for me to return home...' Jan Fabel, of the Hamburg murder squad, struggles to interpret the twisted imagery of a dark and brutal mind. Four days later, a man and a woman are found deep in woodland, their throats slashed deep and wide, the names 'Hansel' and 'Gretel', in the same, tiny, obsessively neat writing, rolled tight and pressed into their hands. It becomes clear that each new crime is a grisly reference to folk stories collected almost two hundred years ago by the Brothers Grimm. The hunt is on for a serial killer who is exploring the darkest, most fundamental fears hidden in ancient fairy tales. A predator who kills and then disappears into the shadows. A monster we all learned to fear in childhood.





blood eagle


The message was sent to Kriminalhauptkommissar Jan Fabel by email.

'Time is strange, is it not? I write and you read and we share the same moment. Yet, as I write this, Herr Hauptkommissar, you sleep and my next victim still lives. As you read it, she is already dead. Our dance continues…'

The same gruesome ritualistic method of killing. The same mocking tone in the emails. It all points to the same killer. But there is no precise evidence to link the two cases, except for the tantalising email.

In BLOOD EAGLE, Craig Russell introduces us to a new detective hero, Jan Fabel - half-Scottish, half-German - a man of conscience and imagination.

Russell has also created a richly textured scenario where the city of Hamburg plays a central rôle - a city of contrasts and shadows.

BLOOD EAGLE is a violently exciting thriller. Fabel's desperate attempt to solve the case before more victims are discovered gradually uncovers layer upon layer of intrigue. How can he track a murderer who leaves no trail, whose victims seem purposefully random and whose motive reaches far beyond greed and lust, into the darkest recesses of the human soul?