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The Valkyrie Song - Craig Russell - 05/09/09
'The heavens are stained with the blood of men as the Valkyries sing their song' says the old Norse saga ...
And, boy, is there some shedding of blood in Craig Russell's grisly and atmospheric new murder mystery set on the mean streets of Hamburg.
If you are looking for a devilishly cunning plot, a truly gripping storyline and a mind-blowing maze of entertaining twists and turns then Chief Commissar Jan Fabel has just the case for you.
He is on the hunt for a ruthlessly efficient female murderer who has turned killing into a fine art ... in fact, her blade slips so sweetly into her unsuspecting victims that they never feel a thing.
First on the list is ageing English pop star Jake Westland who is taking an impromptu jaunt around the notorious red light district of Reeperbahn when the killer targets him.
'Tell them it was the Angel who ripped you ... tell them that before you die,' whispers the smiling assassin as Westland watches steam fume from his rent belly in the cold winter night.
It's just ten years since the 'Angel of St Pauli' went on a killing spree in Hamburg; all her victims used prostitutes and all ended up with their throats cut – and castrated.
She was never found ... so could this new murderer be the same woman or, more likely, is it another equally vicious female assassin?
Links start to emerge with other seemingly unrelated events – the murder of a journalist in Norway, the death of a Serbian gangster and a project by the former East German Stasi involving a highly trained group of assassins, known by the codename Valkyrie.
Fabel also has to contend with his complicated relationships with his partner Susanne and his ex wife Renate who blames him for their daughter's ambitions to be a police officer.
Meanwhile the Valkyrie is proving to be the most terrifyingly methodical killer he has ever had to deal with and catching up with this ultimate avenging angel could be more dangerous than simply tracking her down.
Russell's own love affair with Hamburg helps him to bring the city to life ... the distinctive red buildings that seem 'knitted rather than constructed' and the seedy Herbertstrasse where prostitutes sit behind glass plying their trade 'like joints of meat in a butcher's window.'
He also paints a chilling picture of those other coldly clinical 'traders' – the East German secret police who coerced one in fifty of their own citizens to spy on friends and family with the promise of money or promotion, and who stole underwear from dissidents in case they ever needed to be hunted by tracker dogs.
With a superb cast of characters and a startling and totally unexpected denouement, this is another first-class thriller from the master of suspense ...
(Hutchinson, hardback, 18.99)
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Wednesday 23 May 2012
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