The Carnival Master

by Craig Russell
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Maria Klee is still on sick leave. She cannot see herself going back to her job as a police detective in Hamburg. She hates herself and her life. She gives up on her therapy and goes to Cologne, hunting for the one person she hates more than herself; Ukrainian crime-boss Vasyl Vitrenko.

Her former boss, Chief Commissar Jan Fabel, is also marked by the cases that broke down Maria. He has decided to leave the police. He turns down an offer to be part of starting up a federal unit to support police forces all over Germany on complicated and multiple murder cases. As long as he is still attached to the police he cannot however refuse to read through the files Commissar Scholz from Cologne has sent in. For each of the yearly Carnival the past two years a woman has been murdered and a piece of flesh has been removed from the victims' bottoms.

The case in itself isn't at first enough to entise Fabel to go to Cologne, but when he realises this is where Maria Klee has disappeared to he decides to kill two birds with one stone. In the middle of what is the madness of the Carnival in Köln he has to attempt to protect the innocent and make sure the guilty are forced to pay.
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This is the fourth book about Jan Fabel by Craig Russell. I have read the previous three books and I like this series. The fact that it is set in Germany adds a new dimension; new places, new procedures and a new culture to get to know. Some things seem familiar though; Jan Fabel is a middle-aged, divorced man, finding it difficult to get his relationships to co-exist with his job. He is no cliché though, no alcohol problems or affliction for a certain type of music so really a new and interesting character to get to know and follow.

I recommend this series, but I do recommend starting at the beginning.

The series about Jan Fabel by Craig Russell consists of the following books:

Blood Eagle (2005)
Brother Grimm (2006)
Eternal (2007)
The Carnival Master (2008)