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The Ghosts of Altona

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The Ghosts of Altona

By: Craig Russell
Narrated by: Peter Noble
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About this listen

Jan Fabel is a haunted man. Head of the Polizei Hamburg's Murder Commission, Fabel has dealt with the dead for nearly two decades, but when a routine enquiry becomes a life-threatening - and life-changing - experience, he finds himself on much closer terms with death than ever before.

Two years later Fabel's first case at the Murder Commission comes back to haunt him: Monika Krone's body is found at last, 15 years after she went missing. Monika - ethereally beautiful, intelligent, cruel - was the centre of a group of students obsessed with the gothic.

Fabel reopens the case. What happened that night when Monika left a party and disappeared into thin air? When men involved with Monika start turning up dead, Fabel realizes he is looking for a killer with both a hunger for revenge and a taste for the gothic.

What he doesn't know is that someone has been aiding and grooming a deranged escapee as his own personal tool for revenge. A truly gothic monster to be let loose on the world.

©2015 Craig Russell (P)2015 WF Howes
Crime Fiction Suspense Haunted Fiction Mystery

Critic Reviews

"Russell scores highly with his atmospheric portrayal of Hamburg and its dark river Elbe, as well as with the intelligence of his plots." ( The Times)
"Craig Russell is a great writer." (Peter James)

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Narrator

Sean Barrett narrated the previous books. Would not listen to anything with Peter Nobel again.

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You have to be patient with this book

Overall a good entertainment, despite its few defects.
It starts with a bang but then right after it Craig Russell serves us with a long description of a near death experience that is, to put it politely, boring that I had to fast forward to another chapter. Actually, I had to do it on several occasions throughout the whole book.
The intended surprising ending is not really that surprising and the whole retrospective of the events 15 years prior to the killings is somewhat dull.
Craig Russell could also improve his random characters description. Women in his stories are usually "pretty" or "good looking", men are "well built" or "muscular" with smooth skin or something like that or people working at the architect's office "looked like taken from a model agency". The latter was actually repeated from his previous Jan Fabel novel, The Valkyrie Song.
That's pretty lame, Mr. Russell and I'm sure you can find some better adjectives in your vocabulary.

In some reviews for this novel, other users complained about Pete Noble's performance. I must say that it felt annoying at the beginning and combined with absolutely boring descriptions of events I was about to request a refund. Maybe it's also a side effect of being used to Sean Barrett's narration. After few chapters, it gets fine to a point where one could actually think of listening to some other stories read by Mr. Noble.

Like I said in the title, be patient with this novel, all in all it's a good entertainment.

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