Books
Jan Fabel books in order: the complete series
Looking for Craig Russell’s Jan Fabel books in order? Look no further!
Half Scottish, half German, Jan Fabel is a police officer in the Hamburg Murder Squad who, alongside his colleagues, investigates compelling cases that often involve a strongly historical or mythological element.
Set in modern Germany, each novel mixes history and politics with crime and asks questions about what it means to be European in post-war times.
Dark, menacing and graphic at points, the Fabel thrillers offer something different for crime fans looking for historical and cultural details amongst their murders.
Here are the Jan Fabel books in order.
Craig Russell’s Jan Fabel books in order:
Blood Eagle by Craig Russell
1. Blood Eagle (2005)
Hamburg: Two women are killed in the same horrific, ritualistic manner. It seems clear that a serial killer is at work, selecting victims at random and living out some twisted fantasy.
The murderer taunts the police with e-mails – but, as Jan Fabel and his murder team investigate further, nothing is clear cut or as it first seems. They are drawn into a dark half-world of Viking myth and legend, of obscure religious cults, of political intrigue and of a violent struggle to seize control of the city.
As Fabel desperately races to track down the killer before more killings take place, he and his team come face to face with a cold, brutal menace they could never have predicted. A greater evil than they could ever have imagined.
Brother Grimm by Craig Russell
2. Brother Grimm (2006)
A Hamburg beach: a girl’s body lies, posed, on the pale sand, 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, the names ‘Hansel’ and ‘Gretel’, rolled tight and pressed into their hands.
As it becomes clear that each new crime is a grisly reference to folk stories collected by the Brothers Grimm, the hunt is on for a serial killer who is exploring our darkest, most fundamental fears. A predator who kills and then disappears into the shadows. A monster we all learned to fear in childhood.
Eternal by Craig Russell
3. Eternal (2007)
Two high profile victims – a former Left-wing radical turned environmental campaigner and a prominent geneticist – 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 and he 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.
The Carnival Master by Craig Russell
4. The Carnival Master (2008)
The Cologne police know a woman is going to die. They know the day it will happen. And they’re powerless to stop it.
They call on an outside expert: Jan Fabel, head of Hamburg’s Murder Squad and Germany’s leading authority on serial killers.
Fabel is on the point of leaving the police for good, but Carnival in Cologne is a time when the world goes crazy, and he is drawn into the hunt for the Carnival Cannibal. What he doesn’t know is that he is on a collision course with a crack special forces unit from Ukraine and a disturbed colleague with a score to settle.
Fabel finds himself on a trail of betrayal and vengeance, violence and death. And once more he faces his greatest enemy. The true Master of the Carnival.
The Valkyrie Song by Craig Russell
5. The Valkyrie Song (2009)
After a gap of ten years, a female serial killer – the Angel of St Pauli – again makes the headlines when an English pop star is found in Hamburg’s red-light district, dying of the most savage knife wounds. Jan Fabel is called in to investigate.
Links emerge with a series of apparently unrelated events. A journalist murdered in Norway. The death of a Serbian gangster. And a long-forgotten project by East Germany’s Stasi conceived at the height of the Cold War, involving a highly-trained group of female assassins, known by the codename Valkyrie.
Fabel’s hunt for the truth will bring him up against the most terrifyingly efficient professional killer. The ultimate avenging angel.
A Fear of Dark Water by Craig Russell
6. A Fear of Dark Water (2011)
Just as a major environmental summit is about to start in Hamburg, a massive storm hits the city. When the flood waters recede, a headless torso is found washed up.
Initially, Jan Fabel of the Murder Commission fears it may be another victim of a serial rapist and murderer. But the truth of the situation is far more complex and even more sinister. Fabel’s investigations lead him to a secretive environmental Doomsday cult called ‘Pharos’, the brainchild of a reclusive, crippled billionaire, Dominik Korn.
Fabel’s skills as a policeman are tested to their utmost as he finds himself drawn into an unfamiliar, high tech world of cyberspace, where anyone can be anybody or anything they want.
And he quickly realises that he is no longer the hunter, but the hunted.
The Ghosts of Altona by Craig Russell
7. The Ghosts of Altona (2015)
As head of the Polizei Hamburg’s Murder Commission, Jan Fabel is used to dealing with the dead. But when a routine inquiry turns violent and takes him to the brink of his own death, he emerges a changed man. Fast forward two years, and Fabel’s first case at the Murder Commission comes back to haunt him.
Monika Krone’s body is found at last, fifteen years after she went missing. Monika – ethereally beautiful, intelligent, cruel – was the centre of a group of students obsessed with the gothic. Fabel re-opens 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.
There you have it – all Craig Russell’s Jan Fabel books in order! How many have you read? Let us know in the comments below…
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