The Valkyrie Song

 

Thanks to the continuing popularity of crime/detective fiction, these days it must be difficult for up-and-coming authors to find some new twist that sets their work apart. There are, after all, only so many physical quirks and personality flaws you can give your central characters before it begins to get ridiculous. So, although the award-winning Craig Russell’s regular hero, Principle Detective Chief Commissar Jan Fabel, is introduced to us having ‘increasingly complicated’ relationships with the various women in his life – the angry ex-wife, the quiet daughter, the independent girlfriend –the distinctive selling points of this particular novel are its mildly exotic location –Hamburg – and its mildy kinky central concept of a particularly efficient female assassin. Beginning with the death of a fading English pop star, found in Hamburg’s red-light district, this is Fabel’s by no means easy attempt to end a particularly vicious East German Stasi project. Russell’s sharp, light prose (‘He didn’t look like a legal adviser, unless lawsuits in Denmark were settled in a boxing ring.’) and swiftly drawn characters combine with the small differences in the Polizei Hamburg, the city’s numerous locations and a well-judged tension to ensure an entertaining read. [Paul F Cockburn]