Eternal by Craig Russell

'We are eternal'. 'The Buddhists believe that each life, each consciousness, is like a single candle flame, but that there is a continuity between each flame. Imagine lighting one candle with the flame of another, then using that flame to light the next, and that to light the next, and on and on forever. A thousand flames, all passed from one to another across the generations. Each is a different light, each burns in a totally different way. But it is, nevertheless, the same flame'. 'Now, I'm afraid, it is time for me to extinguish your flame. But don't worry... the pain I give you will mean you will burn brightest at the end.' An environmental campaigner and former left-wing radical is murdered, his body scalped. When a second scalped murder victim, a geneticist researching the possibility of inherited memory, is found, the media latch on to a new serial killer. Jan Fabel and his murder team have nothing to go on other than a single red hair left as a signature at each scene, each hair cut from the same head, at least twenty years previously.;Connections begin to appear: a long disbanded terrorist group and its infamous leader; a mummified body over 1500 years old; and a killer who believes he has been reincarnated to exact a terrible revenge on those who betrayed him in a previous life.

This was the second of Craig Russell's books I've read and although the storyline is generally good, I just don't find them an easy read. This one was particularly slow and I'm not sure if it's because it's Germany-based as opposed to the usual British or American based novels we all generally read. Either way this one had a fantastic surprise ending that at the very least kept me gripped for the last few pages.

Craig Russell also takes care to make his characters 3 dimensional, they all have little sub-plots going, if not things in their life at least things in their psyche that affect who they are and the decisions they make thruout the story. Not a bad read, I'd read another of his books, but it's not earth shatteringly go-out-and-tell-all-your-friends brilliant either.

Buy this book online at Amazon UK, Kalahari or Loot