Johannes Cabal the Detective

Written by Jonathan L. Howard

Narrated by Robin Sachs

Johannes Cabal, necromancer of some little infamy, returns in this riotously clever and terrifically twisted tale of murder and international intrigue.

In this genre-twisting novel, infamous necromancer Johannes Cabal, after beating the Devil and being reunited with his soul, leads us on another raucous journey in a little-known corner of the world. This time he’s on the run from the local government.

Stealing the identity of a minor bureaucrat, Cabal takes passage on the Princess Hortense, a passenger aeroship that is leaving the country. The deception seems perfect, and Cabal looks forward to a quiet trip and a clean escape, until he comes face-to-face with Leonie Barrow, an enemy from the old days who could blow his cover. But when a fellow passenger throws himself to his death, or at least that is how it appears, Cabal begins to investigate out of curiosity. His minor efforts result in a vicious attempt on his own  life—and then the gloves come off.

Cabal and Leonie—the only woman to ever match wits with him—reluctantly team up to discover the murderer. Before they are done, there will be more narrow escapes, involving sword fighting and newfangled flying machines. There will be massive destruction, not to mention resurrected dead . . .

Steampunk meets the classic Sherlockian mystery in this rip-roaring adventure where anything could happen . . . and does.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9780307735256

Jonathan L. Howard

JONATHAN L. HOWARD is a game designer, scriptwriter, and a veteran of the computer-games industry since the early nineties, with titles such as the Broken Sword series to his credit. He is author of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Johannes Cabal the Detective, and Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute, as well as the YA novels Katya’s World and Katya’s War. He lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and daughter.

Reviews for Johannes Cabal the Detective

[jhemlock-1711 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Johannes Cabal: The Detective is a rather enjoyable book. With a nice little surprise at the end. As a reader I enjoyed this book considerably more than the first one in the series. The Detective is put together and more cohesive than the first. After reading volume two the reader is able to fully appreciate Cabal for the jerk that he is. He is practical, unpredictable and deceptively cunning. The Detective finds Cabal hitching a ride on an airship while trying to evade the authorities from a slightly skewed, militant country full of people with little or no common sense. What ensues is Agatha Christie meets H.P. Lovecraft. The characters in this story are well stitched together, the story is considerably more adult than the first and at the end of the book we get a surprise from the author that I am sure most readers would have liked to seen continue. I can only guess this was an experiment or a left over from the author that alludes to his Lovecraft work. The humor is great and we are introduced to a slew of characters that we can actually see and do not seem as contrived as the first novel. The relationship between Leonie and Cabal is very well done. As a reader I like her and the subliminal attraction to Cabal. Something I do not believe that either of them are aware of. The end is chaotic and action packed with some nice attention to detail. This book is highly recommended and fun.

[lynnmpk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A slow start gradually turns into a multiple murder mystery on an airship. A bit different from the first novel in the series and I think that's why it took me a while to fully get into this book.

[joligula · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Johannes Cabal: The Detective is a rather enjoyable book. With a nice little surprise at the end. As a reader I enjoyed this book considerably more than the first one in the series. The Detective is put together and more cohesive than the first. After reading volume two the reader is able to fully appreciate Cabal for the jerk that he is. He is practical, unpredictable and deceptively cunning. The Detective finds Cabal hitching a ride on an airship while trying to evade the authorities from a slightly skewed, militant country full of people with little or no common sense. What ensues is Agatha Christie meets H.P. Lovecraft. The characters in this story are well stitched together, the story is considerably more adult than the first and at the end of the book we get a surprise from the author that I am sure most readers would have liked to seen continue. I can only guess this was an experiment or a left over from the author that alludes to his Lovecraft work. The humor is great and we are introduced to a slew of characters that we can actually see and do not seem as contrived as the first novel. The relationship between Leonie and Cabal is very well done. As a reader I like her and the subliminal attraction to Cabal. Something I do not believe that either of them are aware of. The end is chaotic and action packed with some nice attention to detail. This book is highly recommended and fun.

[murphy4jacobs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read the first book in this series with great delight and not a little sadness when my favorite character died in it. But I hold out hope (feh, I know he comes back in subsequent books, for which I am glad). Horst is a necessary leven to Johannes Cabal, and I felt his absence in this second book of the series.

It took me an abysmally long time to read this relatively short book, and part of that was, despite the dark humor and interesting observations that were sprinkled in, the central concept of the novel was a sort of Christie mystery -- passengers on a ship when one is mysteriously discovered to have committed suicide -- or maybe not. The ship board mystery portion of the book was a bit draggy and lost my interest.

But Howard is a capable author, so when I resolved to finish this book before embarking on the next, I had hope things would get more interesting. And, they did! A little chemistry, a little necromancy, a lot of skulking around, and another glimpse into the distant event that set Cabal upon his path to conquer death. So, it was worth reading, even if it seems to be a divergence from the overall arc set up in the first book.

[aula_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this series! The writing is wonderful - beautifully constructed sentences, fabulous vocabulary, excellently formed characters.
In this second book, Cabal attempts to steal a book, making yet another enemy, gets entangled in odd circumstances aboard an 'aeroship', all the while (mostly) keeping his cool.

Two of many fabulous quotes:

"Pure brute logic overruled any silly murder shenanigans by pointing out the suicide note, the locked room, and then proceeded to wave Ockham's razor around in a threatening manner." p.122

"Furthermore, she is a member of the Mirkarvian gentry, and they seem very political creatures. I'm sure they read Machiavelli in the nursery, and practise by setting their dolls against one another."

[madam_razz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really can't stress enough that the dry humor, sarcasm, and just overall sort of way of describing things that JLH employs when he writes the Cabal books is wonderful and superb. Just as much of that in this one as in the first one.

Also, some recurring characters! I loved seeing Leonie Barrow again, especially since her part was much larger this time and that allowed us to really get an idea of who she is as a person because we got to see more of her and we got to see her interacting with Cabal more often and the way that they played off one another and interacted was just marvelous. I loved every second of it.

I loved this book's big bad. He, and they, were certainly interesting and good at being villains.

The majority of the book is set up like a parlor game murder mystery, except the murders are real. Death, intrigue, conspiracies, zombies, and a locked room mystery. We get so much awesome out of this book it's difficult to put down for too long a time period.

I will say, though, that there are parts that I found to be really tedious and boring, and those would be the technical bits about the aeroships and entomopters, and where things got too bogged down in second-by-second detail. At those points it was a little difficult for me to keep focused, but I think that while those parts weren't my cup of tea they would certainly be another type of reader's favorite parts of the book. So, don't let that stop you from reading it, especially since even though I admit there were some boring areas the overall book was a page-turner.

I think my favorite part is the last bit, the end where JLH explains Cabal's journey home through the point of view of a new character he met along the way named Enright.

Definitely fun to be had by all and worth every penny, and every second of time spent reading it.

[jkdavies · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

fun and slightly sarcastic throughout; a tale of political plotting and murder on an airship in distant (vaguely middle Russian sounding) countries... It kept reminding me of The Ambassador with Mitchell & Webb - diplomatic tensions in Tazbekistan - which is no bad thing. I hadn't realised that this was book 2 when I picked it up, and will get around to book 1 on the strength of this.

[carmenmilligan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not as good as the first in the series, but the sheer cleverness of the writing is a winner! I was bogged down a bit in the steampunk aspect of this one. I think the aspects of the murders were a little more complicated than they needed to be and hindered the story. I found myself skimming, but the action and resolution at the end was satisfying.

Recommended

[picardyrose · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Murder on the Orient Airship.

[parhamj-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh, Johannes Cabal, you snarky, cynical, sarcastic ne’er do well, you are one amazing character to follow. Whether you are getting your soul back from the Devil, as you did in Book One, or out to solve a murder mystery, as you do in Book Two, you are nothing but pure and unadulterated fun.

It has been some months since infamous necromancer Cabal won his soul back in a daring battle of wits with Satan, but, lo and behold, he is back in trouble again. This time, he is under arrest for attempting to steal a rare text from a library in the small, revolutionary-hungry Mikravia. When the country’s emperor dies suddenly, Johannes is called upon to reanimate him… long enough for the late ruler to stoke the fires of revolution. But when that doesn’t go quite as the Mikravian government planned, Johannes goes on the run, fleeing the country aboard a new aeroship with a stolen bureaucrat identity in hand. And just when Johannes thinks he’s safe, a fellow passenger aboard the aeroship goes missing, and an attempt is made on Cabal’s life. Well, that is inconvenient. So with a sense of curiosity born from boredom, Cabal sets out to solve the mystery. Did the missing passenger really commit suicide? Was he murdered? And if it really was a suicide, why did somebody try to kill Cabal?

Yep, it’s all fun and games until Johannes runs into a former enemy – the delightful Leonie Barrow – whose interest in criminology means an unwilling partnership with the necromancer to solve the aeroship mystery.

Sparks fly. Barbs fly. Aeroships fly. This is one flying high novel with the love-to-hate-him Johannes continuing his unique brand of sarcastic and cynical humor as he gets to the bottom of the mystery. The Detective doesn’t have as much of the supernatural as The Necromancer – no devilish carnivals, ghosts, or trips to Hell in this one – but it still sings with the wit of the first novel, and is a respectable second in the series.

On to Book Three!

[lkernagh · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While not as good as the first book, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, I was still rather pleasantly surprised to see how Howard is able to write a black comedy full of biting wit and sarcasm and then turn around in this next book and provide readers with a rather good 'locked room' mystery. Cabal is still the unfeeling, self-serving erudite cad he was in book one, but we are now starting to see tiny chinks in his otherwise impenetrable facade. This man just may be capable of feeling something after all! Even better, and what made this story a delight to read, is Howard brings a character from book one to this story to act as both verbal foil for Cabal and to provide some assistance when Cabal, somewhat reluctantly, starts to poke around in the details of the mystery. An reluctant detective more interesting in preserving their own neck then in solving the case is always a fun character to throw into a mystery story, IMO, and Cabal plays that role perfectly. The mystery itself is a somewhat implausible one based on the method that is revealed, but I was more interesting in seeing Cabal's character development so I was focused on the mystery part of the story. The audiobook I listened to is not narrated by the same reader as the first one was, but one my ears adjusted to the new voice of Cabal, it was clear sailing from there.

Two very different books where the only consistency is in our lead character, the witty repartee Cabal engages in and the knowledge that something is bound to go wrong at some point in the story. If mysteries are more your thing and if you were put off by the premise for Johannes Cabal the Necromancer because you don't like black comedies or the idea of reading a book where Satan and the underworld are key players, you may be happy to learn that these books can be read as stand-alone novels, so feel free to bypass book one and dive directly into book two.

I am now super curious to find out where Howard takes the story in book three, Johannes Cabal the Fear Institute and what kind of mess Cabal manages to find himself in.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love the heck out of these books. Johannes has just the right amount of conscience (ie, just enough to get him into more trouble, not so much that he has too much difficulty killing people to get out of it), the overall atmosphere is a wonderfully unique kind of vaguely steampunk ridiculousness, and I want to read a million more adventures just like this one.

[ahs7wolfy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The second book in the series finds our favourite necromancer having to rely on mundane means to improve his skills so he's travelled to Mirkarvia to purloin a very rare book on the subject. Only problem is, he gets caught in the process and there's only one sentence for a necromancer and that's death. It comes as quite a surprise when when he's offered a proposition instead. Mirkarvia is once again considering thoughts of expansion but the emperor, who was supposed to deliver a rabble rousing speech to the general populace, has upped and died beforehand. So what passes for government in the area want Cabal to bring him back to complete the job. Having previously dealt with the devil, Cabal knows that agreements like the one he's just made generally have a habit of not ending well and so makes a few alterations in the plan and manages to escape on the first airship out of town. Unfortunately for him though, his leisurely flight out of the country does not go as smoothly as he hoped when he runs into an old acquaintance on board and one of his fellow passengers is murdered with an attempt to make it look like suicide. To satisfy his curiosity, Cabal decides to investigate and is almost killed himself. So, not wanting another attempt to succeed, he tries to uncover just what is going on. Not only does Cabal have all this to contend with but he's also getting an odd strange feeling every now and then. Could this be what is referred to as a conscience?

With the first book there was a feeling of the author finding his feet but no such problems with the second. The pacing and plot are pretty much spot-on and this allows for the humour to flow more naturally and there are some very funny moments indeed. Cabal himself, although his character hasn't changed, is a much more likeable hero than he was in his first outing. Also included in this book is a short story told from the perspective of a member of a gentleman's club to his fellows detailing an encounter he had with Cabal at the conclusion of the main story. Definitely worth a read. Although this is a second book in the series you don't necessarily have to have read the first to enjoy this though I doubt that I would've enjoyed the first as much if I read them the other way around. 4★'s

[suzemo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is amazingly awesome. It had the same fun and adventure as the first book and I enjoyed it from the first page to the last.

[g33kgrrl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Johannes Cabal returns, this time in an aeroship detective story. I enjoyed this much more than the first - perhaps because I love detective stories, but I think rather because Cabal's conscience picking at him, Leonie Barrow's presence, and the constrictions of having to interact with other people for his cover story present a much more relatable version of Cabal. I also think the writing has settled into itself more and trusts Cabal to be himself without having to prove to us just who he is, which made me relax as well.

The plot is excellent - a fine detective story and I enjoyed the solution to the mystery, which is of course quite important. The additional adventure included as an afterward was a bonus and quite fun to read as well. I look forward to the third book's publication in the US.

[dheatonrue · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

if you have read the first book and have any preconceptions of how the sequal may be then be prepared to be very very wrong. if you enjoyed the first book as I did and think that this may disappoint you because it is not the same then for the second time in 2 sentences you will be wrong, maybe it is time you gave up and actually read the book so you an be supprised yourself. This book was a very funny read. Highly recommended.

[amandrake_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Though the concept of a possibly redeemable villain as a protagonist is certainly not new, in Johannes Cabal Howard has created a character that is effective if not entirely original. Cabal is a sympathetic, believable, and deeply flawed man about whom the reader cares without being able to say precisely *why*.
The style hovers between Steampunk and Gothic, with technology and magic cheek by jowl and a world that is instantly acceptable to the reader. There is a thread of black humor running throughout, possibly unavoidable when an author has a necromancer for a main character and doesn't want to lay on the Gothic too thickly.
An excellent read, good pacing, plot, and characterization.

[johnny999_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

a top yarn..worth a look

[simonea_533972 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is not an easy book to describe. Johannes Cabal somehow ends up on an aeroship, where people disappear and strange things happen. Johannes and an old acquaintance try to solve the mystery. I think the book is quite funny, like its predecessor. Johannes is an interesting character, which we see a bit more of in this book. I am curious about the next book in the series and hope to read it with as much enjoyment as the first two.

[literate0ninja · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In this second installment of the Johannes Cabal series, Cabal is back and even better. When his attempt to steal a rare book for his research goes awry, he is captured by the government of Mirkarvia and made to revive their recently deceased emperor to fulfill the machinations of the power-hungry Count Marechal. After being double-crossed by Marechal, Cabal attempts to sneak out of the country via airship. However, a string of murders onboard embroil him in an investigation, much to his dismay.

Cabal is not the most natural detective in the world, but his cool analytical personality puts him on a par with a misanthropic and socially maladjusted Sherlock Holmes. If you enjoyed the first Johannes Cabal novel, or are just a fan of steampunk-flavored fiction, you will want to read this book.

[milliehennessy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the second book in the series, and though the story focuses around murder on a zeppelin, and Cabal impersonating a government official, you actually see that Cabal has a conscience (since he got his soul back), and it makes him a more believeable character. The plot was good, and it is interesting to discover the way Cabal thinks--very methodically, not unlike Sherlock Holmes. Lots of sarcasm and dry humor. Still not much about Cabal's back story, just enough of a hint to keep you burning with desire to know what really drives him. I'll definitely read the next book whenever it hits the shelves!

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Starting with the second book in the series was probably not the best move in the world, but Howard gives you more than enough references of what has come before to allow you to follow the quite mad shenanigans of Cabal and his associates and enemies. This time around one is given a Graustarkian fantasy where our anti-hero is just trying to purloin an interdicted book in this benighted country pining for lost glory, only to find himself sucked into the high politics of the region; if only he could just walk away from it all. The adventure is in how Cabal makes his escape, while at the same time trying to figure out just what the hell is going on around him; swap out the Orient Express and substitute the maiden run of an airship and you get the concept.

[kmaziarz_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When we last saw the haughty necromancer Johannes Cabal, he was running a diabolical carnival in an attempt to win his soul back from Lucifer. (Johannes Cabal the Necromancer,” 2008.) That task accomplished, he sets his sights on acquiring a particular rare book of the necromantic arts. Unfortunately, things do not go to plan, and he finds himself captured and pressed into service reviving the corpse of a small, militant country’s dictator for one last rousing speech. Unfortunately, the revived dictator’s appetites now lean toward human flesh. Managing to flee the scene of the debacle, Johannes dons the persona of a self-important bureacrat and embarks upon the first aeroship out of there. Again, unfortunately, Johannes has managed to end up not only sharing passenger space with a young woman who knows him for who and what he is, but with a murderer. His investigations of the murder, at first undertaken from idle curiosity, begin to take a more personal turn—Johannes’s own life is threatened!—and begins to discover the downside of a returned soul—that pesky conscience!—and he finds himself embroiled in a nest of political espionage.

Wickedly humorous, with touches of steampunk, mystery, and the supernatural, Johannes Cabal the Detective is a rollicking good time.