The Ghosts of Altona by Craig Russell
WINNER OF THE BLOODY SCOTLAND CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2015
Head of Hamburg's Murder Commission, Jan Fabel is used to the dead, but when a routine enquiry spirals out of control he finds himself on much closer terms with death - his own.
As he struggles to process this experience, his first case comes back to haunt him: Monika Krone's body is found at last, fifteen years after she disappeared. Monika - beautiful, intelligent, cruel - was the centre of a group obsessed with the gothic.
When men who knew Monika start turning up dead, the crime scenes full of gothic symbolism, Fabel realizes he is looking for a killer with both a hunger for vengeance and a terrifying taste for the macabre.
A true gothic demon is stalking the streets of Hamburg . . .