"Johannes Cabal: The Detective" - An Analysis

Now that I finally chased that squirrel away and returned to sit down and read the last Johannes Cabal novel (“The Fall of the House Cabal”), I found myself returning to the second novel afterwards - “Johannes Cabal: The Detective”. First of all, I do like detective stories, and in addition, it’s the first book in which he has his soul and, thus, his conscience back.

I will state here and now that this post will be full of spoilers for the novel in question (and also spoil a bit of content of the first one, “Johannes Cabal: The Necromancer”). It would be a good idea to have read at least the first two novels, unless you don’t mind spoilers.

At the beginning of the novel, Johannes find himself in a very bad situation - he’s locked up in a cell and will be secretly executed whenever the government which caught him happens to find the time. As is to be expected (with his strongest trait being his cold-bloodedness), Johannes has considered all possible ways to get out of this and come to terms with the fact that his life is to be measured in hours and days, certainly no longer in months and years - let alone decades, despite him being only around thirty. This is, of course, an excellent hook and a great way to generate early conflict. What will the book be about? How he came to be in that cell? There’s a short description of what brought him there, so it’s unlikely. How he manages to cheat death (he is a necromancer, after all)? Or how he gets out of there with his life?

It turns out to be the latter - a sudden change in plans demands the help of a necromancer and with one in the cells (who can be disposed of afterwards), why risk telling anyone else? Johannes is, indeed, dragged from his cell in the dead of the night, only not for a quick and dirty execution, but to be bathed, shaved, and dressed regularly again. Then he’s offered his freedom for help in reanimating the local emperor, so said emperor can give a last speech before his long-expected death. Johannes is well aware that the promise of freedom is false, but he’s a man who happily makes backup plans for his backup plans, so there’s a chance for him to get away.

To cut this story a little shorter, Johannes gets away, although he has to fight a duel to do so - and it doesn’t look good for him. Yet, we find him boarding an airship a short time later, so he obviously did manage to make his escape. Disguised as a government employee on his way to a job out of the country, he boards the ship and settles for a calm trip - until Leonie Barrow, a character he meets under bad circumstances in the first book, boards the ship as well. This makes for a good mystery - last time we’ve seen him before him taking on another identity, he was about to be bested in the duel and, presumably, killed.

Leonie recognizes him and the only reason why she’s not handing him over to the captain is that she doesn’t believe in capital punishments - she will hand him over to the authorities of the next state they will touch down in instead. That alone would be a good conflict for the rest of the story - Johannes tricking his way out of this in some way and getting back home, to his house and dead fiancé -, but not for this book.

During the first night, a passenger apparently commits ‘suicide’ by jumping out of a window he shouldn’t even have been able to get open. Later that night, after following a strange dream and checking crawlspace at the bottom of the ship, Johannes is almost killed as well. The original murder/suicide wouldn’t have troubled Johannes much, but he takes personal interest in anyone who tries to push him out of an airship. This also brings him together with Leonie, who really wants to make practical use of the criminal psychology studies she did between their meetings.

Johannes finds a way to outsmart Leonie and get away as the ship touches down to be searched (result of a lost war), but she finds him again and then they find a dead spy. Still, Johannes isn’t going to return to the airship and he warns Leonie off as well, but she goes back. When he realizes how it all was really done, he wants to ignore it, but he can’t - his damn conscience. So he returns to the ship in mid-air, uncovers an intrigue, and gets almost killed for it (and saves the world in the short story added to the main novel). Johannes Cabal, a necromancer of some little infamy, has been turned into an unwilling hero.

Throughout all novels, from the first to the fifth and in the short stories which were published as well, the author is never shy of humiliating Johannes - which is an interesting way of getting the readers on the side of a man who, when all’s said and done, isn’t exactly what you’d call ‘sympathetic.’ Johannes is cold-blooded, ruthless, and has little qualms about killing, even after he got his soul back. Yet the fact that he’s often thrown into situations which for him are highly humiliating makes him a little more human, since we all can understand what that’s like.

“In the next few hours I intend to lie and steal for no material gain. Then, I have little doubt, I shall kill some people for no better reason than that they dismay me with their activities and I have decided to prevent them ever doing anything similar again. In my experience, death is an excellent prophylactic measure.” This is what Johannes says to a man who was also on the airship and has turned out to be a professional con-man when meeting said man at the train station, shortly after Johannes has realized what happened on the airship and shortly before he follows his conscience and returns to the ship. This sentence might be the one to most precisely capture Johannes’ character, as it were. He’s prepared to commit all kinds of crimes if they further his plans, but he’s no regular criminal who only does it for material gain. This is why even having a conscience isn’t going to make him any less dangerous, cold-blooded, or ruthless. It merely means that he won’t just do the most logical thing any longer, no matter the consequences for other people.

There’s still a long way to go for Johannes Cabal until the moment he will sacrifice what he has been looking for during the books to help his brother, but the second novel is where we see what becomes of Johannes with his soul in residence again and how much it gradually changes him. The book is a great example of how to keep your character off-balance and show the way they change within the narrative.