Craig Russell Author

Wickedly good reviews are in for ‘The Devil Aspect’ (sorry). 

Criminal Element | Book Review: The Devil Aspect

SYFY Wire | Author Craig Russell Enters an Evil Asylum in His New Gothic Thriller, The Devil Aspect

INTRODUCING THE DEVIL’S SIX: THE DEMON.

“As an unseen sun was setting beyond the windowless walls of the tower granary, four orderlies wheeled the Demon into the room on the mediaeval throne of his restraint chair. Skala was not going to be placed on the examination couch. He arrived fastened by metal and leather, bolt and buckle, denied even the slightest movement of hand, arm, leg, neck or head. He would remain bound in the chair throughout the session.”

INTRODUCING THE DEVIL’S SIX: THE SCIOMANCER. 

“‘Dominik Bartoš was a good man too, by all accounts,’ said Viktor. ‘Good people become mentally ill just as much as bad people. And they aren’t responsible for the crimes they commit – they inhabit a different world, a world of hallucination and delusional beliefs.’

‘Is that what happened with Dominik Bartoš?’

‘We call him the Sciomancer.’ Viktor smiled wryly. ‘Professor Románek is very lyrical with how he titles case files. Do you know what sciomancy is?’

Smolák shook his head.

‘The ancient belief you can gain knowledge by communing with the dead. Professor Bartoš was a gifted scientist, but his delusions made him believe, well, in magic. Ah, here we are…’”

INTRODUCING THE DEVIL’S SIX: THE WOODCUTTER.

“The Woodcutter’s appearance was strangely disconcerting: dressed in nondescript city clothes, there was nothing about the man to suggest that this was a rural manual labourer, other than his clearly athletic build. Indeed, Zelený’s face was handsome and well proportioned, his green eyes bright and suggesting an intelligence that the case notes assured was not there.”

INTRODUCING THE DEVIL’S SIX: THE GLASS COLLECTOR.

“Viktor’s main impression of the Glass Collector was that of a fidgety, almost pathological impatience. As he was brought into the treatment room, the small man seemed impatient with the inconvenience of his confinement; impatient with Viktor, impatient with the orderlies.

Impatient with the unacceptably slow turning of the Earth.

It was the kind of intense, relentless exasperation that Viktor recognized as a symptom of megalomania or narcissistic complex: an egomaniacal sense of entitlement; a belief that the world and the universe beyond it revolved around him; that everyone and everything in that universe was there exclusively to serve his needs.”

INTRODUCING THE DEVIL’S SIX: THE CLOWN.

“The Clown, Leoš Mládek, was a small, slender man with a head that seemed too large for his body and pale blue eyes that seemed too large for his head. It was a disproportion that made him look younger than he was: more like a boy or a youth than a man in his mid-thirties. His black hair was short and oiled, severely parted in a sharp line of white scalp, giving the impression his hair was painted on. His face was very pale, the skin like a canvas awaiting paint. To Viktor’s eyes, Leoš Mládek was already halfway to being Pierrot, even without make-up.”

In stores today: Craig Russell’s THE DEVIL ASPECT, a terrifying murder mystery set inside an asylum where Czechoslovakia’s most dangerous killers are housed.

INTRODUCING THE DEVIL’S SIX: THE VEGETARIAN. 

“Mrs. Valentová was a painfully thin, priggish-looking woman of about forty. The kind of woman you would pass on the street without noticing, she was dressed in an unexceptional skirt, blouse and cardigan and had the mien of a provincial schoolmistress. She looked hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed in a way that suggested undernourishment rather than a natural tendency to leanness. Before they had entered the patient’s quarters, Professor Románek had explained that Mrs. Valentová’s extremely particular attitude towards her diet presented ‘difficulties’.”