Johannes Cabal the Detective

The second novel in Jonathan L. Howard's Johannes Cabal series.

"Leonie: Your look of gormless incomprehension as the tigress circled you will keep me amused for many years to come, I'm sure."
 * Berserk Button: Johannes Cabal hates it when people try to kill him. And considering that he's shot people simply for annoying him, one has to fear the depths of his hatred.
 * Came Back Wrong: Emperor Antrobus II.
 * Chaste Anti-Hero: Johannes Cabal is this with some shades of Celibate Anti-Hero. He can't even tell when the resident Femme Fatale is making a pass at him and just thinks that she has an unnatural fascination with the macabre. This amuses Leonie Barrow to no end.

"Sometimes he wished he still lacked a soul. It hurt so much."
 * Combat Pragmatist:
 * Conscience Makes You Go Back: Much to Cabal's irritation when he realizes that while he may be a criminal mastermind, he still would rather be on the side of humanity than with genuinely evil, opportunistic leeches

"Leonie: To answer your question, because it's the right thing to do. Cabal: What your father would do, you mean. Leonie: It's the same thing. It usually is."
 * The Conspiracy
 * Conspiracy Kitchen Sink: Mirkarvia, and all it's neighboring countries.
 * Cool Airship: With all of its bells and whistles, the zeppelin qualifies.
 * Crazy Prepared: Cabal, who carries a gun, a switchblade knife, and a cane sword concealing a 3-foot steel blade.
 * Crazy Survivalist: Cabal again.
 * Curiosity Is a Crapshoot
 * Doomed Moral Victor:
 * Enemy Mine: Why Leonie chooses to ally herself a sociopath like Cabal. In her words: Set a monster to catch a monster, Cabal.
 * Femme Fatale: Lady Ninuka
 * Frame-Up:  Unfortunately for him
 * Genre Shift: Cabal does mystery with a dash of Dieselpunk.
 * Hero Antagonist: Leonie
 * Honor Before Reason: Cabal calls Leonie this when
 * Locked Room Mystery
 * MacGyvering: A simple trip to the local drug store and Cabal can create hair dye, reagents to revive the dead, and time bombs.
 * Occam's Razor: Both subverted and played straight.
 * One Bullet Left:
 * Only a Flesh Wound: Subverted
 * Phenotype Stereotype: Cabal invents a temporary hair dye for himself after noting that his blonde-ness makes it hard to go unnoticed when trying to escape a foreign country.
 * Photographic Memory: Allows the slightly obsessive-compulsive Cabal to realize that one piece of carpet is out of place.
 * Properly Paranoid: Cabal, much to his chagrin.
 * Ruritania: Mirkavia and it's neighbors. In fact Ruritania is actually mentioned in a throwaway line.
 * Spy-Versus-Spy:
 * Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Leonie Barrow and Cabal are pretty much forced to do this in order to unravel the conspiracy on the aeroship even while trying to outmaneuver each other.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Cabal leaves Mirkarvia in a state of civil war. Both figuratively, and literally.
 * Took a Level In Badass: Leonie Barrow goes from the sweet Girl Next Door in the The Necromancer to a Badass Bookworm studying criminal psychology, is a capable investigator and who can match wits with Johannes Cabal himself.
 * Upbringing Makes the Hero: The reason why Leonie is the Lawful Good to Cabal's Chaotic Neutral.
 * Upbringing Makes the Hero: The reason why Leonie is the Lawful Good to Cabal's Chaotic Neutral.


 * Zeppelins from Another World