Oh, not enough? Well I'll give you the skinny then.
In this instalment our gloriously dry-witted necromancer, of no little infamy, finds himself approached by a mysterious organisation called the Fear Institute, dedicated to banishing all fear from the hearts of mortal men in order that, released from the shackles of fear, Man can attain the next golden age of achievement. These men commission Cabal to lead three of them on an expedition into the Dreamlands, an other-worldly reality where peoples dreams come to life, and while there to hunt down and destroy the Phobic Animus - the source of all fear. Naturally Cabal excepts the job (otherwise there'd be no book!) and from the first moment till the last all manner of extremely entertaining adventures befall them.
Now at this point in a review I'd usually go into some detail about the characterisation, the plot, the dialogue and any number of other details but with Johannes Cabal I don't feel I have to. Every word of every page is carefully crafted and utterly precise and the whole thing is beautiful to read but, above all, it's so very, very funny. Cabal has a caustic wit and a total disregard for just about everyone that isn't him and he's not afraid to let any and everyone know how he feels. While that might make him sound unlikeable, it's actually very far from it, Cabal just carries a supreme confidence born out of incredible intelligence and the ability to think very quickly when he needs to extricate himself from a tricky situation in a hurry - something at which he's had an awful lot of practice. On the other side of the law he'd be Sherlock Holmes but without Watson dragging around behind him.
All of this adds up to a wonderful series of stories and one of the few truly brilliant characters to be found in fantastic fiction - honestly, I can't praise these books enough. I've said it before but there's something so very English about the humour, that stiff upper lip, calm in the face of adversity demeanour that Cabal personifies and the innate feeling that, no matter how badly you behave - and Cabal is capable of behaving very badly - you must be in the right because you're British. It's pompous and arrogant and totally un-contemporary but it's also deliciously funny and fabulous to read.
But it's not all beer and skittles, there's a dark side to Cabal that brings genuinely hairy moments and casual, brutal violence when you often least expect it, and naturally there's more to the Fear Institute than meets the eye so there's a mystery to be solved along the way. The story has some excellent and unexpected twists and turns and the ending actually took me completely by surprise, though in retrospect I should have seen it coming as the clues were all there, and it leaves the door wide open for the next adventure.
Not that he needs me to tell him, but Jonathan L Howard is a supremely talented writer and the Johannes Cabal series make for superb reading. It would be easy at this point to say if you like Rankin or Fforde or Pratchett or Holt then you will love these books, but while it may well be true it would be doing Howard a disservice. He's has his own unique and wonderful voice and has berthed his own unique and wonderful character and in my humble opinion he deserves that kind of recognition on his own merit.
Roll on book four!
Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute is published by Headline and is available with free delivery from The Book Depository and on the high street from Blackwell and all good book stores.
Johnathan L Howard has a website, blogs occasionally and he Tweets.