Every now and again there is an aside in the voice of ‘the dark man’. Unlike many detective novels, where the murderer is just portrayed as a bad ‘un, the psychopathy of this murderer is believable, I thought. Gradually it dawns on us who it is. I rather thought the suspects were guessed too easily by the investigators. A little more than halfway through the book, it looks like the crime is solved. But Pence suspends Handy from duty. Jarman and Handy work out who the original Ripper was. From the trenches of the Somme to the tranquillity of a rich English country estate; from the gangsters and molls of Prohibition New York City to the decadent nightlife of Weimar Berlin, Rob Deakin struggles to come to terms with the gift that helped him survive the trenches, while hunting a quarry both elusive and mysterious. During this journey he attracts love and death in equal – and equally devastating – measures. Incredible. That's how I must describe this story. The characterisation of the two main protagonists, the so-called 'Emperor' himself, Qin, and the woman who finds herself trying to stop a war Qin is planning, is brilliant. The story takes us deep in Incredible. That's how I must describe this story. The characterisation of the two main protagonists, the so-called 'Emperor' himself, Qin, and the woman who finds herself trying to stop a war Qin is planning, is brilliant. The story takes us deep into the world of Chinese politics as well as the work of the CIA, MI6 and various other inteligence agencies. We follow Rob through the decades and watch as he passes through the twentieth century into the twenty-first. Reading his adventures is like reading a fun history book. We see Rob through the bootlegging nineteen twenties in New York. We see him in Berlin during the rise of Hitler. He begins to feel apart from humanity, and this affects his mind and his judgement.

What kind of trouble would you get into if you were immortal? Rob is a soldier in WWI and suffers injuries fighting that should have killed anyone, but when he’s on the verge of death, a strange man touches him, and Rob recovers fully. Doctors are baffled. Sooner or later it becomes obvious that Rob isn’t aging. What’s going on? A brilliant, humane, thrilling story spanning decades of significant events in world history. It explores a subject that human beings have been pondering since the beginning of time. Eternal life on this earth. Eternal youth. Wouldn’t that be wonderful! Living forever in a body that never ages yet having the wisdom of an ancient soul.This is a concept book along the lines of Ayn Rand and Lionel Shriver. It’s neither about characters nor story, and, to be honest, there aren’t actually any “characters” at all. A Life Eternal is a poignant exploration that really gets you thinking about whether immortality would be a blessing or a curse. An If there's one thing this story has, it's atmosphere. Coming from the other end of the country I have no idea what the south west is like (apart from a few holidays in the general area), but Kruse has created a sense of time and place brilliantly.

He searched for the medic who bestowed upon him what he began to believe was a curse. He began to realize that he despised humankind. Their pettiness irked him and he seemed jealous of their happiness. Humans were a lost cause to him. I always like to play along with mystery stories and try to beat the fictional detective to the reveal, and I confess that I was successful on this occasion, correctly spotting the ‘bad guys’ pretty early on. This didn’t detract in any way from my enjoyment of the story though, as I continued to follow the two detectives (and my personal favourite, Curmudgeon) in their cat and mouse chase.The writing style is solid and again, very much like reading a first person interview. It reminded me of "Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice, in its style, but Rob’s unburdening of self is less story and more ‘police report”...”I did this, and then I did that, and then I went here...”. This story is a philosophical journey into the nature of humankind and the quality of (the possibility), of an eternal life.

When Sergeant Rob Deakin is mortally wounded during the First World War, he is destined to become just another nameless casualty of a terrible conflict. Only after many years did he come to realize the truth. The truth about himself and his unique condition. He finally found the medic. The medic had become an old man. He was dying. How had that happened?My only complaint was the point of view switched from one person to another, in consecutive paragraphs a number of times, rather than seeing it through just on set of eyes and feelings. What follows is a cursed journey through a century of incredible change, seen through the eyes of a man immune to death, while he searches endlessly for the answers to what makes him so unique. The writing style is solid and again, very much like reading a first person interview. It reminded me of "Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice, in its style, but Rob’s unburdening of self is less story and more ‘police report”...”I did this, and then I did that, and then I went here…”.