Rights Information

This book is avialable in 3 languages. Azerbaijani, Russian and English

Reviews

KIrkus Review:

In this thriller, a detective and a psychologist become romantically involved while hunting a brutal murderer in Ireland.

The year is 1999, and Cork is experiencing a series of ritualistic murders. The female victims, appearing one month apart, all have two beauty marks on the right sides of their necks. Evidence shows they’ve been tortured prior to death and raped afterward. Chief Investigator Sean O’Neill from Dublin assists the local police with his deep cultural knowledge and keen observation skills. He quickly identifies a drawing, knifed in a tree at a crime scene, of what appears to be the Eye of Horus. Also working the case is Erin Parker, an American criminal psychologist, who’s capable of keeping up with Sean’s roaming intellect. As evidence leads the investigators around Cork and to Dublin, Erin becomes infatuated with Sean and his rational, though combative, personality. One of their conversations leads to the biblical Abaddon, “the king of the abyss, the demon of death and destruction,” whose symbol Sean mistook for the Eye of Horus. Eventually, they follow leads pointing to a Dublin gangster named Abaddon and one of his missing crew members, Ray Queen. When a man named Michael Byrne claims to have escaped being murdered, the case grows even more complex. Abdullaoglu offers sparkling portrayals of Cork and many famous locations, including the An Spailpín Fánac pub. (The book, originally in Azerbaijani, was translated by Berlina.) The author also cannily employs Ireland’s frequent rain to make collecting evidence tough for the investigators. The grisly nature of the murders will grip genre fans hard and pull them along. In a letter to the protagonists, the killer asserts, “I am the thunderstorm of all your secret dreams and desires,” which hints at a poet/murderer from the mind of Thomas Harris, author of The Silence of the Lambs. But Abdullaoglu’s fondness for Sean, who’s as egotistical as he is smart, leads the narrative astray. Digressions into everything from the hormonal content of beer to the validity of patriarchal leadership often leave the pair starry-eyed and seemingly divorced from hunting a murderer.

This psychological tale brings Ireland to life, but sometimes leaves its killer in the background.

Author Biography

People often ask me what I wanted to be as a child. Sometimes, they hurry to add “how lucky you became a writer!” In fact, I never really wanted to master a profession. I just had a strong desire to study and teach, to help people solve their social problems, to participate in the process of reforming society, to contribute to the life of young people. Until I decided where to start, I just kept learning.

I got my first degree from the University of Economics. But after four years of study, I realized that I could not achieve my goals as an economist. I became increasingly convinced that what people need most is a healthy philosophy of life and good literature. Thus, I went on to study theology, oriental studies, Eastern and Western philosophy at various universities around the world for nine years. Then I got a degree as a consulting gestalt therapy psychologist at the faculty of Psychological counseling at the Moscow Institute of Positive Technologies and Consulting. In short, I tried to acquire academic knowledge in areas that covered the universe, cognition, and the human inner world.

I began my work with scholarly and philosophical books. In 2010, my first book, Scientific Bases of Self-purification, was published. In it, I describe the factors of spiritual revival and personal decay, qualities of the soul and the shades of light and darkness it manifests.

In 2011, I translated and gave a broad explanation of one of Avicenna's latest works, Remarks and Admonitions, which had a significant impact both in the East and West. This work, which focuses on Avicenna’s logic, philosophy and metaphysics, has been published as two books. Then I started translating and interpreting the works of famous Oriental philosophers on ontology, epistemology and the irfan (gnosis in Islam), which were also published.

At the next stage, I wrote five books of psychological motivation: Burn the Bridges you’ve passed, Everyone is a Ruler, Life Goes On no Matter What, Protest and Fear. These works were a great success. Readers sent me letters thanking for freeing them of many psychological problems.

In these works, I did not focus on a single psychological school. On the contrary, I tried to explain each subject using many points of view: Eastern and Western psychological, philosophical, moral and theological considerations. Such an approach enables optimizing mechanisms of personal development and can be useful to the reader independent of his or her ideology. At present I have started to conduct trainings and seminars on personal development, education and writing at different universities.

My first psychological novel, This City is Empty, which became a bestseller in Azerbaijan in 2016-2018, is to be mentioned here. The second novel, The Man on the Rails, was also a great success; the first edition was sold out in just two weeks.

In 2018, I wrote the intellectual-psychological detective novel Abaddon, whose first edition was sold out in three hours.

In total, I am the author of 25 books to date.