Johannes Cabal is the protagonist of, so far, three novels and a handful of short stories. In these stories his character has been well defined: a brilliant scientist possessed of a razor sharp intellect, an impressive gift for languages, and a near eidetic memory. He is also ruthless in the extreme, single-minded to the point of obsession, and “has the social conscience of anthrax.”
He is also a necromancer.
“Necromancer” is taken in these books to be primarily the more modern understanding of the word; somebody who deals magically in death, rather than the strict dictionary definition of somebody who uses the dead to tell the future in the manner of a medium. While Cabal has nothing against raising the dead so that he may gather information from them, this information is always what they knew when alive. In Cabal’s world, the dead know nothing of the future.

Cabal’s ultimate aim is to conquer death, to return the dead to life “physically, mentally, and spiritually” exactly as they once were. While perhaps a worthy goal in itself, his techniques lack diplomacy and (usually) legality. Necromancy is a proscribed profession, punishable by life imprisonment or death all over the civilised world—and so Cabal is a practised criminal as a well as scientist.
Johannes Cabal