All in all, this volume offers everything that the Hellboy comics have in store. Good characters, moody investigations, a mixture of the supernatural and the mundane (especially in the most down-to-earth characters and the bureaucracy of the B.P.R.D.) and a good amount of tension, horror and revelations. It also marks the beginning of a long arc, but each volume within is self contained. So good that... I read also volume 2 in one go and I am about to start volume 3.