Tag: Robert Galbraith

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Review: Troubled Blood (Strike And Robin #5)

Rating: 4 Stars

This book confused the hell out of me! So many characters, so much information, and Strike and Robin going round in circles! I had to go back and forth to keep everything straight, which, with a book this size, is sheer madness!

But oh the mystery, and the action! Robert Galbraith is like P.D James in my opinion. The descriptions are long, the characters have a habit of sprouting rubbish meant to be deep and profound, and important things get lost in the meandrings of the author’s mind. Yet, the story is so powerful that you don’t want to give up.

I would like to make it clear that I couldn’t care less what the writer is like in real life. If I started caring about authors and their real life problems, I’d have no books to read! I like reviewing books, not the personal lives of other human beings.

Troubled Blood starts off with Strike back in Cornwall to see his sick aunt. He meets a woman who wants to hire him to find out what happened to her mother who vanished 40 years ago. Strike and Robin agree to take the case. They set a limit of a year to get a breakthrough or give up. There are a few other cases, and both Strike and Robin are going through their own personal struggles, like always. On top of this, the initial investigations in the missing woman case are a mess.

The police detective originally investigating the crime was having a mental breakdown, and his notes reflect that deterioration of mind. But of course, all this happens after you have read so many pages that you might as well have read a whole book!

It is always fun to go on an adventure with Strike and Robin, but it is becoming harder with every new book. Galbraith needs to tighten the writing or no one is going to read these never-ending stories! I feel that a lot of focus is lost because of so many other cases on the side. A detective agency can take on multiple cases at one time, but it is not necessary to go into the details of each and every one of them.

Then there is the personal angle that bothers me so much! I have said it before, and I say it again, there is no need for Strike and Robin to be involved romantically. Their personal lives are like train wrecks, you can only feel sorry for them. It is one of the things that I dislike the most about this series.

Troubled Blood is a really good book, but I hesitate in recommending it. Because it is too long and confusing, only real fans of Strike and Robin can truly enjoy this one.

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Review: Lethal White

Rating: 3.5 Stars

I think it was a mistake to read this book right after reading Career Of Evil. For one, I kept wanting to read one more page till I realized that I had spent all night reading it, and for another, it was not because of the mystery but because I just wanted it to be over!

First, let’s talk about the thing everyone was waiting for: Robin and Matthew’s wedding, and what happened after Strike managed to reach the church in Career Of Evil. The whole sequence at the beginning of Lethal White left me underwhelmed and disappointed. I expected Robin’s character to grow more mature as we find out more and more about her. The first chapter again made me question how the same woman can be so brave, yet so weak? Then, suddenly we skip a whole year and realize that everything seems to be back at square one, except the agency is doing a tad bit better than in the last book.

The first chapter could have been redeemed if the actual mystery had been anything like the previous three installments. In the previous review, I talked about Robert Galbraith not being one to shy away from violence and gore. Looks like I talked to soon.

The story is not bad, and there is a definite mystery to be solved, but this detective series has suddenly become like an Agatha Christie book, only with long and tedious details that make you want to yawn. The fact that I was able to actually work it all out much sooner than the detectives themselves, was a downer. I just read on to see if my guess was correct.

It all looked really promising in the beginning with a mysterious visitor, and his strange story. I was ready to read something along the lines of The Silkworm. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I’m still a big fan of murder mysteries, so I won’t say that it was a bad book, just that compared to the earlier books, this was a bit of a letdown. I have really begun to think that Galbraith needs a better editor who has the skills to make the whole plot tighter, and stop it from meandering around too much.

As for the Cormoran-Robin-Matthew relationship, it looks like we will keep going round and round in circles for a while yet. If characters from the past keep turning up at every corner, we can look forward to this whole thing being stretched on for another few books. At least this time the reader wasn’t left hanging with a strange ending!

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Review: Career Of Evil

Rating: 4 Stars

First of all, I don’t know why I didn’t read this book earlier, considering I have had this one since it came out in 2015. My excuse is that I made the mistake of reading reviews which said that it ended on a cliffhanger, and that it would be years before the next one came out. So, me being me, thought that I’d wait till the next one is released before tackling such a huge tome. Big mistake. If reading one thick book is daunting, committing to reading two, that too back to back, seems like a herculean task!

Fortunately, I was able to push myself to finish this one in a little more than 2 days, and now after really thinking about it, I’m ready to write a review.

Contrary to popular opinion, I actually liked this book. Yes, it’s slow, and yes, it leaves off at a strange turn, but these are not reason enough to not read it. When it comes to detective stories, I can be really patient. One of my most favorite detective series, written by P.D James, consists of huge books, with long, long narratives, describing things to death.

Career of Evil takes its own sweet time to come to the point, but the mystery is interesting, and Robert Galbraith never shies away from giving gory details of seemingly unimaginable cruelty. There are so many suspects, each with a plausible motive, which combined with Cormoran Strike’s own prejudices, makes for an interesting read. There is such a feeling of danger lurking around every corner that you keep expecting things to go wrong all the time. Which, of course, they do. With Robin Ellacott around to stir things up, it is but expected that things will become interesting.

One of the reasons for the heft of this book is that it has a parallel thread running through it. That of Robin’s back story. When I had read The Silkworm, I was really irritated with Robin, for it seemed like the woman who was not afraid to face danger head on, was a coward and a loser in her personal life. These two seemingly opposite traits made her an annoying character for me. This book tries to somewhat redress the balance in Robin’s favour.

It has been clear from the beginning that no one in Robin’s family takes her ambition to become a detective very seriously. It is therefore natural for them to be against her taking a very low paying job which comes with its own perils and dangers. She has stood up to these pressures till now, and continued to excel in her job. What is it then, that makes it impossible for her to stand up for herself in her personal life? What seemed like a contradiction, becomes clear in this book and you are better able to understand Robin’s behaviour.

Still, Strike and Robin come across as so clueless and stupid in some instances, that I wanted to club them on their heads with something. As far as the “cliffhanger” is concerned, Galbraith has done it before as well, though this time the exact point where the book left off was very irritating. Even then, the slow burn of the story and all the blood and gore are so typical Galbraith that even though I don’t love this book as much as The Silkworm, I still consider it pretty decent in this series and particularly in this genre.

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