A Very Long Book

J.K. Rowling, writing as Robert Galbraith, has now written a series of five novels about the detective team Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. Troubled Blood, most recent in the series, was published last week, and I have now read all 14,488 Kindle locations -- equivalent to 941 print pages -- of the book.* 

Troubled Blood is a very long book, full of too much detail of every sort I could imagine, and too much detail that I could not imagine: detail about heinous crimes that the bright and likable partners are trying to solve. The primary investigation, about a 40-year-old murder case, is quite intense and absorbed my interest. However, I felt that the some of the numerous sub-plots about the private lives of the detectives went on too long. The secondary cases, in my opinion, were simply tedious. If I had to read one more description about Robin or Strike in a car all night surveilling a doorway to find evidence about someone in a secondary case, I would scream.

In the novel's favor, it offers plenty of suspense and lots of action. It offers lots of insight into the developing characters of the two detectives and their evolving relationship. In the course of the action, it creates a large number of new characters, including those that figure in the case and the friends and relatives of the two detectives: a lot of them are pretty interesting. But for me, it's just too much of everything.

The portrayal of Cormoran Strike is, as always, fascinating. His skill as an investigator is always haunted by his background as a war hero who had lost a leg in battle, and as the son of a famous (fictitious of course) rock star with whom he had almost no contact. Here's an example:

"He’d learned early how to color himself according to his environment. From the moment he learned that penalties attached to not sounding like everyone else, his accent had switched between London and Cornwall. Before the loss of a leg had hampered his full range of physical movement, he’d been able, in spite of his distinctive size, to move and talk in ways that made him appear smaller than he really was. He’d also learned the value of concealing personal information, and of editing the stories you told about yourself, to avoid becoming entangled in other people’s notions of who you must be. Most importantly of all, Strike had developed a sensitive radar for the changes in behavior that marked the sudden realization that he was a famous man’s son. He’d been wise to the ways of manipulators, flatterers, liars, chancers and hypocrites ever since he was a child." (Kindle Locations 2750-2756).

Of the less positive of my impressions, I felt that there were a plethora of clues about the case under investigation -- and I use plethora in the root sense of too many. Of course the clues all come together eventually, and there's a spectacular success at the end. But there's a lot of pain in reading all the details, even the clever penetrating details that create vivid and exciting characters and horrendous evil ones. (This isn't a spoiler, it's a given in the Strike-Ellacott series.)

I think that the quotations from Spenser's Faerie Queen that begin each chapter are intended to give the reader extra help figuring out what's going on. I wasn't able to connect with them: this contributed to my frustration and to my sense that the novel was much too long and involved.

The book is so new that I've seen very few reviews. I'll be interested to see what the professional mainstream reviewers have to say about it.

*NOTE: The lack of actual page numbers is one of the irritating things about reading this version. For all the money they are making, the publishers should have added real page numbers! They could also have done a better job proofreading.

Strike and Ellacott in the TV series, which now
includes the first 4 books.

This review © 2020 mae sander.