A post that has been sitting in my ‘Drafts’ folder for quite a while….
I’ve been rather underwhelmed by the last few books that I have read recently, so I decided that I’d go for something that would draw me in instantly and engross me for a while. And even though I’m not a great detective-fiction fan, what better than the next Robert Galbraith novel in the Cormoran Strike series? So I purchased the third book Career of Evil as an e-book (yes, purchased!) and within five pages I was completely hooked. After all, how could you ignore a woman’s leg, carved off at the knee, arriving in the post onto the desk of Robin Ellacott, Cormoran’s off-sider. Although addressed to Robin, Cormoran is convinced that it is a way to get at him, and he has a short-list of four possible suspects. Two are men that he met during his career in the Special Investigations Branch of the army; another is a gangster against whom Cormoran had testified in the past; and the final, more personal one, is his own step-father, whom he blames for his mother’s death. Of course, because private investigators always need to be in conflict with the police hierarchy, Cormoran’s theories are dismissed, even when the number of gruesome murders and mutilations mount up. So he and Robin embark on surveillance and investigation of their own.
It is a rather well-worn trope that the investigators -especially young female investigators- themselves become the target of the suspect- after all, how many times can Nicki in Prime Suspect be threatened, blackmailed and kidnapped?- and Robin herself is unwittingly in peril as the unnamed murderer begins trailing her, dubbing her “The Secretary”, and planning her murder as another way of bringing Cormoran undone. The murderer is a revolting, sick man. The narrative is interspersed with thankfully short chapters where he gloats over the body parts he has hacked from his victims and where he reveals his repugnance for ‘It’, his partner, who is a foil for his sordid activities. Meanwhile, the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Cormoran and Robin is still unresolved, as Robin’s wedding day to the rather wet Matthew draws closer.
This book is rather dark and graphic, with its mutilations and perversions and I found myself feeling quite sickened by the short chapters from the murderer’s point of view, and glad to turn the page and leave them behind. I am wearying a little of hearing about Comoran’s prosthetic leg and the pain in his stump, although in this case, these descriptions had a plot purpose. And one of the delights of Unresolved Sexual Tension is the fact that it is unresolved, although we are left with quite an emotional cliff-hanger.
I wanted something that would draw me in, and this book suited perfectly. As it turned out, I ended up with COVID, which gave me an excuse to sit and just read. I found myself consciously choosing not to read it before falling asleep because, in spite of feeling exhausted, I knew that I’d keep reading just one more chapter when I really wanted to go to sleep. Rowling (who writes as Robert Galbraith) is such a skilled story-teller that there’s no faffing about for fifty pages while you decide whether you want to make the investment of reading nearly 600 pages. One chapter and I’m in, and relishing the opportunity to return to the next book in the series.
My rating: 9/10
Read because: I wanted something engrossing
Sourced from: purchased Kobo e-book.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 