For we now know Robert Galbraith as the nom de plume of JK Rowling, who intended to write her crime novels incognito until someone blew the gaff. His cover is blown and this predicament seems heartfelt to the author. One element of realism is that Strike, having solved many high-profile murders (not something actual private investigators do much in real life), has now become famous and compromised in his operations. And the time taken in describing the day-to-day workings of his craft ensures that he’s plausible enough in his occupation. He’s one of those lost souls who joined the army in search of family, an outsider who knows the belly of the beast.
An overweight former boxer with one leg amputated below the knee, ex-military police – and you don’t get much more authoritarian than that – he grew up in the counterculture of squats and communes with a groupie mother who died of an overdose. Strike is a wonderfully complex creature, with just the right balance of contradictions to guide us through this labyrinthine world. Each chapter is headed with a quote from Ibsen’s state of the nation play Rosmersholm, indicating themes of social, political and moral conflict, and from the start it’s clear that we’re also on an emotional journey, particularly in the love lives of our two protagonists. Strike and Ellacott must walk the line between corrupt Tories, devious coalition Liberals and brutish proto-Momentum activists. There are whispers of blackmail and double-dealing in the corridors of power and something suitably nasty and gothic that happened in the country seat of a Conservative MP. It’s set amid the 2012 London Olympics, that last precarious moment of national unity. At nearly 650 pages, it’s a big book and it certainly doesn’t lack ambition.
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Lethal White, the fourth in JK Rowling’s crime series featuring the disabled war veteran turned private investigator Cormoran Strike and his partner in the agency Robin Ellacott, arrives with the customary fanfare, declaring itself “the most epic Robert Galbraith novel yet”.
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