JK Rowling’s engaging duo return for a cold case full of misdirection and simmering emotional tension
Robert Galbraith’s Troubled Blood is not for the faint of wrist. Clocking in at a cool 927 pages, the fifth Cormoran Strike novel knocks Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror & the Light off the top spot for the biggest big book of 2020. Galbraith, otherwise known as JK Rowling, has form. The fifth Harry Potter was a similar whopper, dividing the legions of fans ecstatic to be gifted so much Hogwarts from its critics, who wearied of the boy wizard’s adolescent angst and longed for something to actually happen. Troubled Blood will, I suspect, divide readers in much the same way.
For those Strike aficionados long captivated by the will-they-won’t-they relationship between the detective and his agency partner, Robin Ellacott, there is much to be savoured. A year on from Lethal White, both are juggling work with complicated personal lives. Strike’s aunt, who brought him up, is terminally ill; he and his sister are at loggerheads and his tricky ex-fiancee, now married with twins, isn’t going away quietly. Ellacott is contending with a messy divorce and the unwelcome attentions of the agency’s newest hire, handsome ex-police officer Saul Morris. Galbraith’s unhurried examination of their emotional turmoil adds depth to both characters and convincingly stokes the simmering tensions between them.
