Robert galbraith - career of evil

review by showhost

I just love these books by JK Rowling.  A good book always makes me late for work as I keep wanting to read one more page, one more minute. Cormoran Strike is such a good lead character.

Cormoran Strike is ex army SIB turned private investigator.  He has a prosthetic leg, the result of his leg being blown off below the knee, when in a patrol car in Afghanistan.  He has proved to be a 'thorn in the side' of the police after having made them look inept when he solved a couple of crimes they could not, one which they claimed had been suicide until Strike proved different.  This did his business the world of good, jobs started to roll in but he realised, then, that he needed a secretarial type person.  Robin came as a temp but is now still with Strike as her previous training in psychology and her desire to be a detective help the business.

In this latest story Robin is horrified one morning when she opens a parcel at work addressed to her and finds a severed human leg inside. The police are called. This will not be the only souvenir to arrive over the next couple of months. A dismembered body is found and an investigation begins. With the leg was a verse of a song from an obscure rock band which Strikes drug fuelled mother, in one of their squalid flats, with one of her many boyfriends, would listen to. Whoever sent the limb was getting at Strike through Robin.  Robin is now considered a potential next victim so she is warned not to travel at night alone and to keep with crowds during the day, surveillance is also posted where they work.  The business starts to suffer as the jobs stop coming in because of this bad publicity.  Robins looming wedding is getting ever nearer but the arguments with

her fiancee Mathew continue over her work which he considers too dangerous and extremmely poor pay. 

Strike has narrowed his possible suspects to three, two of whom were ex army of whom he made enemies putting them away for crimes such as domestic abuse and child abuse. But first he has to find them.  The story is tense, gripping, sometimes grisly but always additctive.

We learn more of Strikes past, it's like a slowly unfolding story with each book.  You don't have to read them in order as there is sufficient reference to previous books to give the reader an insight. But why deprive yourself of two really good books!  I can't wait for the next one.