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Career of Evil – Robert Galbraith

Career of Evil – Robert Galbraith

I have very much enjoyed listening to this. I watched the first two series of C.B Strike, so I have been picturing the actors as I have been listening.

Here’s the blurb …

When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg.

Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible – and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality.

With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them…

A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, Career of Evil is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives. You will not be able to put this book down.

I haven’t got much to say about this novel. It was a really enjoyable crime novel, and I didn’t pick the culprit. There is a lot of what I think of as world building – I felt like I was walking the streets of London, going to the office on Denmark Street, etc. It adds to the enjoyment of the novel for me.

Now to watch the the third series.

A review.

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Filed under 4, Audio, Crime, Fiction, Mystery

The Cuckoo’s Calling – Robert Galbraith

The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith

The Cuckoo’s Calling – Robert Galbraith

Someone at my book club selected this one. I must say I had a few doubts because I found The Casual Vacancy to be very grim. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

Here is the blurb …

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you’ve never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you’ve never seen them under an investigation like this.

Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

I enjoyed this novel – like a lot of books I thought it needed a bit of editing (perhaps it is me). I did guess the murderer/villain early on, but there was a twist (which I shan’t reveal) that I didn’t see coming. The novel reminded me of old black and white detective films – I keep expecting a ‘fast talking dame’ to appear – Cormoran is down on his luck, living in his office when John Bristow hires him to investigate his sister’s death, which he (John) thinks is murder and everyone else thinks is suicide. Cormoran takes this job for the money (he is living in his office after all) and finds all is not as it seems.

I liked the relationship between Cormoran and his new ‘temporary’ secretary, Robin – I can see that they are going to be quite the crime-fighting duo and I was glad the relationship wasn’t romantic (at least in this novel).

This novel reminded me of Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series.  I do plan to read the next one in the series.

More reviews …

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/18/cuckoos-calling-robert-galbraith-jk-rowling-review

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-cuckoos-calling-20130920-2u4cy.html

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