Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith
The third in Robert Galbrith’s Cormoran Strike mystery series opens with the grisly delivery of a woman’s severed leg to Robin Ellacott, Strike’s assistant. Tucked under the leg are the lyrics to the Blue Oyster Cult song “Mistress of the Salt” , a song that Strike’s mother, Leda Strike, had tattooed on her body. The threat to Strike and Robin is clear. In Strike’s mind there are four men from his past possible of such a horrible act: his junkie former step-father, a pedophile, a mafia hoodlum and a violent ex-army man. While the police focus on the one suspect Strike feels is least likely to have committed the brutal act, Strike and Robin actively pursue the three remaining viable suspects as the actual killer stalks Robin through the streets of London.
In this book, we finally get some back story on both Robin and Strike and the romantic tension that is between them is finally acknowledged. While investigating each of the three suspects, Galbraith fills in Strike’s character, adding new dimension to her lead detective. For much of the book, Robin works along side Strike and struggles to find the balance in their partnership. Robin also wrestles with whether to marry her longtime fiance Matthew and the reader finally learn why Robin never finished school, why she has stuck with a boyfriend so patently safe and boring.
As J.K. Rowling did with the fictional Hogworts, Robert Galbraith does with the very real London- he creates a world of bright warm pubs, smelly damp tube cars and misty city streets. Some have criticized Rowling/Galbraith’s writing of contrasting good and bad too sharply, and while here she does write of a great evil, the sociopath hunting all women in a sense, and the ostensibly good people trying to stop him, Galbraith also writes about the small everyday evils that people knowingly inflict upon other people that are just as damaging. I am just enjoying this new adventure that Rowling/Galbraith is taking me on with Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott.