Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Fern

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough—who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974.

Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike.

As Strike and Robin investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly . . .

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is back in Cornwell visiting sick family when a stranger approaches him outside the pub. The woman is asking for answers and help to discover what happened nearly forty years ago to her mother. Having never taken on a cold case Strike admits he is curious, and both he and his business partner Robin Ellacott soon find the case brings them more questions than answers. With a year to solve this case in amongst all their other more usual cases, can Strike and Robin give the woman the longed for answers she seeks?

While I greatly enjoy the Strike series the previous book in particular was very weighty to my mind and I had a few qualms about continuing. I am vastly relieved to learn that – in my opinion at least – this book handled the evolving friendship/business relationship between Strike and Robin far, far better and the author really has begun to get a good pace going with juggling the multiple main characters in the detective agency as well as the multiple cases/plotlines all rolling around at once. I enjoyed this book far more than I expected to – though that partly might have been due to my not-overly-high expectations.

Yes, there is still the will they/won’t they bubbling between Strike and Robin, but I truly felt they both turned a corner with each other in this book. They didn’t guard their private lives as fiercely as they did previously, seeming to finally trust each other a bit better which is a critical item for both their friendship and more importantly their business relationship. Also they didn’t miscommunicate anywhere near as badly as I felt they have in all the previous books – but the one before this most particularly. I was thrilled that they both seem to have screwed their heads on a little straighter now, and equally they are both taking small but meaningful steps into a more healthy working relationship. Indeed, toward the end of the book I even began to feel they might really round a corner and start acting like best friends and business partners and not being quite so block-headed around each other. A girl can hope.

Before reading this book I was also quite worried that – at very nearly 1100 pages for the paperback copy I personally own – the book would be overly bloated and dragging at times with far too much weight. I was so relieved this wasn’t the case. At any given point in the story both Robin and Strike had personal life stuff they were dealing with, plus the agency was normally juggling about four different cases with all the work, staking out and following down leads and people that any case would require. With only an admin and four to five detectives in the whole business this was no small feat and there was ample detective work/cases to carry the plots of the story along at a decent pace. Readers should note this is not an action-orientated or fast moving book, but equally I did not feel at any point like the book was dragging on or just bloated under it’s own massive weight. I felt the author did a really good job with this.

The main plot – that of the 40 year old cold case of the missing person – was threaded very well through the exceptionally long book. I was pleased that this case was strongly present throughout almost the whole of the book and unlike what could have happened the other plots didn’t ever really overtake this main plotline to my mind. A lot went on in both Strike’s and Robin’s personal lives, so it wasn’t like these took a back seat either, but at no point did I find myself wondering or skipping ahead to when they reverted back to this case. It was quite prominent throughout the whole book and I was grateful for that.

While I still really wish the whole “will they/won’t they” aspect to Robin and Strike’s private relationship would get a shuffle on and move forward – I now have a strong feeling we won’t get proper closure (one way or the other) for quite some time, potentially even in the last book or two when the series is coming to a close. Overall I’m pretty happy with this book and definitely more enthusiastic about the next in the series.

A ginormous book that’s more of a marathon than a sprint, this is nevertheless a solid mystery with interesting characters and a lot of layers. Recommended.