“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

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…

Career of Evil is the third in the highly acclaimed series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott. A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, it is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives.

Cormoran Strike is back, with his assistant Robin Ellacott, in a mystery based around soldiers returning from war.

My Thoughts:

Does it still need to be explained that Robert Galbraith is a pen name for J. K. Rowling? Are we all clear by now?

Good. Moving on.

The Cormoran Strike series keeps getting better and better! In this third installment, the murderer strikes particularly close to home. As Cormoran and Robin sift through the clues, they bring up a host of nightmares from each of their pasts. Meanwhile, all the attention means that their business is on the brink of failure thanks to all the negative publicity, and the threat posed by the unknown murderer is scary and unpredictable. Neither of them are safe, but neither wants to back down.

Meanwhile, we get occasional chapters told from the psycho killer’s point of view, and boy, are they disturbing! His obsession and cold-blooded determination to kill and mutilate is just horrific to read, especially as it’s all so matter of fact.

Beyond the murder mystery, which is complicated to the extreme, one of the delights of this book is seeing the relationship between Cormoran and Robin continue to unfold and deepen. Their trust in one another leads them to open up in ways that they haven’t previously, even as their unacknowledged feelings and fears lead to misunderstandings, anger, and near disaster for their partnership.

In general, I enjoyed Career of Evil very much, perhaps even more than the second book in the series, which just struck me as overdone in some ways. My one quibble is the same quibble I often have with J. K. Rowling’s writing: She seems to take inordinate amounts of pleasure in describing unsavory or sad sack characters as being just completely repulsive physically, with stringy hair or dandruff or body odor or any number of other unattractive qualities:

“The man on the door was squat and neckless… ”

“Tempest, whose black bob had certainly been dyed and who wore thick, square black-rimmed spectacles, was his physical opposite: pale, dumpy and doughy, her small, deep-set eyes like raisins in a bun.”

“He turned his head and Strike saw scalp shining through the thinning roots…”

“Eyebrows as thick and bushy as tiger moth caterpillars overhung her puffy eyes.”

It gets to be too much after a while, in my humble opinion.

Actually, I had one more quibble with Career of Evil: The tiny detail that finally enables Cormoran to have the major breakthrough and solve the mystery is… a tiny detail, so trivial that I find it close to impossible to believe that this man would have noticed and identified this teensy element and have the entire solution hinge upon that discovery. The rest of the mystery’s resolution worked for me, but that one thing — no.

Other than that, though, I’m really having a great time reading the Cormoran Strike books, and hope there are many more to come. This book’s mystery is solved by the end, but the door is still open for more adventures and complications for Cormoran and Robin and their partnership.

Added bonus: It’s so exciting to know that BBC is developing a Cormoran Strike Mysteries TV show!

Finally, a reading tip: This is a big, densely plotted book with (it feels like) a thousand characters and backstories to keep straight. The lives and details of the various suspects can easily blend together, and I found myself constantly having to flip backwards and forwards in the book to keep straight which clue went with which suspect. Keeping it all in order is part of the challenge and the fun — but I’d recommend saving this book for a time when you know you’ll have minimal distractions and plenty of concentration!

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The details:

Title: Career of Evil
Author: Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling)
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Publication date: October 20, 2015
Length: 489 pages
Genre: Mystery
Source: Purchased