Wed 12 Dec 2018
A PI Mystery Review by David Vineyard: ROBERT GALBRAITH – Lethal White.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
ROBERT GALBRAITH – Lethal White. Cormoran Strike #4. Mulholland Books, hardcover, September 2018.
That’s the question Robin Ellacott, secretary and operative of Cormoran Strike’s small detective agency asks herself on her wedding night when she learns her former boss wants her back after they have made national news capturing the Shakewell Ripper in the previous novel, Career of Evil.
Her relationship with her wounded war veteran boss, Strike, is complicated at best, the two a team reliant on each other, but dancing around the other issues coming from their relationship, him dealing with his missing leg and painful stump and she with anxiety attacks after nearly being killed by the Shakewell Ripper.
A year later things are still at loggerheads when an emotionally and mentally disturbed boy named Billy shows up in Strike’s office with a story of a crime he witnessed as a child: “Ages, I was a kid … Little Girl it was, but after they said it was a little boy. Jimmy was there, he says I never saw it, but I did. I saw him do it, Strangled. I saw it.â€. Billy’s memory is inexact, but Strike believes him and takes up the case.
His new found fame makes it harder to keep a low profile though. People expect him to be delving into something major and clam up. Meanwhile he and Robin, the latter only a year into a marriage she still questions, have to navigate their increasingly difficult relationship and her less than perfect marriage.
The unlikely murder of a little girl, or was it a little boy, takes Strike and Robin from the back streets of London to the secret sanctums of Parliament, to a grand manor house in the country, with one obstruction and red herring after another thrown in their path as they try to uncover the truth behind a confused boy’s memory of a crime no one believes he witnessed and a tie to a priceless painting hiding in plain sight and worth killing for.
Lethal White is a long book, in fact, it weighs in at over six hundred pages, but then it is written by someone known for writing densely plotted long books readers plunge into willingly. Perhaps the remarkable thing about this series and Galbraith (which has inspired television adaptations, too) is that you won’t find a single mention in the hardcover edition of this book that Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym of one of the most popular and successful writers of the last few decades, J. K, Rowiling of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts fame.
Fairly compared to the best of Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, and Peter Robinson, Robert Galbraith deserves all the attention and accolades even without knowing who lies behind the pseudonym. Cormoran Strike and Robin are believable characters, flawed and human, and among the most attractive and intriguing sleuths currently around.
I know many of you aren’t great fans of these dense long books and wonder how the writer can call anything that long suspense or maintain the mystery element, but I can only say in this one case it feels effortless, and unlike many writers who work at this length, the attractive detectives are on stage for all the action, always at the center of things, in a book that mixes hard-boiled, classical, satire, and romance in a heady mix.
The dirt on his windsheild shimmered and blurred in the setting sunlight …
“You just ate half a potato field and most of a cow.â€
The slate grey Thames rolled eternally on, its surface barely troubled by the thickening rain …
“… Death rides a white horse in Revelations, though.â€
“A pale horse,†Strike corrected her winding down the window again so he could smoke.
“Pedant.â€
“Says the woman who won’t call a brown horse brown.â€
“Pure white foal, seems healthy when its born, but defective bowel .. they can’t survive lethal whites …â€
Such is the universal desire for fame that that those who achieve it accidentally or unwillingly will wait in vain for pity.
Writing like that makes taking on six hundred plus pages a pleasure.
December 12th, 2018 at 9:47 pm
Rowling writes faster than I can read them. I bought the first one but I passed on the next two because I hadn’t read the first one yet.
And here she is with number four.
Question: It sounds as though reading them in order might be a good idea, but is it absolutely necessary?
December 13th, 2018 at 6:51 pm
It probably helps to read them in order to follow the relationship between Strike and Robin. There is some carryover between books, though no cliffhangers or the like. Luckily the books started off on a high, and haven’t let down.
In some ways Rowling has her cake and eats it too in that Strike is a tough as nails type with a believable and often painful disability who would fit in any hard boiled tale while Robin, also a realistic character, brings a more feminine and emotionally tough side to the thing. It is no easy trick to keep series characters personally involved in the mystery at hand and not, like so many writers who pen these long books, sideline your main characters for long passages about other characters (Thomas Lynley hardly appears in some of the Lynley series by Elizabeth George).
Strike or Robin, or both are on almost every page of these books, yet they remain characters who we wish to see more of and watch grow, especially the difficult relationship between two people so different, but so drawn to each other, and so dependent on each other. Either one could easily dominate the series, but instead Rowling wisely keeps a balance where the reader appreciates what each of them brings to the proceedings.
December 13th, 2018 at 7:00 pm
Well, you’ve convinced me, David. If I can’t find my copy of Book One, I’ll buy another one and have it to read on my next CT-to-CA flight. Unless there’s a weight limit, in which case I’ll give it a read before I go.
December 13th, 2018 at 8:43 pm
The door stop length doesn’t start until book three in the series.