It was already a memorable day for twenty-five-year-old Robin Ellacott – her boyfriend Matthew proposed at midnight – but to top it off, she is sent by Temporary Solutions to a new assignment at what turns out to be her dream job working for a private detective. That private detective is Cormoran Strike whose day is a bad as Robin’s is good – assaulted and thrown out in the early hours by long term, on/off girlfriend Charlotte, and now saddled with a new temp on a contract he thought he’d cancelled and definitely can’t afford.
But things immediately look up. A client, no less, appears and is happy to spend big to ‘get justice’, to prove his sister, a famous model, dead three months following a fall from her balcony, did not jump but was pushed. Strike is doubtful; it was a high-profile death, and the police investigated thoroughly before concluding suicide. But the brother insists it was murder and has money to back his beliefs. So Strike takes the much-needed cash and gets to work.
The plot develops, expands, draws in a wide range of characters, leads one way then another, before concluding cleverly. In the process, Strike’s back story emerges – unconventional childhood, university dropout, a career in the military police cut short by injury and disfigurement, and of course the stormy relationship with the lovely, if unstable, Charlotte. As for Robin, she turns out to be a natural, not only efficient but resourceful, and within days more of an assistant than a secretary.
“Robert Galbraith”
handles the convoluted plot and the large cast of characters with consummate
skill (what else to expect from she who must not be named) making this a good
page turner (all 550 of them). More Strike novels follow, and the two leads certainly
seem to have the depth of character and potential to carry the story further.
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