Book Reviews – May 2022 – Sallie Eden

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
Published by Sphere, 2020

After seeing filming taking place in St Mawes recently I thought I’d read the book on which the latest series of Strike is based.

The book opens with the now well known private detective, Cormoran Strike, visiting his family in St Mawes. Despite an already heavy workload, he agrees to take on a missing person’s case, that of Margot Bamborough, who disappeared in 1974.

Robin Ellacott, his partner in the detective agency, is going through a divorce and (cliché warning) she’s “battling her own feelings about Strike”.

The book is described as a “breathtaking, labyrinthine epic” and “a fiendishly complex case” involving a serial killer and witnesses who can’t necessarily be trusted.

I realise I’m in a minority but I thought the book was over long, tedious, far too detailed (how much information about tarot cards and signs of the Zodiac does one book need?), needlessly complex and frequently downright nasty. Apart from that, did I enjoy it? No. There was no need for so many unnecessary references to Strike’s amputated leg and also far too much graphic adult content for me.

The descriptions of St Mawes were interesting though.

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