Book review: Career of Evil

Writing under a pseudonym must do wonders for J.K. Rowling's writer's block, because unlike the big gaps we used to get between Harry Potter books, the Cormoran Strike crime novels she writes as Robert Galbraith have been coming out pretty regularly. The series is in part Rowling's way of talking about the weirdness of fame, and where the first two books saw the private detective solve cases involving famous people, in Career of Evil it's his own fame thanks to those cases that kicks everything off: A serial killer with a Blue Öyster Cult fixation has made it very clear he or she has a particular beef with Strike, who thinks his recent appearances in the papers have stirred up someone from his past with a grudge. And since his past was in the military police, he can come up with a decent shortlist of suspects just off the top off his head.

The book opens with Strike's assistant Robin receiving a severed leg as a special delivery, but despite early word being that this was the goriest of the novels so far, I'm not sure it quite overtakes The Silkworm's ritual eviscerations. The creepiest element is probably Robin delving into the world of acrotomophilia, investigating people either attracted to amputees or, particularly in this case, people who want to have their own limbs amputated. Having lost a leg in the Middle East, Strike is unsurprisingly unsympathetic, particularly to a very odd couple they meet during their investigation. Despite a fairly small pool of suspects this is another good mystery with a few red herrings and perilous moments - this being someone happy to kill off dozens of characters in a children's series, you can certainly imagine Rowling wouldn't hesitate to get rid of one of her popular leads in a grisly adult series.

Book review: The Silkworm

After The Cuckoo's Calling, the second "Robert Galbraith" novel is The Silkworm. J.K. Rowling has said that one of her ideas behind writing this series of crime novels was to do stories about fame - hence a detective whose father was a famous rock star, which brings him a lot of celebrity clients but also unwanted attention. This time she really goes for her specialist subject as Cormoran Strike is hired to find a missing author, so the pool of suspects and witnesses is drawn from the publishing world. Strike's assistant Robin gets increasingly caught up in the action, and the book gets a running subplot of her enthusiasm for her new job getting in the way of her relationship with her fiancé. I enjoyed the first novel but thought this was better - there were a couple of gasp-out-loud moments, and a major clue nicely disguised as a character note.

Twitaceous Era 50: Ooh, haze effects!

This week I was ill so my Twitter feed is likely to make even less sense than usual.

Pearce Brosnan thinks Idris Elba should be James Bond. Or Colin Salmon. Or Daniel Craig. He doesn't care, stop asking him about James Bond.
8:19 AM - 18 Feb 2015

The people who can answer any question except the one they've been asked are out in force today.
3:46 PM - 18 Feb 2015

Last night's fever was so bad my legs stopped working. Scary. But slightly like a fairground ride.
12:12 PM - 19 Feb 2015

Book review: The Cuckoo's Calling

J K Rowling's second post-Potter novel, and the first in a new series, has of course been most famous for the fact that it was published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, a disguise that was uncovered a lot earlier than she'd hoped - although she's going to continue writing the series under the Galbraith name as originally intended. But The Cuckoo's Calling also turns out to be a good murder thriller in itself. Having got used to using exotic character names her new protagonist is the son of a rock star and a hippie groupie, which leaves him with the unusual name Cormoran Strike. It's a provenance that's inconvenient for who he now is, a former military policeman who lost a leg in Afghanistan and is now a private detective, but finds it hard to blend into the background when people find out about his famous dad.

Hints that this is written by the most famous living author continue to the plot of The Cuckoo's Calling, which extends the celebrity theme with the supposed suicide of a supermodel. The murder mystery part is well plotted and there's a shady group of characters to fill the pool of suspects, plus an obligatory plucky assistant for Strike in Robin, a temp secretary he's hired, sort of accidentally, and can't really afford. And knowing who the real writer is makes it fun to see if there's any clues to her identity - Strike seems to have a different nickname with everyone who knows him, which is apt for a pseudonymously-authored story; and I liked him confronting the killer with the truth, only to be told it was so fanciful the detective should take up writing fantasy fiction instead.

Book review: The Casual Vacancy

I do like to be awkward, so while everyone else was going on about J.K. Rowling dragging up as Robert Galbraith, I was catching up with her first non-Potter book written under her own name, The Casual Vacancy. I'd been a bit wary of it as its reputation precedes it, as one of the books most likely to be given up on halfway through and a really dark affair. It's certainly a departure from the family-friendly books she made her name with although anyone who'd paid attention to them would have known the strong feelings she brings to the fore here: The Casual Vacancy is populated almost entirely by characters like the Dursleys.

The story is set in the determinedly middle-class small town of Pagford in the Westcountry, its affairs run by a local council as there's a larger town nearby that deals with bigger issues. The book's starting point is the surprise death of one of these councilors, and one of the few people who seemed to care about the poverty-stricken estate that occupies the borders, and which the insular people of Pagford would like to see offloaded on their larger neighbour as their responsibility.

The barely-concealed reality is that the relatively well-off people of Pagford have contempt for their needier neighbours, as exemplified by the wayward teenager Krystal Weedon, the daughter of a drug addict, and in her attempt to make sense of the world alternately repellent and in some ways admirable. Of course the people of the town only see her as a monster, and with a vacancy on the council they hope to get someone more sympathetic to their cause in to make sure she and her like are no longer their problem.

I actually found the book pretty involving, it's a portrait of a whole town that builds up a lot of individual character studies. It's occasionally witty but mostly it's a very angry book, Rowling's feelings about middle-class NIMBYs never disguised, with barely any character not displaying some pretty horrific side. Even when, as here, I completely agree with the author's politics, I can get a bit frustrated when they hammer it home to this extent so that was an occasional irritant, as was the way Rowling writes Krystal's dialogue, rather overegging her poor grammar. But overall I found it worth a read - although I'll definitely need something a lot lighter next to cheer me up.