Cormoran Strike

Among my favorite recreational reads for the last few years has been the "Strike" series of detective novels by "Robert Galbraith" (actually a pen name for JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books).  The series follows the career of Cormoran Strike, owner of a small and initially unsuccessful private-detective agency in London, and Robin Ellacott, who first joins the agency as a temp and eventually becomes Strike's full business partner.

Despite common authorship, the Strike novels bear little resemblance to the Harry Potter works.  For one thing, they are unequivocally meant for adults, both in their themes and in the way they engage the reader's intellect.  Also, Rowling's writing has greatly improved over the years.  I personally found the Harry Potter books to be full of logical lapses and misfired emotional resonances, but the Strike books are the work of a fully mature creator.

There have been seven novels so far:

The Cuckoo's Calling
The Silkworm
Career of Evil
Lethal White
Troubled Blood
The Ink Black Heart
The Running Grave

It's well worth reading them in order.  While each novel is a fully self-contained story, the relationships among the characters develop and change from each one to the next -- and while the mystery stories themselves are gripping and complex, it's the characters that are the strongest appeal of the books.

There are no idealized figures here.  Strike and Robin are both very emotionally-damaged people in various ways, due to personal histories which are revealed over the course of the series, and both sometimes make disastrous mistakes.  Each has a toxic and manipulative romantic partner whom they would clearly be better off without, yet struggle to untangle themselves from.  Strike, a former military man, lost the lower half of his right leg in Afghanistan; a prosthesis allows him to walk normally most of the time, but bad habits and neglect eventually turn the injury into a crisis.

Several novels focus on particular areas of society or current issues -- The Cuckoo's Calling on the fashion world, The Silkworm on the publishing industry, Lethal White on the British class system, The Ink Black Heart on toxic online culture (with a white-nationalist terrorist group as a side story), and The Running Grave on cults.  The last is an especially disturbing read in places, as the brainwashing methods, manipulation, and cruelty of cults are described in the most unsparing and sometimes grueling detail.  However, reading it may actually help you recognize and see through such tactics, if you are ever in a situation where they are being used on you.

The mysteries themselves are extremely intricate and engaging, and the solutions, while far from easy to anticipate, always hold together well logically.  Investigative dead ends and red herrings abound, as in real life.  The novels easily bear repeated readings, not only because of the enduring appeal of the characters, but because even when you know "whodunnit", it's interesting to see how little details you may not have noticed the first time tie into what's really happening.

Strike's repeated success at attracting women is one aspect of the series that strains credulity a bit; while highly intelligent and idealistic, he is repeatedly described as physically ugly, and is sometimes abrasive and intimidating.  Still, these books were written by a woman, so perhaps she knows something I don't.  All of his relationships fail disastrously because his half-unacknowledged feelings toward Robin prevent him from fully committing to them, a problem which is understandable but sometimes leads him to behave callously.

Contrary to some claims, the transgender issue (on which Rowling has been outspoken in real life) hardly comes up in the novels.  A serial killer in Troubled Blood sometimes disguises himself as a woman, but this is just a tactic to make his female victims less wary -- the killer is not trans in any sense.  A true trans character does appear in The Silkworm, but he/she is a minor character and is portrayed fairly sympathetically, and no overall point about transgenderism is being made.

The British setting flavors every moment of the stories, with Britain's many regional identities and cultures a major part of the atmosphere.  Strike is Cornish, Robin is from Yorkshire, and other major characters' regional origins are often an important part of who they are.  American readers may be amused at the rarity of guns and the startled reactions when they appear or are mentioned.  You also get an impressive sense of how huge, variegated, and colorful London is.

The series is ongoing, with the eighth book probably appearing later this year and several more to come.

[Image at top:  Strike and Robin as portrayed in the BBC TV adaptation of the series]