Career of Evil review
Jan. 14th, 2017 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessCareer of Evil: Robert Galbraith
This story had such a hold on me – a staying up much later than my usual bedtime hold. It starts as it means to go on with Robin taking a parcel from a courier that…contains the severed leg of a dead young woman at the office. Cormoran realises it’s a message for him, and can give the police the names of four men from his past who might do this type of thing and have a grudge against him. As you would, but this gives us and Robin more information about his past, which I welcomed.
The novel followed Cormoran as he started investigating the case, seeing the police botching it; Robin as she investigated and navigated rescheduled wedding preparations with Oh Come Off It Matthew; and the delightful (not) serial killer who we gradually learned had a thing for cutting the body parts off women he’d murdered, had plans for Robin and really wanted to pay Cormoran out – but apart from giving us insight into his methods and sick mind, it didn't. As the publicity around his link to this case dried up Cormoran’s other cases and the danger to Robin grew, tensions simmered between Robin and Matthew, then Robin and Cormoran after she and Matthew broke up. Cormoran was always a step forward in realising the dangers of ‘letting Robin in’ and a bit more honest about his feelings. But then, Robin has been with Matthew for nine years and only vaguely realised her mind was wandering towards considering Cormaran in that way when she took off her engagement ring. Not that she broke it off because of the countless rows she and Matthew were having, which signified they were so compatible.
And really, Robin was thinking more of who she is, who she wants to be (not a victim) and how the career she wants (is not evil) is to investigate. And that was the really interesting thing about how she wanted Cormoran to see her (and when he didn’t and reacted to the danger she was in as a target how that disappointed her and wound her up, which you could read more into than Robin did).
Like I said, this book delved into Cormoron’s past more, with the case making him relive his mother’s final days with a boyfriend Strike loathed and believed had killed his mother, and his career as an army investigator when he’d let one nasty piece of work get to him and get away with a heinous crime and came across another. But we also found out what I’d always suspected had happened to take Robin out of university and it went some way to explaining why she had become cocooned in her family and Matthew’s protectiveness.
The backdrop was Prince William’s royal wedding (surely the next book or the one after will be set during the London Olympics with the gentrification and the scepticism that got turned around – and it’d be interesting to have Cormoran’s take on the Paralympics).
As for the case itself, I couldn’t quite work out who our killer was, but then I thought it was Cormoran and Robin’s jobs to make a list of everything they knew and cross-reference it, which they never seemed to. The more we learned, the more the suspects ruled themselves in or out, but I felt it was in and out. I got a hazy idea of where things were going a little before they were fully revealed, but not quite. But I was as delighted as Robin that she got a bigger investigative role to play, and did a lot of things brilliantly, while she also showed her lack of experience (and let her emotions influence her even more than Cormoran did). With the UST cranking up a notch - although the big thing for me was realising how fond Cormoran is of Robin before he admitted it himself – let alone the ending, things have changed. We had to contend with the vileness of the serial killer’s thinking and action (and there’s child abuse, rape and objectification of women) – I found it easiest to put the book down before or after those chapters. But the countdown of the threat to Robin and to Strike’s agency, plus the wedding that Robin and Cormoran are not facing up to made it very easy to turn page after page. Rowling clearly enjoys writing about the different type of lives going on in London – and we got out of the big smoke for a road trip for Comoran and Robin (when she was on her break with Matthew) and I was delighted that the Acknowledgements suggested that the fictional characters were following a route their creator took.
But after that ending, where will Rowling go? Robin has choices to make and she should be making them with Matthew, but will she? Will his guilt and fear that she would leave him continue the slight reset in how he treated her? Or is he going to realise that she doesn’t care as much about him as she does about her career (and, you’ve got to say, Cormoran, because looking at him when she was making her vows to another man? Oh, Robin.) Will she realise her indifference? Will she fight for the career that makes her happy, and as to that, I’m not sure that Cormoran be able to make it up to her professionally without a lot of apologising from him for sacking her and sending her away, while using the fruits of her labour to entrap the killer? And then denial. And for now I want Robin to continue investigating, doing what makes her happy, for herself more than the romance – Cormoran’s reasoning about what ‘an affair’ between them would mean holds true. Er maybe she could become a police officer? Basically, I look forward to the next book.
This story had such a hold on me – a staying up much later than my usual bedtime hold. It starts as it means to go on with Robin taking a parcel from a courier that…contains the severed leg of a dead young woman at the office. Cormoran realises it’s a message for him, and can give the police the names of four men from his past who might do this type of thing and have a grudge against him. As you would, but this gives us and Robin more information about his past, which I welcomed.
The novel followed Cormoran as he started investigating the case, seeing the police botching it; Robin as she investigated and navigated rescheduled wedding preparations with Oh Come Off It Matthew; and the delightful (not) serial killer who we gradually learned had a thing for cutting the body parts off women he’d murdered, had plans for Robin and really wanted to pay Cormoran out – but apart from giving us insight into his methods and sick mind, it didn't. As the publicity around his link to this case dried up Cormoran’s other cases and the danger to Robin grew, tensions simmered between Robin and Matthew, then Robin and Cormoran after she and Matthew broke up. Cormoran was always a step forward in realising the dangers of ‘letting Robin in’ and a bit more honest about his feelings. But then, Robin has been with Matthew for nine years and only vaguely realised her mind was wandering towards considering Cormaran in that way when she took off her engagement ring. Not that she broke it off because of the countless rows she and Matthew were having, which signified they were so compatible.
And really, Robin was thinking more of who she is, who she wants to be (not a victim) and how the career she wants (is not evil) is to investigate. And that was the really interesting thing about how she wanted Cormoran to see her (and when he didn’t and reacted to the danger she was in as a target how that disappointed her and wound her up, which you could read more into than Robin did).
Like I said, this book delved into Cormoron’s past more, with the case making him relive his mother’s final days with a boyfriend Strike loathed and believed had killed his mother, and his career as an army investigator when he’d let one nasty piece of work get to him and get away with a heinous crime and came across another. But we also found out what I’d always suspected had happened to take Robin out of university and it went some way to explaining why she had become cocooned in her family and Matthew’s protectiveness.
The backdrop was Prince William’s royal wedding (surely the next book or the one after will be set during the London Olympics with the gentrification and the scepticism that got turned around – and it’d be interesting to have Cormoran’s take on the Paralympics).
As for the case itself, I couldn’t quite work out who our killer was, but then I thought it was Cormoran and Robin’s jobs to make a list of everything they knew and cross-reference it, which they never seemed to. The more we learned, the more the suspects ruled themselves in or out, but I felt it was in and out. I got a hazy idea of where things were going a little before they were fully revealed, but not quite. But I was as delighted as Robin that she got a bigger investigative role to play, and did a lot of things brilliantly, while she also showed her lack of experience (and let her emotions influence her even more than Cormoran did). With the UST cranking up a notch - although the big thing for me was realising how fond Cormoran is of Robin before he admitted it himself – let alone the ending, things have changed. We had to contend with the vileness of the serial killer’s thinking and action (and there’s child abuse, rape and objectification of women) – I found it easiest to put the book down before or after those chapters. But the countdown of the threat to Robin and to Strike’s agency, plus the wedding that Robin and Cormoran are not facing up to made it very easy to turn page after page. Rowling clearly enjoys writing about the different type of lives going on in London – and we got out of the big smoke for a road trip for Comoran and Robin (when she was on her break with Matthew) and I was delighted that the Acknowledgements suggested that the fictional characters were following a route their creator took.
But after that ending, where will Rowling go? Robin has choices to make and she should be making them with Matthew, but will she? Will his guilt and fear that she would leave him continue the slight reset in how he treated her? Or is he going to realise that she doesn’t care as much about him as she does about her career (and, you’ve got to say, Cormoran, because looking at him when she was making her vows to another man? Oh, Robin.) Will she realise her indifference? Will she fight for the career that makes her happy, and as to that, I’m not sure that Cormoran be able to make it up to her professionally without a lot of apologising from him for sacking her and sending her away, while using the fruits of her labour to entrap the killer? And then denial. And for now I want Robin to continue investigating, doing what makes her happy, for herself more than the romance – Cormoran’s reasoning about what ‘an affair’ between them would mean holds true. Er maybe she could become a police officer? Basically, I look forward to the next book.
