How many pages can you read whilst a saucepan of peas cooks do you think? As it turns out, quite a few. I know as I have done it. Usually my current book stays beside my bed, except during lockdown times when there was a downstairs book and an upstairs book. However, I lived (I do mean lived) Troubled Blood during the two weeks it took me to read it and to such an extent that the book accompanied even into the kitchen when I was cooking dinner, hence the peas. I found that when I was out shopping or watching television those characters of Strike and Robin were fully in my mind, actually in a slightly uncomfortable way.
But, what a fantastic read this book is, number 5 in the series of 8. More to come I understand. Taking a different angle from the previous stories, this is the first cold case that Strike agrees to take on and, be warned it is grisly, but undoubtedly gripping. For me it had considerable added interest as it was set in Islington and Clerkenwell, areas of London I know well as my daughters both lived there some years ago. And there was more! The tall London house with the requisite basement, where the serial murderer took his victims was in Liverpool Road, where one of my daughters had had a flat. Goodness! I’m not sure how I feel about ghastly activities (yes, fictional I know) happening in streets where people are living today.
I remember reading Andrew O’Hagan’s terrific novel: Caledonian Road, which focused on a particular house in an adjacent Georgian Square, all still in the borough of Islington. I actually walked Caledonian Road and tried to see if this numbered house actually existed and found that the square was certainly there but the author had invented the number. Definitely fictional.
Troubled Blood is a labyrinthine epic of a book. We see Strike as troubled himself with family matters as well as agency work. The author develops the vulnerable side of this, her big character as she allows him to confront his feelings for Robin.
One friend said she felt Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) was becoming rather self-indulgent in the length of her books. This one runs to 1073 pages. Well, maybe she has a point but goodness those pages are filled with such a great story that I personally won’t hold it against her…the friend or the author.
And then, staying with detective novels there is the latest in the Jackson Brodie novels by Kate Atkinson: Death at the Sign of the Rook. Here, a dedicated companion disappears apparently with a valuable painting and then this scene is replicated but the girl is a housemaid with a different name and different looks. Enter Jackson Brodie. There is great writing here but for aficionados of Brodie it is unsatisfactory, there is simply not enough of him and I found the plot, clever and amusing as it is, to be disjointed.
I put these two books together because at one point I had the thought that maybe both authors knew each other and met occasionally for coffee in Edinburgh. Both have important characters that suffered amputations through IED explosions in Afghanistan and both revel in literary allusions. Literary allusions can be fun, well, when you can recognise them but they can also be seen as a little pretentious. If I like them maybe that makes me pretentious too. Anyway, I think you will be clear which of these two novels I would recommend. I am restraining myself from acquiring Strike book 6 and think I will have a short break from all things private detective, just for a short while.