Troubled narrative
Troubled Blood Robert Galbraith Mulholland
In an afterword to 2015's Career of Evil, J.K. Rowling says Robert Galbraith, her fictional alter ego, “has always felt like my own private playground.” On the evidence of Troubled Blood, the fifth and latest Galbraith novel, that playground has grown deeper and bigger than ever. At more than 900 pages, it is the longest, most ambitious Galbraith novel to date. It is also the focus of a controversy that seems likely to divide potential readers.
Rowling has created a creepy serial killer who dresses in women's clothes to more easily reel in his female victims. That decision has generated considerable outrage in light of comments Rowling has made that angered transgender rights activists.
Is this creation a legitimate esthetic choice or is it an affront to the LGBTQ community? While I don't pretend to know the author's motivations, I lean toward calling it legitimate. Many others will no doubt passionately disagree.
This once again features Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott, partners in a London-based detective agency. Strike is a former military policeman who lost a leg while serving in Afghanistan. Ellacott, we learn, is an emotionally scarred young woman with an affinity for the peculiar satisfactions of detective work. They have solved high-profile cases but have yet to resolve their complex feelings for each other. During a visit to his childhood home in Cornwall, Strike agrees to look into a decades-old mystery.
Nearly 40 years before, a local doctor named Margot Bamborough had left work and walked in the direction of a nearby pub, where she planned to meet a female friend for drinks. She never arrived. No body was found, and no clues ever surfaced. Strike learns the bare facts of the case from Margot's surviving daughter, Anna.
The investigation that follows is the centrepiece of a wide-ranging novel filled with enough characters, incidents and alternating storylines to justify its exorbitant length.
Controversies aside, Rowling remains a rare, natural, confident storyteller. For more than one reason, this will surely be among the most widely read — and widely debated — novels of the season. Let the arguments begin.