The power of evil and the reality of good

The new Robert Galbraith novel, the seventh in the Cormoran Strike series, is enthralling. It is very long, the kind of book you are happy to lose yourself in. It is also very heavy, not a book comfortable to read in bed, all but impossible really. Victorian publishers were kind to readers – they brought out novels in three volumes, issued simultaneously.

For anyone new to the series, Strike, an army veteran and former military policeman who lost half a leg in Afghanistan, now runs a private detective agency in London’s Soho, with his partner Robin, a thirty-ish woman, survivor, some time back, of rape and a bad marriage. They are “best friends”. One expects – hopes? – that they may become more than that. Strike, however, is still not free of a former but still possessive lover, while Robin has a fiancé, a Metropolitan police officer.

Their new case is demanding. Their client, a rich man, commissions them to try to extract one of his sons, Will, from the clutches of the Universal Humanitarian Church. Will, who seems to have been brainwashed, is living at one of the Church’s centres, a farm in Norfolk. He had previously been working with a man who had left the church and turned against it; this man has now been found dead. Strike, though he doesn’t mention this, has experience of the church and its farm, having spent time as a child there with his hippy mother.

There is no doubt in his mind – or, I would guess, any reader’s – that the UHC is a cult, and a very nasty one.

The UHC is very rich and successful, with a temple in London and branches in the USA and elsewhere. Its leader is a charismatic preacher, Jonathan Wase or “PapaJ”.

Investigation has to be an undercover job. Robin of course volunteers, posing as a seeker and potential covert. What she discovers is horrible and frightening. She arouses suspicion and suffers accordingly. Meanwhile on the outside, Strike, while also dealing with the agency’s other cases, which adds verisimilitude to the narrative, seeks out and questions past members of the church. The church is bizarre, with its own prophets, chief among them a drowned girl, daughter of PapaJ’s sinister and frightening wife, Mazu. The dead girl – “The Drowned Prophet” is capable of “manifesting” herself alarmingly.

That’s the setting. Even as cults go, the UHC strains credulity – strains it but never quite snaps it. Galbraith makes it all seem possible, and horribly alarming. Even while one is sure, or almost sure, that Robin will manage to escape from the farm, her predicament is gripping.

Reading, and thoroughly engrossed in the book, I was reminded of the great early novels of Dick Francis, when his heroes were usually damaged men and he was rightly praised by Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin.

Not all thriller writers make you care for their characters; Francis did and Galbraith does too. Francis was an addictive writer; so is Galbraith. It was hard to lay a Dick Francis novel aside; same with Galbraith.

Years ago I was sure no one did, or could do, this sort of stuff better than Francis; same with Galbraith now. Francis put his early heroes through some very nasty experiences, likewise Galbraith. Like him, Galbraith – also known as JK Rowling – has no doubt about the power of evil and of the reality of good, just like that other master of suspense, John Buchan.

In the end – we are made chillingly conscious of evil, yet consoled by the ultimate triumph of good.