‘Troubled Blood’ made me not care about two characters I’d loved
Goodbye, Strike and Robin. I'll miss you.
When I first heard that J.K. Rowling had begun writing detective fiction, I wasn't particularly excited. I didn't grow up with Harry Potter, and I read the series as an adult with more duty than pleasure (though I enjoyed going to the movies with my nephew). And I found Rowling's first foray into adult fiction, “The Casual Vacancy,” a snooze.
But then came “The Cuckoo's Calling” in 2013, written by Rowling under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, and I fell — hard. Cormoran Strike is a hardluck London detective with a gruff exterior and a carefully hidden tender heart; Robin Ellacott is his trusty associate, a clever young woman whose carefully guarded secrets gradually begin to emerge. Together, they had a flinty Nick-and-Nora charm — two smart, charming people whose mutual attraction was something they needed to hide. (Robin was engaged and later married; Strike felt it unseemly to get involved with an employee.) Over the first four books, as Strike and Robin sat in pubs pulling at the strands of cases together, they became effective co-workers, fast friends and a couple whom you badly wanted to see together. And I devoured every word, even as the books, like the Potter series, grew slowly longer and less nimble.
The latest book, “Troubled Blood,” quotes me on the back cover, from a review I wrote of the third book, “Career of Evil”; I had noted that the duo “make you wish desperately for a new installment” as soon as the current one ends. Well … be careful what you wish for. “Troubled Blood” is a deeply frustrating and ultimately unpleasant experience, for reasons having to do with both Rowling's recent public opinions and with the book itself.
Earlier this year, Rowling