Review: Career of Evil

You guys all know about Robert Galbraith right? If not take a minute to google the name and you can get caught up quickly. It's important so go take a look.

This is the third book to give us a look at the life of modern day London detective Cormoran Strike. Just give yourself a minute to take in that name. It's maybe the best name in modern literature. I mean when i need a good expletive or a replacement for "Odin's Beard!" I like to think Cormoran Strike in my little brain.

This instance in the series has Cormoran and his side-kick / secretary hunting the trail of a serial killer. This isn't my usual genre read. I have to say that I found my way to the series through the fame of the author. It's been a nice surprise that all of the entries so far have been excellent, and Cormoran Strike has proved as interesting as his name. Career of Evil continues to give us the excellent character work of it's main character and a bevy of side characters that stretch beyond the simple means that were used in their creation. It provides a real fantastic view of both London and  the cases they work on. Even though everything is thoroughly mundane there is such a sense of discovery and genuineness to the stories that reminds you of whose fingers are behind the words on the page.

I would call them mysteries, though I don't think that there are ever enough clues through the novel to put the different odd circumstances to put them together into a solution. Indeed most of the enjoyment I got from the first two books were in the evidence vomit at the end where all is revealed. Yet, the story moves along with excellent pace and you are never left feeling like you are out of the loop on what the characters are finding. Though as solutions are found the moments where the obfuscation of the necessaries becomes more and more apparent. But used as an instance of increased tension these misdirections help us race to the end instead of bogging things down in "Ah Ha!"s.

I did find that this novel is much more violent and disturbing then the previous entries. There are moments where the killer becomes the point of view character and his perspective is entirely disgusting and revolting to slide behind. I think I understand the point of this but there were more then a few times where I had to put the book aside for a few days to get the taste out of my brain. So head's up for those of you with no interest in getting behind the eyes of someone whose decided to and then does murder several women for the worst sort of reasons.

Career of Evil gets four stars out of five.