Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
As Josie leads a new life as Mari, fifteen years after she was allegedly killed in a terrorist blast in Europe, you get to learn the same narrative from her as well. There is a lot to work with. The story’s most obvious unanswered question is not whether Kit will locate Josie, but rather what will happen when she does. We are all following the same road to get to this pivotal point in the narrative, but the route there is somewhat akin to driving down Lombard Street in San Francisco, with many curves to navigate. As Strike and Robin look into Margot’s disappearance, they encounter a devilishly complicated case with leads involving tarot cards, a psychotic serial killer, and unreliable witnesses. They also discover that even cases that are decades old might be fatal.
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
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Private investigator Coroman Strike runs a business alongside his business partner Robin Ellacott, a number of subcontractors, and their secretary Pat. He is approached by a woman asking him to check into the case of Margot Bamborough, who has been missing since 1974 when he is visiting family in Cornwall.
Strike and Robin agree to only work on the case for a year in case nothing happens, despite the fact that they have never investigated a cold case before and that their schedule is already extremely demanding. The plot of the book changes significantly when the personal difficulties of Robin’s divorce, Strike’s aunt’s serious illness, and both characters’ conflicting affections for one another are included. A one-legged man, a woman returning from a brutal rape, a lesbian couple seeking closure over the death of one partner’s mother, people with all forms of developmental disabilities, including those with fragile X syndrome, people from all socioeconomic classes, numerous psychopaths at various levels, as well as numerous cases of mental illness and personality disorders, are all represented in this epic.
The Italian mafia, murders, rapes, vividly detailed encounters that result in prostitutes needing medical attention, and different types of sexual paraphilia are just a few more pieces to this puzzle. Because, well, there isn’t enough to deal with already, we have to wade into the dynamics of Strike’s ex-lover and his father just to kick it up a notch. There is also the sturm und drang of the two partners’ approach/avoidance of the possibility of romance between them against a background of a divorce for the female and multiple family challenges for the other. Even the climate and Cornish politics are given prominent attention.
