First of all, an admission. I have never read a Harry Potter book and I don’t intend ever to read one! No offence intended to Edinburgh resident, JK Rowling, and I must say that I have queued at eight o’clock in the morning outside a bookstore with my daughter to be first to buy a copy of the latest book and I have also queued with the same daughter to have a copy of another Harry Potter book signed by the author. I have also watched one Harry Potter film but I’m afraid that I didn’t enjoy it very much. However, I am certainly happy to admit that I am a huge fan of the Cormoran Strike novels which Ms Rowling writes under the name of Robert Galbraith. I have read all the books and watched all the TV versions and I am not ashamed to say that I didn’t want the most recent book ‘Troubled Blood’ to end I was enjoying it so much.
All five plots have been excellent and absorbing with all sorts of cunning twists but, as tends to be the case for me, it is the characters who make the book the enthralling and enjoyable reads that they are. I simply cannot recommend them enough. The two principal characters, Cormoran and his partner Robin Ellacott are both quirky but interesting in their own ways and, as an aside, both really well represented by the actors who portray them on TV. In fact, the actress who plays Robin looks almost exactly as I imagined her when I was reading the book!
To describe Cormoran as quirky would be a terrible understatement! Born in 1974, he has an estranged father who is a famous but aging rock star, late mother a model, Oxford educated but left to join the army. Wounded in action in Afghanistan when he lost half his right leg in a bomb attack. He was in the Royal Military Police Investigation Branch and, on the basis of that experience, he decides to become a private detective but, at the beginning of the first book, he has little work and is in debt. His partner, Robin, joins him initially as a temp from an agency but, gradually, she shows her talents as a detective and, by the third novel, she is his partner. Although she and Cormoran are clearly meant to be, neither owns up to this and she eventually marries her boyfriend, Matthew. However, the marriage is short-lived and, by the end of Troubled Blood, it looks as if she and Cormoran are on the verge committing to each other.
Other characters include a few of Cormoran’s associates/friends in the police and his quasi-criminal friend Shanker. No more that you need to know at the moment but certainly worth reading in my view and I would say that they are some of the best books of the genre to appear from a British writer for some time. I hope that, with a recommendation like that, I can be forgiven by JK Rowling for not being a fan of Harry Potter! As tends to be the case, you can read any of the books on a stand-alone basis as the history and background of the characters tends to be repeated in each of the series but, as ever, I would recommend reading them in order.