The Nature of Things

This a big, sprawling tale, fourth in the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott mystery series. Each one has been better than the last. This one starts where the last one ended - at Robin's wedding to Matthew, an absolute jerk who everyone except her can see is wrong for her. Actually, even she sees it, but she has several years of her life invested in the relationship plus a lot of her parents' hard-earned money spent on the wedding and she just can't find it within herself to pull the plug. Moreover, she has been fired from her job by Cormoran Strike and now her relationship with Matthew seems like the only thing she has going for her. The only bright spot of the day is when Cormoran shows up at the wedding and gives her a hug and they reconcile. Fast forward a year. Robin is back at work as a detective, now a partner in the agency which is doing quite well. They've solved some big cases and gotten a lot of public notice as a result. A young man named Billy Knight comes to t...

Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith My rating: 4 of 5 stars Okay, let me say up front that I really enjoyed this book. I think it is my favorite in this series so far. J.K. Rowling, writing as Robert Galbraith, seems to be hitting her stride with these new characters, Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. She's fleshing them out in a way that makes them more real and more sympathetic. We begin to understand some of what motivates them. As we join Robin and Cormoran this time, their struggling detective agency is still on the brink of disaster and soon events will conspire to push it further over that brink. Moreover, their personal lives, which they determinedly keep separate from their professional ones, are becoming complicated and problematic. In a few weeks, Robin is to marry her long-time boyfriend Matthew, whom Cormoran privately thinks is a "wanker." Meantime, Cormoran is involved with a beautiful and wealthy woman who is in the midst of a divorce. Beautiful and weal...

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith My rating: 4 of 5 stars Readers of the Harry Potter series know very well what a master storyteller J.K. Rowling is. Even when she uses the pseudonym "Robert Galbraith" that talent shines through. She has written a second very entertaining entry in her Cormoran Strike detective series. The Silkworm holds the reader's interest from the first page to the last. It is quite simply delicious fun to read. Part of what makes it such fun is the setting of this novel. Rowling/Galbraith has taken on the publishing industry, something about which she undoubtedly knows a very great deal and on which she must have very well-formed opinions. Coming from one of the most successful writers in history, those opinions certainly carry an extra dollop of interest as one speculates about the personalities of her characters. The center of this story is novelist Owen Quine, who goes missing, not for the first time. His dowdy wife Leonora becomes alarmed when h...