Troubled Blood

Plenty of Plot, People and Pages

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith is the fifth in the Cormoran Strike series. It won the book of the year in the British Book award, and the CWA shortlisted it for their prestigious Steel and Gold Dagger Awards for best thriller and novel, respectively.

Perfectly plotted with a clever ending, but it took a long time to get there.

Synopsis

One rainy night in the 1970s, Dr Margot Bamborough walked out of her surgery to meet a friend in a pub. She didn’t arrive, and nobody ever saw her again.

Forty years later, Bamborough’s daughter seeks the help of Private Detective Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott in a last-ditch attempt to discover what happened to her mother. The cold case makes a welcome distraction from the detective agencies’ usual fare of cheating husbands. Strike and Elliott are plunged back into the 1970s and a world of Bunny Girls, Italian mobsters and serial killers.

Review

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling) is an extensive and detailed account of Strike and Ellacott’s year-long trawl through a long-dead investigation. It is powerfully descriptive (Rowling’s account of Skegness is all too sadly accurate) and long on characters, storylines, interviews, tarot cards and clues.

Galbraith spins up an elaborate plot and serves it with a handful of thought-provoking ideas. She handles some delicate subjects (abortion, senility and sexual harassment) intelligently, contrasting views from the 70s with the present day. She also plays with the idea of bias and how adept we are at self-deception.

The book isn’t without its flaws. Galbraith relies on a clumsy North London vernacular to portray her characters.

Yea, but I was s’posed to be at work, so I took Kev wiv me to the practice and give ‘im a colouring book.

Yet on her visit to her home in North Yorkshire, Ellacott didn’t “‘appen t’ mek a butty”.

As well as being long on plot, Troubled Blood is also long on paper; my copy weighed in at 1,073 pages. If you are considering a copy, save your biceps and use an e-reader.

If you like to immerse yourself in clues and red herrings (so many that I am still a little confused), this is the book for you. But it isn’t for me. The most exciting thing about the novel is the uproar it caused in the trans-sexual world, which is nowhere near reason enough to read it.

Excerpt

‘An appeal was put out for her, but nobody came forward, and in the absence of any information to the contrary, the investigating officer put a great deal of pressure on Gloria to say that she thought the patient was really a man in disguise, or at least, that she could’ve been mistaken in thinking she was a lady. But Gloria insisted that she knew a lady when she saw one.’

‘This officer being Bill Talbot?’ asked Strike.

‘Precisely,’ said Gupta, reaching for his tea. 

‘D’you think he wanted to believe the patient was a man dressed as a woman because —‘

‘Because Dennis Creed sometimes cross-dressed? Yes,’ said Gupta. Although we called him the Essex Butcher back then. We didn’t know his real name until 1976. And the only physical description of the Butcher at the time said he was dark and squat — I suppose I see why Talbot was suspicious but…’

‘Strange for the Essex Butcher to walk into a doctor’s surgery in drag and wait his turn?’

‘Well… quite.’ said Dr Gupta

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith