Today we will talk about the book "Troubled Blood" by Robert Galbraith - under this pseudonym J.K. Rowling creates the story of the detective Cormoran Strike. This is the fifth novel about him. In the new part, Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott investigate the disappearance of a woman that happened 40 years ago. There are three reasons to read this detective story.
This is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults.
This is the perfect detective
The detective genre today is experiencing, if not a decline, then at least some stagnation: new novels are increasingly repeating or, at best, re-arranging classic clichés. Heroes, plots, techniques, motives - sometimes it seems that nothing new can be invented, everything has already happened. With her new, fifth novel about Cormoran Strike, J.K. Rowling (as everyone remembers, it was she who took refuge under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith) confidently proves that the canon is far from exhausted, and even in such an utterly conservative and trampled field as the classic detective of the whodunit system, quite it is possible to create a completely new route.
A chance meeting in a Cornish bar becomes the beginning of a new big investigation, in which the main characters, Robin Ellacott and Cormoran Strike, fail headlong for thirteen months. Forty-year-old Anna, a successful architect, wants to know what happened to her mother: on a rainy day in 1974, a twenty-nine-year-old female doctor, Margot Bumborough, left the London dispensary where she worked and disappeared forever. Neither her friend, with whom they agreed to meet in a pub next door, nor her husband, nor her one-year-old daughter waited for her. The police also failed to find traces of Margot: the maniac who was operating in the neighborhood, caught shortly after her disappearance, did not plead guilty to the murder of a young woman, and the inspector, who was slightly deranged during the investigation, stubbornly refused to consider other options.
Time passed, the wounds healed, and only Anna did not lose hope one day to find out the truth about her mother. Seeing a renowned private detective in the bar, Cormoran Strike, she decides that this is a sign of fate: the case of Margot Bumborough is returning from the archives. The hopeless "hangman", in which all traces have long been overgrown with weeds, the evidence has been lost, and the witnesses changed their names, went abroad or simply forgot about the events of that old day, gets a new chance.
It's not just a detective
In any detective novel, there is always a formulaic, functional side. The detective and his assistant are obliged to honestly, without hiding anything, share with the reader the evidence they have found and their own guesses. The perpetrator should be known to us long before being exposed and not disappear for a long time from the field of vision, but at the same time, as much as possible, arouse less suspicion than other candidates for the role of the killer. And finally, we must be sure that in the finale we learn not only the name of the villain, but also his motive, as well as the line of reasoning that allowed the detective to find the culprit.
However, a detective story reduced to a pure formula, no matter how well it is built, is doomed to remain within the framework of a purely genre, “one-off” literature and cannot claim more. Fearing this, many authors try to add "literary" to their books in the hope of jumping a little over their heads in this way and move from the shelf of entertaining reading material closer to serious non-genre prose. These exercises often result in strange texts in which a carelessly assembled plot frame creaks and heels under the weight of excess detail and stylistic beauty. Finding the optimal balance between detective intrigue and artistry, not falling into either a pure "genre" or into a postmodernist something with a slight hint of intrigue is a very difficult task, as experience shows, but Rowling copes with it flawlessly.
The «Troubled Blood» edition has 960 pages - and that's definitely a lot for a detective. Plunging into the past, Strike and Robin unwind dozens of strings that break, crumble in their fingers, or end in reliable knots. In fact, in order to find out what happened to Margot, they have to find out what kind of person she was, what it meant for a woman to work as a doctor in the 1970s, and how life was generally arranged in that ancient, almost legendary era.
The heroes will have to meet and talk with dozens of living, relief sculpted people, one way or another involved in the disappearance of Margot - with her friends, relatives, colleagues at the outpatient clinic, each of whom will have their own complicated story, where the details important for the investigation are almost inseparable from unimportant, but through the personal, the universal is clearly visible. The detectives will be forced to understand the frightening mystical delirium that enveloped the mind of the first investigator in the case of Margot Bumboro, and will engage in a dangerous mental duel with the exposed maniac. In addition, Cormoran and Robin will continue in the usual way for the reader to suffer from chronic uncertainty in their relationship, Cormoran will face a painful loss in the family (and this will also be given a lot of pages), Robin will get bogged down in divorce - in a word, inside a detective intrigue, it is cozy curled up as a snail, you find a Dickensian dense, densely populated, detailed world with many pretty nooks and crannies.
However, Rowling's writing skills are such that none of the above seems superfluous in terms of the dynamics of the investigation. Hiding the main keys among the seemingly insignificant elements of a huge exciting pattern, deftly confusing cards, skillfully setting traps for the gullible reader and in some almost magical way avoiding lengths and sagging, Rowling builds an exemplary genre text, which at the same the time definitely does not fit into the rigid framework of a pure genre.
This is a warming and upbeat book.
The detective as a whole has the ability to ennoble and harmonize reality. No matter how impenetrable the darkness at the beginning, in the end it is guaranteed to dissipate: justice will be restored, virtue will triumph, and evil will be punished. It was this feature of the detective that aroused criticism at one time (for example, the great American critic Edmund Wilson in the period between the world wars condemned the detective for this illusory and deceitful ability to turn reality into a sugary fairy tale with a happy ending) - and it remains the basis for many decades his charm and popularity.
In «Troubled Blood», Rowling takes the comforting nature of the detective to the next level. Choosing a forty-year-old drama as a starting point, she smoothes out this entire huge period of time entirely, resolves old quarrels and carefully unravels old knots. The investigation of Cormoran and Robin leads to reconciliation and catharsis on such a scale that even in their own confused and almost hopeless relationship, a long-awaited move suddenly comes, making the denouement not just happy, but almost dazzling. In a word, exactly what we all need in the darkest time of the year.
This article was sponsored by KATHY ZHAO
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