Predictable, but fun

This is the 7th book in the Comoran Strike series, and the books are getting heftier; this one is nearly 1200 pages long. No complains though, it was a fun read.

This is not so much of a review, and more of an opinion-discussion, intended for those who have already read all the preceding 6 books and are fully in the know regarding the Strike-Robin detective agency.

When I began reading, I was not thrilled to find it was about some cult – Universal Humanitarian Church (UHC) – because these kinds of cults, with their semi-religious, semi-mystical nonsense, wheedling money out of people, the church elders living it up and making all the devout serve them, all spouting some supposedly holy mantra gobbledy gook nonsense – is just so not my thing. It bores me even to have to read about them, because it is all so pathetically a con, and not a very convincing con at that. Though having said it is not convincing, many such cults do exist, and many people do sign up, so I guess perhaps it is convincing enough to some.

The story is relatively straightforward, that a client comes to Strike and Robin saying his son is taken in by the cult, and to ask for help accessing his son. So Robin has to go undercover and become a member and live within the church – in Chapman Farm – for 4 months, as a mole. There is the usual nonsense about fasting and self-abasement and hard labour and punishments and starvations and control by fear. None of it particularly riveting. That’s just such old hat. And to add to the mix, the detective agency has finally become very successful, and so there are a whole number of cases going on, not explained well, just plopping the reader into the middle of them, along with a whole bunch of operatives, employees of the agency. There’s Barclay, Shah, Dev, Mitch, and Littlejohn. Apart from the latter, who is a villain character, the others are all too good to be true, and completely typecast. The many cases takes time to disentangle, so the first few hundred pages are a bit tedious since the reader doesn’t know or care yet about any of these. Also, the UHC has so many characters in its cast, and it is a job keeping them straight, who is related to who, who suffered what, etc etc. It is all just a bit too much, leaving me scrambling with too many threads of side stories.

Thankfully, after a few hundred pages, the novel hits its stride, the story lines become slightly easier to follow, though for me, I kept having to be reminding of who is who, who left the church, who died, how, it was just a bit of overkill in running too many threads all at once. Plus of course, Galbraith is not actually good stylistically, so none of the characters’ voices are particularly distinctive; the series has always been about plot. But Galbraith really gave herself loads of room to spread out and spin the story in this 7th novel. Fortunately the novel is divided into parts, and then many many short chapters, making it more readable.

It is fairly predictable – Robin goes undercover, puts herself at risk, uncovers secrets, Strike gets her out just in the nick of time, then they throw a net over the nefarious UHC and find lots of witnesses to testify. It is also old hat that Strike and Robin remain in love but in denial and each finds another partner. Finally Strike’s old flame, Charlotte, is out of the picture once and for all – Galbraith has flogged that horse for too many novels already – while of course Robin is in another relationship which she is uneasy in, because she knows she has feelings for Strike.  

A lot of it is resting on past laurels, all the street credit and affection of readings from the first 6 novels of the series, but for all that it is not particularly scintillating a read – pretty predictable and safe really – it is still a fun easy read, which was very enjoyable for its not being demanding. And honestly, the distaste for having to read about cults, is personal and my own, no doubt there are many readers to whom this topic is most riveting. So heigh ho, looking forward to The Hallmarked Man, number 8, and may there be many more!