Lethal White

Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) is back with another gritty detective novel involving blackmail, the possible strangling of a child, lots of horses, and government ministers behaving badly. It’s a long game novel, one where lots of moving parts slowly move together, but I was so happy to be back in a book with Strike and Robin after three long years since the last book.

*Spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the first 3 books in the series, but you definitely should because they are amazing. The spoilers are about Strike and Robin though, not the crimes in the first three books*

Lethal White begins with the wedding of Robin and Matthew, and Strike shows up after having solved a serial killing and firing Robin in order to protect her from the criminals they so often are forced into contact with. Robin’s not too pleased to be fired, and frankly, her marriage isn’t off to a good start.

**SPOILERS OVER**

But she’s back at the agency as a partner and she and Strike are on the case of a socialist trying to disrupt the Olympics, a government minister being blackmailed by the husband of another minister, and investigating the claims of a mentally ill man that he saw a child strangled and buried when he was a kid. The way this plot weaves and intertwines and unwinds itself is masterfully done. Overall it’s not an extremely fast moving book, especially the first half,but I had to read the final 150 pages in one sitting because I could not put it down.  The Strike novels always have some high brow cultural references woven in and I’m absolutely obsessed with the working (and maybe more? fingers crossed) relationship between Strike and Robin and I cannot wait for book 5. If I have to wait three more years though I may lose my mind.

Anyway, if you haven’t read these books yet, do it right now. Put down whatever you’re doing and get all four books and fly through them. I cannot rave about them enough.