Audiobook Review: Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

Pub. Date: October 20th, 2015

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Length: 17 hours, 58 minutes

Series: Cormoran Strike #3

Genre: Fiction / Mystery / Thriller / Crime Drama

Synopsis

When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman's severed leg.

Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible - and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality.

With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them....


Career of Evil is the third in the highly acclaimed series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant, Robin Ellacott. A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, it is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives.

What Did I Think About the Story?

Career of Evil is my favorite Cormoran Strike novel yet! I feel like I can't get enough of Strike or Robin and love seeing each of their characters, as well as their relationship together, develop and grow from book to book. In this novel we really get to see further into their personal histories and how those experiences have influenced the development of their personalities. Both of them have gone through some very dark situations, situations that, in Strike's case, lead around to the case at the center of this story.

As you can read from the synopsis, there is a serial killer/body mutilator sending body parts to Robin along with taunting messages that tie back to Blue Oyster Cult lyrics. Strike's mother, an infamous rock groupie who died of a drug overdose years before, was a fan of the group and this instantly puts Strike on alert that the killer is somehow tied to his and his mother's past. As Strike searches for the various men who he sees as suspects we get to peek into his sad and torturous childhood with his mother and her rotating group of "boyfriends" who, often, treat Cormoran, his sister, and his mother horribly. For me this really solidified Strike's personality and why he's often somewhat withdrawn and impersonal with those that get too close to him. He's built a wall up around his heart and it isn't easy for him to let people in, even when he does, deep down, care for them and want to protect them.

While this is all going on we get to know Robin Ellacott better as well. We learn the shocking and devastating reason she quite college and the dark secret she's been trying to hide from Strike, scared that, if he knew, he'd fire her from the only job she's ever truly loved.  We see why she fights so hard to be strong and independent, and seen as such by those around her. We see her relationship with her fiancée take some unexpected turns, turns that kept me personally glued to the page as much as the investigation.

The narrator once again did an exceptional job of giving all these characters distinct voices, voices I'm very much going to miss as I wait for the (fingers crossed) next installment in this series. I should mention that Career of Evil, as well as the rest of the series, is filled with quite a bit of graphic imagery, situations, and profanity. While this doesn't bother me I wanted to mention it so people who do have a problem with those sorts of situations are aware.

I really do hope there are more books in this series to come out. I've listened to each audiobook this year and I'm now a little sad that I don't have another to listen to. I definitely recommend this series for those that enjoy a gritty murder mystery and ones that have characters that are both humorous and troubled in particular.

What Did I Think About the Cover?

Much like the cover of The Silkworm, it doesn't really represent this story very well. However, it does add that touch of mystery you'd expect from this sort of story, so I do like that.


My Rating: 4.5/5.0

I borrowed a copy of the audiobook version of Career of Evil from my library's Overdrive account. All opinions are mine alone. You can find more information about the book, including other reviews and links to where you can purchase a copy, on Goodreads HERE.

 

 

 

 



Audiobook Review: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

Pub. Date: June 19th, 2014
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Length: 17 hours, 22 minutes

Series: Cormoran Strike #2

Genre: Fiction / Mystery / Thriller / Crime Drama

Synopsis

Private investigator Cormoran Strike returns in a new mystery from Robert Galbraith, author of the #1 international bestseller The Cuckoo's Calling.


When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days—as he has done before—and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives—meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.

When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before...

What Did I Think About the Story? 

Book Two in the Cormoran Strike series begins with Strike flush with clients and slightly famous after solving the Lula Landry case in the Cuckoo's Calling. Robin Ellacott is still working as his secretary, enjoying her job even while getting increasingly frustrated with the fact that he won't trust her with more detective work and with her fiancée's continued snobbery about the job and jealousy of Cormoran. Into this busy madness walks Mrs. Quine, a woman without much money or standing who simply wants Strike to find her wayward husband so he can come home and take care of her and their mentally disabled daughter. But, as the facts begin to fall into place and Owen Quine's mutilated body is found in the exact same manner as he describes in his not yet published book, Strike has to follow the bizarre clues and use his excellent deduction skills to find the murderer before the wrong person goes down for the crime.

I found this case to be particularly interesting as it's a real literary whodunit, with a limited number of possible suspects but each with their own, very deep-seated reasons for wanting Quine dead. Watching Strike gather together this list of suspects and interpreting how they figured into Mr. Quine's forthcoming book (and which salacious character they each represented) kept my attention, especially as there were certain aspects of the characters that ended up being clues to what actually happened, clues that I completely overlooked! I won't say who ended up being the killer but I will say I didn't figure it out before the fast-paced and thrilling ending.

I think what I love more than the actual mystery at the heart of the story are the characters themselves. I find Cormoran to be such a complicated character: ex-military police, annoyed by the limits his disability causes (he lost one of his legs), caring - if standoffish - with those in his limited inner circle, yet always willing to put in the time needed to help the underdog and make sure that the truth, whatever it is, always comes out in the end. Seeing Robin next to him is almost comical as she's vivacious, whip-smart, and far more capable than he - or her fiancée - give her credit for. It was great watching her finally voice to Strike her need to be considered as more than just his secretary, as a partner who can put in the time and energy as well to solve their various cases. This obviously causes issues with her fiancée, and that dynamic added another interesting layer to not only her character but the overall story.

I should also mention that the audiobook version of The Silkworm is narrated by the same person as The Cuckoo's Calling (Robert Glenister) who did just as exceptional a job of bringing these characters to life and keeping me glued to my car's stereo during my commutes as he did before. He really is a great audiobook narrator and I'm excited to see he'll be doing the narration for the third book in the series - Career of Evil - as well.    

The Silkworm reaffirmed by love of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott and has me excited to see what they will get up to next, both at work and in their personal lives.  If you like good mystery with interesting and sometimes dryly comical characters, you will find much to enjoy with this series.

What Did I Think About the Cover?

It's okay. It doesn't really represent the story at all - or anything specific to this particular story - and I'm not even sure who the man on the cover is meant to be (is it Cormoran? Or Quine? Someone else?). However, it does give off a feeling of mystery and I enjoy that aspect of it.


My Rating: 4.0/5.0

I borrowed a copy of the audiobook version of The Silkworm from my library's Overdrive account. All opinions are mine alone. You can find more information about the book, including other reviews and links to where you can purchase a copy, on Goodreads HERE.  

 

 



Audiobook Review: The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

Pub. Date: May 16th, 2013
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Length: 15 hours, 54 minutes

Book Series: Cormoran Strike #1
Genre: Contemporary Fiction / Mystery / Crime Fiction

Synopsis

The Cuckoo's Calling is a 2013 crime fiction novel by J. K. Rowling, published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.


A brilliant mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide.

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

What Did I Think About the Story?

I feel very late to the game with this series of contemporary mysteries by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling). I saw this first book in the series pop up on my library's Overdrive account and thought, why not give it a go? I'm been really enjoying mysteries this year and it sounded like a good premise. I'm glad I went with my gut because not only did I enjoy the story very much I also really enjoyed the narrator.

The main character - Cormoran Strike - is a gem. As the story began I pictured him as a classic sort of bumbling detective, kind of gritty and unkempt and seeming to be falling apart even when you know he's following all the clues. He's also got much about him that's very unique, having been in the military police and having been injured in the line of duty, as well as being the illegitimate son of a aging rockstar, something that put him in a very interesting predicament as he investigates the death of a supermodel that was surrounded by people who also know his father.

His (at first temporary) assistant, Robin Ellacott, is wonderful as well, serving as a great Girl Friday, keeping Cormoran in line and on target while also wrestling with whether she wanted to continue on assisting him in this unsteady detective business (something she very much enjoys much to the dismay of her fiancée) or move on to the next better paying and more secure position. I'm surprised that she isn't even named in the synopsis above as she plays a large part in the story and is just as enjoyable and fleshed out as Cormoran. I would definitely say I at least appreciated both of these characters equally.

The actual search into what happened to Lula Landry was fun to follow. The rich and vicious world Lula lived within was quite entertaining, if superficial, and I was constantly left feeling like these people who were supposed to care about Lula weren't telling the whole truth about what they knew about her or the events leading up to her death, whether that was because of secrets in their own lives or because of some sort of involvement. When the last shoe does drop and we find out exactly what happened to Lula - in great detail as Cormoran has figured out - I can honestly say I did not see it coming. I almost feel like I should have, given what we discover, but as it stands I was completely surprised.

The narrator of The Cuckoo's Calling was exceptional, varying the voices into distinct characterizations (and there are quite a few secondary characters) as well as keeping the narrative flowing evenly so as not to bog the listener down in all the details. He also perfectly expressed Cormoran's dry wit, making me connect with him as a character even more than I might have otherwise.

The Cuckoo's Calling was a fun audiobook to listen to on my commute. The story flowed, the characters and the mystery were interesting, and I'm left wanting more. I've now reserved the next book in the series and hope to be able to listen to it really soon! I'm also really excited to see the TV series that I read is being made based on the series.

What Did I Think About the Cover?

While I think this image represents the overall story well, I don't think the woman on the cover at all matches the image of Lula Landry that I had built up in my head while reading the story. I always prefer if the model on the cover matches the description of the character. Other than that, I love the blinding flashbulbs and the way the name is sort of scrawled within it. I also like that the author's name is quite small so as not to draw attention away from the rest of the cover.


My Rating: 4.0/5.0

I borrowed a copy of the audiobook version of The Cuckoo's Calling from my library's Overdrive account. All opinions are mine alone. You can find more information about the book, including other reviews and links to where you can purchase a copy, on Goodreads HERE.