This book felt like it took forever for me to finish. I read the first 1/3 pretty quickly, and that the second 1/3 felt like pushing through cement, the last 1/3 flew by.

I was incredibly frustrated by the characters, most particularly Robin, throughout most of this installment. Her behavior was straight up irritating a lot of the time - her relationship with Strike was fraught and her relationship with Matthew was dysfunctional. The ending was the culmination of a series of misjudgments that made me want to slap her upside the head.

The mystery was a particularly grisly and disturbing, and the bits and pieces of insight we get from the mind of the killer were interesting. Rowling did a good job hiding the murderer in plain sight - her plotting is, as always, ingenious. There were points were I suspected pretty much everyone who showed up in the book, except for Strike and Robin. 

I even had a few minutes where I thought "could it be Matthew?" before rejecting that possibility out of hand. But it's a testament to Rowling's ability to keep me off balance that I considered it.

I'm still thoroughly annoyed by Robin's behavior, but I can't wait until Lethal White shows up at the library with my name on it!

I enjoyed The Cuckoo’s Calling so much, like being reacquainted with Strike and Robin, that I wanted to read the third book in the series, Career of Evil, right away. Bingo came calling, though and since I knew it’d fit perfectly I hung on….by the shards of my nails!

Career of Evil picks up pretty soon after Cuckoo’s Calling with Robin preparing for her impending wedding to Matthew, her fiance. Strike’s P.I business is doing well, he’s got a good number of clients and is finally beginning to make traction. All that comes crumbling down, though, when Robin receives a package in the mail which contains a severed leg! His business begins to feel the strain as people see him as being connected with the killer. Strike has 3 possible culprits in mind, so he and Robin begin investigating them.

This was my favourite book in the series. I really liked Cuckoo’s calling because it built on Strike and Robin’s relationship, but this one went a step further. What’s most important here is what’s not said between the pair as they spend an increasing amount of time with each other. Their relationship becomes deeper and with that comes another dimension, exacerbated by a crisis between Robin and Matthew. I did feel there was a certain completion to their relationship at the end, so maybe the next book will focus more heavily on the case they’re investigating.

As always with JK Rowling aka Robert Galbraith, every conversation, every character, every plot development is meticulously thought out and therefore has an authenticity it’s hard to find elsewhere. I know I say a lot that characters are very believable and authentic, but with JK Rowling it’s of a higher degree than most other books. She doesn’t overload on details, gives just enough and weaves it through a narrative which is hard to put down.

Like the second instalment this one is quite grizzly, so bear that in mind if you pick it up.

I’m on the library list already for the next instalment (which isn’t even out), but seeing as I’m waaayyyy down I think it’ll be a while before I get to it. I’d be more eager to read it if I thought the relationship between Robin and Strike was going in a new direction, but I don’t feel that. In a way this book felt like a line was drawn under their relationship. I’ll still read it, though…eventually.

The third in the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith ( JK Rowling) and easily the best and from what I have read the authors favourite as well. When a severed leg turns up at Strikes office addressed to his secretary Robin Ellacott the pair are confronted with an evil from Strikes past and someone who will stop at nothing to cause havoc and retribution.

Although the story itself is excellent, ending with a spell bounding cliffhanger, it is the information and attention to detail that sets this novel above a simple police procedural. For me I would describe the writing as Agatha Christie for the modern audience, with a list of possible perpetrators and the final unveiling cleverly hidden by an accomplished author. The real issue debated at some length concerns a group of people who are probably best referred to as "amputee wannabes"  who chop off their own limbs to feel normal. Individuals who are willing to take drastic measures to mutilate themselves because they aspire to be disabled. This condition is known as BIID body integrity identity disorder and it gives people a fierce desire to rob themselves of healthy limbs. Of course there is a neat little association to Strike as he lost his right leg below the knee when in Afghanistan  an IED exploded under a vehicle he was travelling in. Strike is convinced that one of three associates from the past, is not only seeking revenge but feeding his warped desires as he preys on defenseless young women before cutting and mutilating them in the most horrific fashion.

This is a much more blood thirsty tale than books one and two in the series and adds a real gritty dialogue to some exceptional observations...."A vast unfocused rage rose in her, against men who considered displays of emotion a delicious open door; men who ogled your breasts under the pretence of scanning the wine shelves; men for whom your mere physical presence constituted a lubricious invitation."...."He would never understand what rape did to your feelings about your own body; to find yourself reduced to a thing, an object a piece of fu**able meat".....For me Strike is an antihero, not a conventional detective but almost a freak who has to hobble around London on a prosthetic surviving on little sleep constantly fuelling his broken body with foods of convenience and copious amounts of his favourite tipple Doom Bar. The son of an absentee rock star; Jonny Rokeby, and a drug addicted mum Leda he spent his childhood moving between squats in Whitechapel and Brixton. "Career of Evil" has a 572 page count and never once did I find my attention waning so engrossed was I in this bloody yet brilliant third outing for a private detective battling against his own inner demons and physical infirmities. The fact that he is attracted to his glamorous partner Robin (and she to him) only adds to the fun and I am sure this relationship will be explored in greater detail as the series progresses....Highly Recommended.

Soooo ... turns out I listened to book 3 almost straight on the heels of book 2 after all, because I've had some fairly major anger and sadness issues to go through lately, and nothing helps in that process like a really dark-hued book, right?

As a matter of fact, it turns out that yours truly wasn't the only person in need of some healthy dose of anger management here.  I knew going in that this is a serial killer novel (that much is clear from page one); actually, though, the person ultimately revealed as the killer is only one of several seriously sick and violent bastards, all of whom have a major personal gripe with Strike and therefore pretty much auto-suggest themselves as suspects -- I mean, who other than someone pretty obviously out to make Strike's (and Robin's) lives hell would send them body parts and go stalking Robin, intent on ultimately killing her, too?  (No spoiler here btw.; this, too, is obivous right from the beginning.)

But speaking of Robin, in this installment she is having to deal with some pretty substantial anger management of her own in turn, and she's unfortunately not doing all that brilliantly ... in fact, for the better part of the novel she's behaving more like a sulking teenager than like a grown up woman.  We learn a lot about her background here, and about the reasons why she gave up university and kept on clinging to Matthew, her boyfriend of nine years, despite his obvious dislike of her work as Strike's assistant -- and up to a point I can empathize with her insecurities

  However, I have decidedly more of a problem empathizing with her for throwing a major fit every time Strike doesn't go to the end of the world to treat her as a full-fledged partner -- and for her coming within an inch of fatally jeopardizing both her own and Strike's lives, not to mention his work, on several separate occasions as a result; not least towards the very end.  For an army / MP veteran with 15+ years of experience on the job as an investigator to accord that kind of equality to an untrained temp secretary who'd started in his office barely over a year earlier would be a ludicrous expectation under any circumstances, but even more so after she had repeatedly failed to follow his orders, thinking (wrongly) that she knew better, with disastrous consequences every single time. And no, Robin, you don't get to chalk that one up to your experience in university, horrific as it doubtless was.  Because this isn't a matter of anyone denying you your basic, inviolate human dignity -- it's a matter of (un)realistic expectations, plain and simple; and if you did have even the most marginal claim to the position to which you aspire on the job, this would be the first thing you'd realize.  I don't doubt that your experience created major insecurity issues, but if those are truly still overwhelming to this degree, Strike is even more justified than he is, anyway, on the basis of your lack of training and repeated misconduct, in not treating you as an equal partner.  For him to be able to do that -- and trust you with the blind assurance that true partnership in a dangerous job such as the pursuit of violent criminals would have to entail -- you would have had to demonstrate that such trust on his part would be justified.  You, however, have demonstrated the precise opposite.

So anyway, minus one star for Robin's temper tantrums, but full marks, as always, for the writing and for Strike's character development -- as well as for introducing us to a guy named Shanker, who I very much hope is going to make a reappearance or two in the future.  The serial killer plot isn't of the ingenious, never-seen-before-new variety, but more than merely competently executed, and I've also had quite a bit of fun touring Northern England and the Scottish borderland with Strike (and, in part, Robin) on the hunt for the killer.