• Email
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Fables&Wren

  • Reviews
    • By Author
    • By Ratings
    • Graphic Novels
      • Archie Comics
      • Bantam
      • Boom! Box
      • Dark Horse Comics
      • Disney-Hyperion
      • Dynamite
      • Feiwel & Friends
      • Image Comics
      • Marvel
  • GoodReads
  • About
    • The Cheerful Wednesdays
    • Favorites
    • Blog
    • Twitter
  • Policy
  • Contact

Cormoran Strike #03: Career of Evil

December 9, 2017 / 04 STARS, JKROWLING RG AR CORMORAN STRIKE

Career of Evil Book Cover Career of Evil
Cormoran Strike
Joanne Kathleen Rowling, Robert Galbraith,
Detective and mystery stories
Sphere
2015
Audiobook
512

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... A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, Career of Evil is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives. You will not be able to put this book down.

WrensReads Review:

Strike and Robin are two of the most interesting characters you will ever meet. Their relationship is purely human and isn’t something that is overplayed like a lot of books written in our time and age.

Robin is sent a LEG to the office. That’s right folks, the crazy at last is catching up to the detective-pair and they are now getting it sent through the post and to their office door.

They call their police friend, mainly because he is the only police office that doesn’t hate Strike, Wardle and they start an investigation. Strike gives him the name of four men who could have possibly sent the leg associated with him.

Jeff Whittaker
Digger Malley
Donald Laing
Noel Brockbank

While the police investigate, so do the private detectives…

You learn more about Robin and how she has become the girl she is today. You learn her insecurities and how she has overcome them, you see her struggle to see Matthew’s point of view of his hatred for her job and her boss and her constant need to be reassured she is valued by Strike as a partner and now an assistant.

Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) is a phenomenal writer and really makes you fall in love with the two main characters that she has created. Even sidekicks, like Shanker in this book, are characters you will be able to laugh at.

Robert Glenister is the reader of this audiobook, and might I say that he did a MARVELOUS job making the characters jump to life. The emotion that he puts into their characters… it is just awe striking. He reads the former books in this series as well; so it just brings a smile to your heart to hear the same voice telling you a different story with the same characters.

The writing that Galbraith brings to the book allows you to know the details of the surroundings but leaves enough room for your imagination.

What bothers me, which really is a good thing for these types of books, is that Galbraith lets you know that Strike knows who the killer is, but won’t actually tell you. Again, I am someone who LOVES spoilers (helps with the anxiousness of not knowing, cut me some slack). And trust me, I searched and searched for the answer to this riddle and come up with nothing at all.

Robin and Strike’s relationship rides a fine like. They have a maybe-love between them but neither one of them would want to ruin the working relationship they have. It is a stressful thing for those who “ship” them, but really I see it as a human interaction that we don’t get enough of. Most stories, the characters who have feelings for each other do stupid things in order to get together. Robin and Strike have common sense, which is something I admire people and characters, and they don’t just jump into the nearest bed when they are alone together.

Do they end up together? You’ll have to read about that.

Also, I was wrong about who I thought the killer was. I’m a little hurt by that but I’ll get over it. It’s a marvelous story. Best of the three!

WrensReads | Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram

SHARE THIS POST
FACEBOOK / TWITTER / GOOGLE + / PINTEREST / WHATSAPP

Leave a Comment

Cormoran Strike #02: The Silkworm

December 9, 2017 / 03 STARS, JKROWLING RG AR CORMORAN STRIKE

The Silkworm Book Cover The Silkworm
Cormoran Strike
Robert Galbraith
Mystery
Sydney
June 19, 2014
Audiobook
736

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...
A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, THE SILKWORM is the second in the highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike and his determined young assistant, Robin Ellacott.

WrensReads Review:

AUDIO-BOOK.

I LOVED listening to this book instead of reading it. I think that is a reason why this review will be so positive.

It leaves off a few months after the ending of The Cuckoo’s Calling, which affects this book in a kind of a back-burning way.

For example, Robin is still engaged but it is on the rocks because Michael isn’t a fan of Robin’s choice in careers. With that turmoil, it really affects the flow and way of the book because she lets her emotions towards that situation guide her.

Another example is the ending of The Cuckoo’s Calling. Without spoiling the ending of the first book (even though you really should read the first book first, though it isn’t really necessary), the police are holding a grudge against Strike because he showed them up on the case that was the base of the first book. They don’t want to listen to him, they treat him horribly because they can and when he gives them another suspect to the current case, they ignore him.

The writing in this book is the same as the first. Rowling/Galbraith has a clear voice (very different from the books that made her so unnaturally popular) and tells this mystery in a way that makes you want more.

I know a lot of people are finding this work harder to read and not really giving it a shot, which I think is an unfair assessment. Rowling is writing to a different audience and is allowed to change the way she writes because of it. Each story has a few twists and turns and keeps you interested.

When you set apart this work from the Harry Potter work, you will see its value.

I like this series. It isn’t my favorite, but I would pick it up again in a few years.

WrensReads | Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram

SHARE THIS POST
FACEBOOK / TWITTER / GOOGLE + / PINTEREST / WHATSAPP

Leave a Comment

Cormoran Strike #01: The Cuckoo’s Calling

December 9, 2017 / 03 STARS, JKROWLING RG AR CORMORAN STRIKE

The Cuckoo's Calling Book Cover The Cuckoo's Calling
Cormoran Strike
Robert Galbraith, J. K. Rowling,
Fiction
Mulholland Books
April 30, 2013
Audiobook
464

A brilliant debut 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, thelegendary 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. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

WrensReads Review:

I’m not positive where to start with this review. All I can say is that if you read this book merely because you love the Harry Potter series, you may be disappointed.

I for one love the Harry Potter series and I was NOT disappointed by this book merely because I understand that this is a different type of writing, a different audience, and a completely different world going into it.

I understood that the reason J.K. Rowling wrote this book under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith was to get it out from under the shadow of Harry Potter and into its own light.

Strike and Robin are completely different characters with backgrounds I loved to learn about throughout the book: Strike a bastard to a famous name and Robin newly engaged.

John Bristow comes into Strike’s office on the first day of Robin’s temporary secretary job wanting Strike to investigate his famous model sister, Lula Landry’s suicide. He believes that she was actually killed and that the police just shrugged it off as a suicide because of her mental medical history.

Rowling gave each and every character a unique voice.

Robin is excited to watch a private detective (Strike) work since it was something she was always interested in. She likes to get noticed for the little things she does and likes to feel important.

Strike hates to live under the shadow of his father. He has a war wound and doesn’t like to show it off to people. He gets straight to the point and is very keen to what people are saying between their actual words. Not to mention his crazy ex-girlfriend.

There are other characters that are super interesting like John, Lula’s adoptive older brother, her friends Ciara and Rochelle, her designer Guy, the boyfriend Duffield and her neighbors the Bestigui couple. Everyone has a secret they are holding, even if they aren’t completely aware.

Each person talks differently, even with just the writing.

I’m not going to give away the ending of this book, but it isn’t an ending one would expect. Though, I would like to say I am one of those people who like the ending of books spoiled, so I knew who it was the whole time, but I didn’t know the motive or how it was done.

This book is completely geared towards the adult world and can be a little hard to concentrate sometimes. Her sentences get a little runny with detail that, in my opinion, didn’t really need to be stated. She does paint the whole scene for you though. The story is worth reading through the ten-line long sentences.

I really enjoy Rowling’s writing. She is very diverse in what she can write and I look up to her and her abilities to grab the attention of the reader when it is needed. I am looking forward to reading the next books of this series, The Silkworm and The Career of Evil.

WrensReads | Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram

SHARE THIS POST
FACEBOOK / TWITTER / GOOGLE + / PINTEREST / WHATSAPP

Leave a Comment

Meet Wren!

Meet Wren!

Hi my name is Wren and welcome to my page. I like to read books, listen to books, take care of my plants and pet cats and dogs.

Follow Along

  • Email
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Subscribe!

Currently Reading

Goodreads Currently Reading

Not currently reading anything.