Plot or Premise

Robin Ellacott has always wanted to be a private detective, and temping for one for a week seems like a possible dream come true before she goes off to be properly married to her new fiancé. She didn’t count on Cormoran Strike being both good and highly in need of office help for his new case — a brother of a celebrity who committed suicide wants Cormoran to find out if it really was suicide.

What I Liked

The case is deliciously messy, with therapy, adoptions, birth mothers, sordid histories, difficult families, etc. And for the first time when Cormoran and Robin both want the same thing but are afraid to say it outright, it’s fun to see them struggle to keep Robin past the first week (even if their reluctance to speak candidly is way overused as a plot device later). And I love the solution to the issue of the witness who couldn’t have witnessed what she claimed to have seen and heard, yet smacks of some semblance of truth.

What I Didn’t Like

There is a lot of confusion about what happened the night Lula died, and major players are relatively ignored for long periods of time with very little explanation of why. Some of it lacks a way to coerce cooperation if the person isn’t interested in cooperating with a private detective; some is just a red herring left to rot too long in the story.

The Bottom Line

Cormoran is good until Robin helps him be great