Plot or Premise

A cold case arrives from a woman in a pub back home (where Cormoran’s aunt lives). Her mother disappeared back in ’74 and all leads went to nought. Did she die? Did a serial killer get her? Did she take a runner?

What I Liked

I love the premise of cold cases and the ability to ferret out a small nugget from one witness that leads to a new nugget from another, etc., until you can start to find actual threads to pull and unwind the whole tapestry of mystery. This one does that in spades. The missing mother was working in a doctor’s office, and there were lots of niggly threads that could have been the reason for her disappearance. Not to mention the serial killer running around. And for backstory, you get to see Cormoran dealing with his extended family a little more personally than simply as throw-away references.

What I Didn’t Like

There seems to be an assumption that if a book is good at 400 pages, it must be awesome at twice the length. Rowling ballooned the Harry Potter series as it went on and has done the same with the Strike series. This book is more than double the size of the first in the series, and it needs serious editing. Long stretches with very little happening. And as the “case” mushrooms into larger combinations of cases, at least two of the threads read more like ridiculous happenstances than actual solutions. And the crap with Charlotte is long past its expiry date.

The Bottom Line

Deeply buried in the flotsam is a mystery dying to breathe