Now I don’t have enough time to sit and read 960 pages when I’m pretty sure 50% of those pages will be utter gibberish. They will be there to make the book look epic, but those additional pages will undoubtedly add nothing to the plot. Help is at hand though in the form of Audible…I tried listening to Robert Glenister reading book 4 and I’ve stuck with him ever since. If you’ve got to spend 34 hours in someone’s company, he’s a good choice, and it means you can tidy the kitchen, or clean the car, whilst finding out if anything exciting is going to happen to Strike and Robin.
“Private Detective Cormoran
Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a
religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside.
The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organization
that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the
surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths.
In order to try to rescue Will, Strike's business partner, Robin Ellacott,
decides to infiltrate the cult, and she travels to Norfolk to live incognito
among its members. But in doing so, she is unprepared for the dangers that
await her there or for the toll it will take on her. . .”
Retired civil servant Sir Colin Edensor is concerned about
his son, Will. Will dropped out of university several years ago to join the Universal
Humanitarian Church (UHC) and now he is refusing to communicate with his
family. Sir Colin is worried because the boy is neurodivergent, and he is
concerned that his son has been brainwashed in order that the church can make
use of his son’s trust fund.
The UHC has many high-profile followers and owns a lot of
prime real estate; sounds very much like the Church of Scientology to me. The
church is headed up by a charismatic chap by the name of Papa J. His daughter,
Daiyu, supposedly drowned in the North Sea when she was seven years old, now
reappears to the congregation as an apparition called the “Drowned Prophet.”
To investigate this crime, Robin, who else, decides that
she will go undercover and infiltrate the church. She finds a world far removed
from the glossy brochures that promise a better way of life. She is taken into
a world where everything is back to basics. No mobile phones or internet, not
even clocks and calendars are allowed. All senses are removed in a bid to
gaslight the followers of the church. Robin finds that they are basically held
captive to do daily back breaking chores, and to be coerced into having
unprotected sex, neatly wrapped up under the guise of “spirit bonding.” If
anyone falls ill, there is no medical assistance, and as all residents are
underfed the chances of collapse is high. Robin has placed herself into the
centre of a hell hole where she needs to find out as much as possible, get the
information to Strike, and hopefully not be found out as the consequences are
unthinkable.
J K Rowling was undoubtedly Hatchette’s Golden Goose when it came to the Harry Potter books. Many publishers turned her down when she first tried to sell her story to them; how they must be kicking themselves now! But just because someone has delivered one series successfully, it doesn’t mean that everything they write will automatically be good. Whilst the Harry Potter books became longer tomes, there did seem to be some editorial control going on in the background. I can’t say the same about the Strike books.
Each stage of this
story is described in such aching detail that it became boring to read. I want
to be able to build up a picture in my mind of what people are like, where they
are, what they’re doing; I only require a certain amount of information which
will allow me to use my own imagination to fill in the gaps. JKR doesn’t allow
you to do this. Everything, and I mean everything, is painfully mapped out…how
Robin manages to infiltrate her way into the UHC, how she manages to ensure she
survives each day at the farm, how the others at the farm spend each minute of
their days…it’s no wonder this book is so long. I don’t need spoon feeding,
give me a good pacy novel that gets me thinking, that shocks and surprises me,
that fills me with tension and keeps me turning the pages. Just because JKR can
write a long book, doesn’t mean it is necessary to write a long book.
Make sure you have plenty of soft furnishings
to hand, you’re going to need them, and you’ll thank me for this piece of
advice, because banging your head against a brick wall hurts. I don’t
understand, J K Rowling (Robert Galbraith is nothing more than a nom de plume)
is a talented storyteller who can conjure up amazing characters, so why does my
heart plummet each time I read one of her books? I’ll tell you (I know the
reason!) She starts off by lulling you into her beautifully created world with
a regular sized book, then once she has trapped you into NEEDING to know what
happens next, she starts writing ridiculously long books that contain lots of
inconsequential waffle which dilutes what could be an amazing story. She’s like
a bottle of cordial, when you crack open a new bottle, you lob a reasonable
amount in the glass, yum yum, but as you get closer to the end of the bottle
and you’re eking out some extra glasses of squash, it’s all gone a bit weak and
watery.
I admit I was surprised
that I enjoyed the first three books, they were snappy, well-paced, they
introduced various characters who I was interested in, but they weren’t without
fault. I have a dreadful memory, but I can still remember in book 1, Strike and
a policeman (can’t remember the name, can’t be bothered looking it up) were
having a conversation on a street. This conversation was interrupted by a
strange looking man who poked his tongue out at Strike. The conversation
continued…only I had forgotten what the conversation was about by the time I’d
read the detailed description of the strange little man. I thought, hmm, he
must be important. He wasn’t, he had nothing to do with the story, it was a
strange and unnecessary detail that probably worked better in JKR’s head than
it did on the page. The fact I still remember that part of the book and very
little else, shows that disruption had made me grumpy! So, what does that have
to do with The Running Grave? Well, it just goes to show what happens when you
don’t nip these things in the bud. The unnecessary details have become longer
and longer with each book, and her publishers/editors are not saying “JKR STOP!
Take a breath! Concentrate on the story and the characters…that’s what makes a
great book”.
JKR really needs to go back to the drawing board and
concentrate on weaving a tightly knit plot and allowing her main characters to
grow instead of using her novels as an extension of her social media accounts.
There is nothing wrong with using a book as a conduit for bringing your
political agenda into the public domain, but that cannot be at the expense of
the characters and plot.
I am sad to say that the titular character needs a lot of
work. I liked him at first. I could understand why he was so grumpy. He was in
the army, he had his leg blown off, he set himself up as a private detective
and had to live above his office because he had no money, and his girlfriend
was a nightmare… I could go on, but you get the picture. I found it endearing
that he enjoyed a pint, smoked far too much and relied on take aways to quash
his hunger pangs. He was likable, he had some humanity about him. I found both
Robin and Strike a breath of fresh air and they exuded a warmth and humanity
about them, but they have become stale and unloved under JKR’s pen.
Strike and Robin now run a successful detective agency, yet
Strike remains stubbornly grumpy. He now employs staff (who in the main are a
competent bunch) ensuring that a subplot crime can filter through the book. I
question whether he enjoys being a detective, but then, there doesn’t seem to
be a lot of detective work going on in the novels. It just seems to be numerous
situations where he and Robin end up in a pub swapping notes. I also question
whether Strike likes women…he certainly doesn’t respect them. Yet again, The
Running Grave is padded out with endless repetition about Strikes past, Robins
past, past cases etc. Strike’s ex Charlotte rears her ugly head, and this time
he is having a romantic dalliance with a woman called Bijou who Strike describes
as a “man-hungry pain in the arse”.
Robin used to be an interesting character, but she is now
defined as being the one to sacrifice herself, physically or mentally, to solve
a case. She seems to put herself in danger in every book and then Strike appears
towards the end taking much of the credit. It’s become boring. So is her love
life. She marries someone she no longer loves, divorces him and then decides
she will go out with someone who she doesn’t have any real feelings for because
she might as well have someone if she can’t have Strike. Why can’t Robin have a
fulfilling life living on her own for a bit until she gets her head together
and decides what she really wants? Would that really be a bad thing?
Also, whilst it is nice to dip into the characters family
stories, how necessary was Uncle Ted’s dementia storyline to this book? It just
added more weight to an increasingly interminable tale. Either another crime as
a subplot, or a family storyline, not both please!
The Running Grave could be a great book, but it is so mired
by a tedious sub plot, a heart wrenching family storyline and a primary plot
that follows earlier narratives (Robin puts herself in danger, Strike is
worried, it all works out ok in the end) that it becomes dull reading…essentially
you only want to reach the end of the book to find out what will happen to
Strike and Robin…and I’m not sure that I even care about that anymore.
Genre: Crime, Detective, Fiction
Release Date: 26th September
2023
Publisher: Little Brown Audio
Listening Time: 34h
13m
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