The Running Grave

November 15, 2023
J.K. Rowling's detective, Cormoran Strike, makes his seventh series appearance in an overlong but reasonably entertaining whodunit. "We were hippies...We never knew what it was all going to turn into." So speaks a veteran of a pseudo-religious cult that, when its leaders aren't busy extracting money from their followers, worships the ascended spirits of members who just happen to be dead. Ah, but why dead? As the pseudonymous Galbraith's latest opens, emails and letters are flying among the cult's lawyers, a wealthy chap whose on-the-spectrum son has gone kiting off to join the cult, and a disgruntled former member who's been writing damaging blog posts about the bunch. Naturally, the last fellow soon exits the stage, the victim of--well, who knows. Enter Strike and sidekick Robin Ellacott, whose friends have been hoping that "she and Strike would become more to each other than detective partners and best friends." Strike has been nursing just such thoughts, but there's no time for hanky-panky, since they've got an evil cabal of cult masters to take down. Their investigation leads them into tangled situations aplenty, with intimations of pedophilia and indiscreet behavior on the part of cult boss Papa J, "a handsome, tall and fit-looking man in his mid-sixties" who talks a very good game. Robin, natch, goes undercover to try to dislodge the aforementioned neurodivergent cultling from the group's heavily fortified rural farm--where, she discovers, there are skeletons in every closet, to say nothing of every pigsty. Brexit, Charles Manson, and David Bowie all make appearances in this overstuffed yarn, much in need of streamlining though with plenty of neat plot twists and archly pointed dialogue, as when one interlocutor says of a baddie, "She must have had a dreadful childhood." Answers Strike, "A lot of people have dreadful childhoods and don't take to strangling small children." More of the same, but Rowling's fans will be neither dissuaded nor disappointed.

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December 15, 2023

Private detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott's seventh outing strays from Galbraith's (The Ink Black Heart) winning gritty mystery formula by separating the team for nearly 40 percent of the book as Robin goes undercover at the cult-like Universal Humanitarian Church's isolated and sprawling farm to rescue a client's son who has been under the church's spell for years. Once inside, Robin discovers that several mysterious deaths on the farm could be murders and struggles against the brainwashing techniques, starvation, and physical and sexual abuse that the church members now accept because they think they are preparing themselves to become "pure spirits" who possess supernatural powers. On the outside, Cormoran and his detective agency's staff realize that the few people who have escaped the church are being killed, staged in ways to look like suicides. Both detectives are fascinating and clever characters. Galbraith (J.K. Rowling using a pseudonym) also endears them to readers by giving them plenty of emotional baggage to deal with beyond their current cases. At 960 pages, the mystery is overlong but it's a surprisingly agile and nimble elephant. VERDICT Galbraith/Rowling is a master storyteller, and these detective mysteries continue to enthrall with compelling puzzlers.--Kevin Howell

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