“The New Queen of Crime”: Positive reviews for J.K. Rowling’s “Career of Evil”

Or should it be “The New King of Crime?” J.K. Rowling has been appearing at events for her good friend Robert–specifically Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards. (Galbraith’s Silkworm was short listed for a Gold Dagger, though it was over thrown by Life or Death by Michael Robotham.)  With a new Robert Galbraith book due out Tuesday (October 20), reviews for Career of Evil are making their way to the pages of newspapers.

The reviews have been more positive for this Strike novel than the previous, Silkworm. Some incline this may be the best one yet. Galbraith is starting to make a name for himself within the crime writing community, and a more than acceptable one at that.

The Independent reports:

But surely the pseudonymous Galbraith (J K Rowling) didn’t turn up for events [the Dagger Awards] like this? Indeed she was there, looking both elegant and slightly vulnerable, and adding a certain lustre to proceedings even if room was already full of celebrated crime writers. 

In the event, I didn’t use the joke, but something remarkable happened that evening. The writer of two books featuring not a boy wizard but one-legged detective Cormoran Strike won over the crime writing community. It quickly became evident that Rowling had a genuine and unassuming desire to be a member of this new fraternity that she had recently joined. But – leaving aside Rowling’s personal virtues – just how good are the Cormoran Strike books? 

This first crime novel, however, was soon recognised as a winner, with military policeman-turned-sleuth Strike finding the truth behind the apparent suicide of a supermodel. That book sported a vibrant use of the apparatus of the crime novel, despite the familiar trappings (bloody-minded detective traversing various class divisions, showing up a wrong-headed police force). The second Strike outing,  The Silkworm, was diverting, but  less inventive – and, for that matter, less plausible. 

Now we have Strike number three, and, thankfully, it’s every bit as  impressive as that first book. After a chilling opening in the company of a psychopathic killer, we move to the building site that is Tottenham Court Road and the office of Strike.

Written in an unadorned, non-literary prose, Career of Evil confirms that Rowling’s post-Potter initiative is proving to be a very welcome one. Both Strike and Ellacott are multi-dimensional characters (she is stuck in a dying relationship), and there is no gainsaying the sheer relish with which the writer tackles the genre. 

The new writing identity that Rowling has forged for herself is not only utterly unlike that of her fantasy endeavours, but quirkily different from most of the already established confrères she is befriending in the crime writing world. Let’s hope the sardonic Cormoran Strike is here to stay.

The Telegraph gave the novel three stars (out of five), saying:

Ultimately, the crimes [of the first two novels] that drove the books were less memorable in themselves than as hooks by which to chart the awkward relationship between the one-legged Afghanistan vet turned private eye, Cormoran Strike, and Robin Ellacott, the comely wannabe detective.

Career of Evil, the third in the series, immediately announces itself as something different. The title and chapter headings are taken from the lyrics of the US rock band Blue Öyster Cult, a signal that the book intends to take us to dark places that Sayers and Allingham would not have touched with bargepoles. The plot encompasses paedophilia, serial murder and Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) – the mental disorder that makes sufferers want to amputate their healthy limbs.

Fans of the intrepid duo are in for some shocks about their pasts. We learn more about the death of Strike’s mother, for which his stepfather, an appalling failed rocker called Jeff Whittaker, was tried and acquitted. Whittaker, “an ostentatious lover of the perverse and the sadistic”, has got away with a career’s worth of misdeeds: “Strike knew how deeply ingrained was the belief that the evil conceal their dangerous predilections… When they wear them like bangles for all to see, the gullible populace laughs, calls it a pose or finds it strangely attractive.”

But it is the revelations about Robin that will shock readers more deeply, casting light on why she stays with her terrible fiancé Matthew, whose characterisation is proving increasingly unsubtle. (Would even this tedious accountant list “his estimates of the salary of all their contemporaries?”) Even after three books, the dance of Strike and Robin’s cautious non-courtship remains very entertaining.

But has Galbraith really succeeded in going to a darker place? The killer’s inner thoughts are a bit cheesy, and the novel slips too easily into the language of melodrama (“the means by which the murderer and his macabre schemes could be brought down”). It is as readable and exciting as ever, but Galbraith’s most “realistic” plot so far is, perversely, his least convincing.

Read more about the planning of Career of Evil and reactions at The Telegraph. The Leaky Cauldron will be reading the novel as soon as it hits shelves, and posting our review as soon as possible!

UPDATE:

The Chicago Tribune and USA Today released their reviews, they can be seen by clicking on the respective links. USA Today gave Career of Evil  4 stars! The Chicago Tribune gives the book more praise then critic, though most of the review contains a lot of summary of the plot (do NOT read if you do not want any spoilers, it doesn’t give away the ending, just a lot of narrative detail).

However, one does wonder what the male author of the Chicago Tribune article meant by saying, “this is not a book that a man could really have written.” An insult? A trace of sexism? Does the gender of the author really matter when evaluating the quality of the story? He does go on to say that it couldn’t have been written by anyone other than J.K. Rowling (which to most of us, her fans, is a compliment).