Another exemplary work by the author even though there was many a time where I felt the details were way too exhaustive to the point of boring for me, especially the parts inside the Chapman farm, Yes, Strike series is not your typical adrenaline racing thrillers, we all know that and the description does get the imagination running on all tangents but I would have loved it equally with a story more tightly wound and bound. However, the book is too long. There are characters that you forget who they are if you’re reading over a number of days. There are multiple instances where references are made to previous books and these things are explained to the reader. For example the same character’s relevance to Strike is mentioned in two separate chapters, yet they’re completely irrelevant to the story (do they really need to be mentioned at all?). This time, Strike and Robin deal with a religious cult, its charismatic leader and everything surrounding these. I will not mention any more plot details because it’s probably best to go into this novel without too much knowledge or ideas… I have had some issues with suspension of disbelief regarding the detective agency and its setup for a few books. Here it just got to me how much power Strike seemed to have over the people he was interviewing when he was not even police, how so many people seemed so eager to see him (and not answer or try to dig up at once what he wanted to talk about, but were very often all happy to set up in person meetings next week. Would you meet in person, in your own home a private investigator even if they were famous and you knew they were real?) or put up with some rather bullying questions. I was not liking Strike much through this book anyway, a know it all with a justice boner (even if justified, mostly) shoveling his way into stuff with little introspection or regrets for any damage done to bystanders. I might be off this series here. I did not see anything -phobic or -ist here, except maybe a weird line (from Robin's PoV no less!) about the height of chinese men.

And yet, despite this, “The Running Grave” easily garners five stars out of five and a place among my favourite books.The second plot, of course, is the investigation. It is not immediately clear when the book begins whether there is actually a mystery. Will Edensor, one of the sons of a wealthy family, has joined a cult -- the Universal Humanitarian Church (UHC). His parents think he is being mistreated and exploited and want to get him out, but their attempts to bring the law to bear on the UHC have been unsuccessful. Will's father hires Strike and Robin to investigate the UHC, to find means to get Will out. Strike, too, grows as a person during the course of the investigation. Especially when dealing with a major change and its aftermath.

Strike and Robin realize immediately that they are going to have to get someone into the UHC, and Robin volunteers -- nay, insists that it should be her. Robin's undercover investigation of the UHC occupies two-thirds of the book. This part is gripping. Point of view alternates between Robin and Strike. Strike continues the investigation of the UHC from the outside. Robin's chapters are the most harrowing -- we feel that she is in real danger throughout this time. Strike's pretty much apolitical. Robin's politics are fairly clear, but only if you read between the lines. Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Though, the actual outcome isn't as beguiling a twist, albeit much more elaborate, so it's a bit of a letdown. And it must be said: Without an editor, it becomes obvious that Rowling has abysmal instincts as a writer. Important plot and character moments are glossed over with a single paragraph summary from the narrator, but the story slows to a crawl to deliver blow-by-blow details whenever something “funny” happens — like the chapter where Robin interviews a senile old woman who constantly repeats herself. Rowling reveals new information in massive data dumps, full of comically implausible names that are impossible to remember. We rarely see Strike or Robin engage in real detective work — they’re the heads of the agency, so most of that is done by a rotating cadre of freelancers. (This may be more true to how an actual real-life detective agency works, but it’s dull reading) On the rare occasion that they do detective work, it happens off screen so that they can meet afterwards, in a fancy pub or restaurant, to tell each other (and the reader) what happened. People print out Internet conversations or blog posts on long reams of paper (Has no one in the Strike universe ever heard of a flash drive?) and spend chapters sitting in fancy pubs or restaurants and reading them. Everyone is constantly going to fancy pubs and restaurants. Rowling lards up the narrative with pointless details about random things in the room. Robin gets distracted in the middle of a conversation by the random appearance of an American in a funny hat, because Rowling seems to think it's amusing but the reader is left wondering if this walk-on American is going to figure into the narrative somewhere later.JK Rowling is the only author for whom I stay up late to get her new releases at midnight. So it was with Harry Potter when I was growing up, and so it is with Strike now. I am sure all of you who know and love the duo wants to know if the will they, won’t they gets any further? Well, I won’t tell  However, bear in mind that the focus this time is more on the case than their love story. Yes, there quite a few mentions of their feelings, Strike gets into another stupid relationship to get past the relationship between Robin and Murphy. And, there is the ending… Haha. Let’s say, if she writes another novel next year, is not soon enough.

It’s been brilliant to see the enormous success of the Robert Galbraith books over the past ten years and an honour to publish them. With over 11 million copies sold in the English language to date, the story of Strike and Robin has captured readers’ imaginations and, like so many others, I can’t wait to see what happens to them over the course of the final four books in the series.’ David Shelley, Group Chief Executive, Hachette UKAlso, boy, Cormorant Strike is just an unpleasant asshole. Rowling obviously intends Strike to be part of the tradition of rumpled detectives like Horace Rumpole or Columbo. He shares a lot of their blue collar affectations, like a love of good beer, smoking, and shitty food. But part of what makes this type of character such an enduring archetype is his surprising flashes of humanity, where his sympathy for the underdog and his passion for justice break through his hard, cynical shell. How many times has a hard-boiled gumshoe reluctantly accepted an unpaying case because he can’t stand to see a dame in a fix? Strike does not seem to be driven by anything other than, well… he’s in a detective story so I guess he’s a detective. But he doesn’t really seem to enjoy or care about the work. With a book of this length, you need more regular reminders of who people are and their relation to others. There’s obviously a lot more to the tale than I’ve covered, but suffice to say by half way through I was totally held captive. I’m in awe of Galbraith/Rowling’s ability to create a such a convincing world: the scenes she sets inside the cult’s enclave are both disturbing and totally convincing. And by the end, so many theories had been espoused concerning potential concealment of deaths, outright murder and a mystery concerning an ‘accidental’ drowning that I had no idea where the truth lay. Niamh met her much older husband when he was her boss. Which is exactly how Robin met Strike, who's around a decade her senior.