It’s been a decade since Joanne K. Rowling transformed into Robert Galbraith…and cloudy blood is already the fifth investigation carried out by Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott, his partner. Here we are once again far from Harry Potter, even if the fog and the smoke screens are at the heart of this story as dense as it is thrilling.
While visiting his ailing aunt in Cornwall, Strike is asked to investigate a disappearance that occurred in the mid-1970s; that of Dr. Margot Bamborough. This “closed case” never solved by the police had at the time been linked to the monstrous crimes of a serial killer who raged in London without ever being able to prove it. Moved by the request of the victim’s daughter, our two investigators decide to take up the challenge. But where to start ?
Playing with his contacts and reputation, Cormoran first manages to get his hands on a copy of the police investigation file; this allows readers and detectives alike to familiarize themselves with the actors in the drama. From the reports and notes of Inspector Bill Talbot – obsessed with black magic, he left his sanity in the case – Robin and Cormoran reanalyze all the data of the investigation, review all the witnesses still alive … and they too let themselves be taken in the trap of several false leads. All this in the middle of the hectic daily life of the agency, which works on two or three other cases at the same time, and of the real life which tears Strike as much as his partner. In the end, after a series of unlikely twists and turns, the case comes to a conclusion that no one obviously saw coming.
Rowling-Galbraith – very well served by a solid translation – knows how to tell stories lived by eminently credible characters to whom one attaches, one will not teach it to you. And even if his Cormoran Strike series hasn’t reached the fame of the adventures of Harry Potter with its 500 million copies sold and its translations into more than 70 languages (!), it could very well get there again.
Various violence
What explains the indefinable appeal of Arnaldur Indriðason’s novels? His breath ? His way, the air of nothing, to tell the story of Iceland? His inimitable slowness in weaving stories that take shape, one thread at a time, then unfold even more slowly before our eyes? It’s a bit of all this that we find in The wall of silencethis 24and novel (already!) where the master of the Nordic whodunnit leaves all the room to Konrad, the retired cop who unfolds before us the fourth chapter of the investigation he leads into the assassination of his father.
Here, Konrad first crumbles under the weight of remorse when his son learns of an infidelity that he had hidden from everyone. Unhappy as stones, Konrad plunges even further into his investigation… and that’s where we learn that he lied to the police on the evening of the tragedy. Here he is even suspected by a criminal inspector who makes him undergo a harsh interrogation. Konrad no longer has a choice: he must elucidate this crime which obsesses him. Of course, it’s not that simple.
The former policeman will bring back a whole era; that of the late 1960s when his father was rampant. Nicknamed Seppi, he was a petty crook and a receiver who had started blackmailing a pedophile doctor. Acquainted with a small band specializing in burglaries, he got his hands on compromising photos while one of his accomplices was linked to an assassination. We will obviously learn all this very slowly, one detail at a time.
Beneath its innocuous appearance, this story is terribly violent and depicts the worst that one can imagine: rape, brutal pedophilia, breach of trust, pornography, murders and domestic violence… not to mention everything else. . Éric Boury’s translation once again renders this dark and unsuspected universe in an admirable way.
A disturbing book.
Flashy
The first book in the Leo Desroches series — The fall of disgrace, published last year by the same publisher — introduced us to an astonishing character. An Albertan Métis, Desroches is a journalist devoured by gambling addiction. He is a man who has lost everything — wife, children, home, career, and so on. — and that we find once again on the street in A deadly winterbelow -40°C, in the heart of Edmonton.
Except that here, he is working in full immersion on a report describing the impossible living conditions of the homeless. Overall, Leo is doing much better; he rediscovered a taste for a job well done and even an accomplice girlfriend. But it won’t last, we quickly guess it when one of his friends from the street disappears… before reappearing, horribly mutilated, in the morgue.
The journalist then plunges into a convoluted investigation where he will be confronted with an Aboriginal criminal gang, and everything starts to go very quickly and very badly. The violence accumulates, Desroches survives a shooting, is kidnapped, then escapes once again, miraculously, from death to end up in prison… we hardly caricature.
Despite everything, the character is endearing in his excesses; this is what makes the interest of the series. Wayne Arthurson would benefit from focusing more on Desroches and offering us plots that are a little more believable and less flashy.