Since the Harry Potter saga, we know that JK Rowling likes to tell complex, long and… fertile stories. Those who have not yet noticed this will see how this is just as true when she takes the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
This is a bit what explains why we are coming out of So worried — the sixth investigation, already, by Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott — with a strange impression: that of having “ binged “three or four seasons of a TV series full of characters and complex plots that highlight the, let’s say, “difficult” world we live in.
On the menu of this solid 1000-page brick: cyberbullying, identity theft, virtual reality, violence, small-time racism and supremacism (white, obviously). Not to mention the cheats and scams of all kinds that weave the ordinary daily life of our days. The wizarding world is far away; time for “ordinary” shenanigans!
It all began with the resounding success of an even more successful cartoon. trash that South Park : So worried. The animation is set in a cemetery, features an ink-black heart (Harty) and involves decomposing bodies, skeletons, a demon (Drek) and a ghost… The series shatters YouTube viewing records , and Netflix has just bought the broadcast rights. At the same time, an online game, Drek’s Gameis inspired by it and gains more and more followers, to the point of becoming “cult”. There is even talk of a version of So worried for the big screen! But then the two designers of the cartoon are brutally attacked in the cemetery where the series takes place: one dies and the other is left paraplegic.
However, the murdered designer had been to the office of the two detectives: harassed online by the host of the Drek gamea certain Anomie, she wanted to put an end to all this by identifying the person hidden behind this pseudonym. Overloaded with files, Ellacott and Strike belatedly set off in pursuit of Anomie while the bodies pile up. They suddenly find themselves plunged into a case involving far-right terrorists, disoriented ordinary humans and a whole bunch of crazy fauna living just as much – if not more – in a virtual universe as in reality.
The plot, which takes a while to get going, paints a portrait that is both dark and complex, torn by tensions of all kinds, which is uncannily similar to… what we encounter when we get up every morning. As usual, the characters are solid and Galbraith-Rowling’s writing, very well served by the translation, takes various forms to describe all this while always fitting in accurately with the fractures that we all know. This is a multi-layered story describing a world where the usual landmarks are fading.
Does this remind you of anything?