The investigation, JK Rowling style

The least we can say is that cloudy blood is an impressive book. And not only because this imposing brick is more than 900 pages. The fifth title of private detective Cormoran Strike’s investigations, signed by the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, is undoubtedly the most ambitious novel in the series to date; but it is above all J. K. Rowling at the top of his game.

Laila Maalouf
The Press

A long-term mission

Cormoran Strike is a gruff, boxer-looking ex-military man who lost a leg in Afghanistan. His associate, Robin Ellacott, and he manage a private detective agency in London. In cloudy bloodthey are investigating for the first time on a closed case, a case very different from the stories of adultery and spinning that usually occupy their daily lives.

The two detectives embark on this mission with the impression of attempting the impossible. They have a year to find out what happened to the D^D Margot Bamborough, who vanished without a trace in the 1970s, and whose daughter seeks to finally solve the mystery of her disappearance. They then undertake to question all the many witnesses of the time to reconstruct the last months of his life. A real monk’s work whose developments we follow at a snail’s pace. Because we move slowly, very slowly, in this story that stretches in length. Without this reduced pace being unpleasant.

The sentimental plot

In parallel with the investigation into the disappearance of Margot Bamborough and their other ongoing cases, on which they work day and night, a sentimental intrigue unfolds between the two private detectives who have been together for four years. Between them, however, the chemistry operates in the shadows, both of them hesitating between the desire to express the reciprocal feelings that surface and the fear of losing everything they have sacrificed to make their agency prosper. Robin struggles with her long-delayed divorce, while Strike struggles with a number of personal issues. We also delve with great interest into the former soldier’s past – whether or not we’ve read the previous titles.

What makes the charm of these two characters that everything opposes – and whose investigations have been adapted to the small screen – is that they do not count the hours or the efforts they put into their work, erasing the borders between their private and professional lives.

Throughout their research, we enter into their intimacy, their deeply buried secrets and their dilemmas, big and small.

And it is through these innocuous scenes, these hints of humor that pierce through the British grayness, these meticulously described atmospheres, as well as this finesse in identifying the psyche of his characters, that the inimitable style of the film stands out. writer.

A dense universe

Even if it is an investigation that constitutes the backdrop of the story, it is not a simple detective novel that J. K. Rowling constructs; it builds a universe that thickens from one discovery to another and sows enough traps to bog us down in a seemingly unfathomable mystery, building a plot of astonishing density and a denouement as unexpected as disturbing.

Detectives will unearth many secrets; they will interfere in the mysteries governing intra-family ties, reopening conflicts whose scars are still just as vivid despite the years that have passed. cloudy blood is also a fascinating incursion into the heart of London, its pubs, its districts; a journey to Cornwall and the seaside resorts of the North which gives the impression, after reading it, of having made a long and distant journey from which one cannot escape without admitting that it can indeed to exist human beings of the caliber of Voldemort.

In bookstores May 4

cloudy blood

Robert Galbraith (translated from English by Florianne Vidal)

Grasset

928 pages

★★★★