Reviews with content warning for Body horror - Troubled Blood

The fifth book in the series, Troubled Blood takes readers on a convoluted path that has every suspect looking like a murderer at one point, and simultaneously, the main character looking like a possible runaway instead of a possible victim. The character progression between Cormoran and Robin is intriguing also, as this is the first book in the series where I found their friendship/relationship frustrating to experience as Cormoran’s personal situation has him lashing out, making me quite frustrated in his behaviour. While I did consider deducting stars due to the fact there’s a significant focus on rape in this book which made me uncomfortable, in the end the writing was so excellent and the reveal so shocking, I had to give it 5 stars in the end regardless.

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sauvageloup's review

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dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Complicated feelings over this one

Pros:
- Rowling is an exceptional writer; the complicated but satisfying plot, the mixture of straightforward tone interspersed with moments of lyrical descriptions and reflection, the characterisation and development, the slowly eked out relationship development, the depth of every single side character, how each character's dialogue is made distinct and accents rendered realistically, the research that's clearly gone into it... just so much to admire in the actual writing and her skill.
- I like Robin and Strike and many of the other side characters. They feel real and Rowling puts across their emotions very well. There's a very real feeling of being as harried and pressured as Strike clearly is with everything piling up and then the release at the end.
- the plot was complex but wrapped up very neatly at the end. It was complicated by various characters' mixed motives but it didn't feel forced.

Cons:
- My only complaint about the writing was that it was *massively* confusing at the beginning. SO. MANY. NAMES. Got super confused. Also later on completely forgot who

Joanna Hammond

, which might be due to it being 3am right now, but still. Took the punch out of the revelation at the end because I couldn't remember who the hell they were talking about.
- Rowling's views... Rowling as a person... that was just in my head the whole time I was reading.
- her views then come through in this book, more than the others I think. This is the first book to come out post Rowling revealing herself as a massive transphobe and I think there's a lot of elements of that that come through in this.
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There's the killer, Creed, dressing up in women's clothes to lull his victims into a sense of security, which is the most transphobic bit. Then there's a good bit of fatphobia in there with obvious scorn and disgust angled towards fat people, including Creed being obese. A point I hated a lot was when it's made fun of that Irene has IBS. The condition is given to an already dislikeable character and it's encouraging the reader to laugh at her during that whole episode, which I thought was really cruel. No-one, however dislikeable, should be subject to mockery because of a chronic and painful medical condition. There were other bits too and I can't speak for disabled people but I wasn't sure how some of the portrayals of disabled people would come off to them. Then there's points where I felt that Rowling was hammering home other points, about women's safety, about Robin's rape, about domestic abuse, manipulative men, feminism, and about people who arguing for changing language rather than actually making a difference (the students Strike has a rant at in Max's flat over a so called 'slutwalk'). None of that was wrong, but I felt it linked back to Rowling's perception of herself within the world.

Anyway, the book was written excellently, but Rowling is a piece of shit. Unfortunately, I am also very jealous of her writing abilities and wish they'd been given to someone more worthy.

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andyincolour's review

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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samanthaxe's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I picked up this book because JK Rowling is a master plotter, and I continue to love the dynamic between Strike and Robin. As with past books, the interaction between the two of them was the best part. The story is a little convoluted--the agency is now very busy, with multiple cases going on at once, and it's hard to follow all of those details as well as the main mystery of Margot Bamborough. I enjoyed the astrology subplot, but was ultimately too confused by it to see how it impacted the ending or solving of the case.

I was also wondering whether Rowling would use this opportunity to make a statement about trans people, and she does.

One of the main suspects, a man, dresses as a woman in order to gain the trust of his female victims and enter their spaces.

While Rowling does not use the word trans or identify this character as trans, she's obviously trying to spin a story where the fears she spouts on Twitter are manifest, however unrealistic or unfounded. There are also several conversations between characters where Robin or Strike think about the naïveté of young people and their desire to control the narrative and language around their experience, and how ultimately that doesn't change anything.

So, trigger warnings for what you'd expect in a gritty thriller, with an emphasis on almost unrelenting violence against women, and I'd also add a trigger warning for Rowling's seemingly benign use of things like cross-dressing to make an insidious and harmful point about gender identity.

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varunob's review

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

On a rainy night in autumn 1974, Dr Margot Bamborough vanished into thin air minutes after having left her practice in Clerkenwell, Central London. Forty years later, her daughter Anna spots in a pub a man she thinks might be able to uncover the truth behind her mother’s disappearance.

For Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott, the cold case at the heart of Troubled Blood presents an opportunity like no other. What’s more – among their suspects, alongside Margot’s husband, colleagues, and ex-lover, is one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers.

The size of the book (at 888 pages [Kindle], Troubled Blood is the longest book of the series, and of JK Rowling’s career) inspires awe. Initially. The awe soon gives way to a feeling that nobody told Rowling to take it easy. I’m not saying the book is long; the Nile said so. Any other writer would have been pulled up about a mystery novel this long, but not one who has sold over half a billion copies worldwide.

Troubled Blood is not a rambling mess, but it isn’t a focussed novel either. The intention with both this one and the predecessor is to establish a new, sprawling kind of crime novel, the likes that appear once in a blue moon and seldom more than once from the pen of the same author. The trouble is that there are only so many “moments” between Strike and Robin one can take. There are only so many times one of them will do something outlandish without telling the other. There are only so many near misses one can tolerate. There are no more such sentences you, dear reader, are likely to take, so let’s move on.

The decision by Rowling to have the mystery share centre stage with the Strike-Robin relationship mystified me in Lethal White, and it annoyed me here. With the setup of Margot Bamborough’s disappearance and the work they do, the novel flows organically, only for Rowling to interrupt with Strike pondering over his feelings for Robin and their precise nature, and the similar musings Robin seems to have. I’m probably one of the few people following the series who would much rather they didn’t get together, but even if that wasn’t the case, the constant cutaways would make me jump ship hastily.

The book isn’t helped by the fact that the character arcs developed over its four predecessors seem to have been forgotten, never more evident than in Strike and Robin’s interactions – personal and professional. No reader would think these characters have known one another and worked together for around four years and, it seems, nor does Rowling.

The mystery itself is extremely compelling. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it is the best case the duo have had to tackle so far, even if the book as a whole falls smack in the middle of the series. This is old-school proper detective work. The amenities of the twenty-first century are only occasional tools. To get to the bottom of Margot’s disappearance, Strike and Robin have to wade through police reports, the first investigating officer’s strange diary, and a flock of ageing suspects whose memories are fast fading and nearly all of whom have something or the other to hide.

The investigation is what tides over many of the novel’s hiccups, and the only detour I actually thought worthwhile was the sub-plot involving Strike’s uncle and aunt. When Rowling tried to mine both characters’ pasts, however, either through side characters or incidents, she failed to keep things interesting.

The book is also laden with several dull, lifeless passages of writing, almost as though Rowling was bored with writing them. Those should have been the first thing to go when the draft encountered the editor’s pen, but maybe, as she has done with the Wizarding World rules in the recent past, Rowling thinks she can turn Galbraith into a below-par writer.

There is also the massive cloud that hangs over Troubled Blood about Rowling’s transphobia and the way it rears its head in the book. While some reviews claim the novel features a trans serial killer (this is not a spoiler, worry not), said serial killer is actually a cis man who, on a couple of the many occasions on which he took a life, abducted women in the garb of a woman. While I support Rowling’s right to write a character this way, and though there is evidence that such a technique was adopted by some serial killers in the past, it’s not difficult to see that the outrage is justified. And that Rowling has done this deliberately. She has had time since her rant on Twitter (let’s be clear – it was a rant and nothing more) to think things over. The offending part of the book isn’t even a character trait, really, more of a minor aesthetic choice. And yet it’s dangerous. It continues to feed the hysteria that Rowling fanned on social media. It would have done no damage to the novel had the serial killer not been an occasional crossdresser designed in a manner that Rowling could prove her point. Sadly, she chose to take the route she did, and for that, she has justifiably earned the ire of many people.

Troubled Blood has its moments, but it truly is a middling book with a great premise at its core but a haphazard execution around said core. Venture into it only and only if the blurb piques your interest, though I’d recommend reading the earlier books to understand a lot of what happens in this one in case you haven’t.

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