Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (2015)

I almost did not finish this one, was ready to return it to the library about halfway in as the level of evil was just so dreadful, not helping me live positively in this world. I let it sit for a few weeks, and then decided to finish it just because I wanted to find out if Robin was really going to marry Matthew and whether Cormoran Strike would let her know that he likes her.

Robin gets a severed leg in the mail and it looks like it is one of three big men from Cormoran's past that are trying to get back at him. There is a complex plot surrounding all three of these men. I always like to see Cormoran and Robin working together as detectives, but I lost track of some of the details, so the final explanation wasn't completely clear to me. Through the stories of these three awful men, we get more of Cormoran's back story. Since this crime seems to reflect on Cormoran, he loses clients, so one of the threads throughout this book is about their business going down the tubes. Then there is Robin and Matthew - they are planning a wedding, but then at some point she calls it off. Will she or won't she marry him?

Hopefully J.K. Rowling will take her time writing another one of these. I will probably be sucked in to read it, but she has gotten so dark - as we saw in Harry Potter. Is this what readers really want? I don't tend to psychoanalyze writers, but one would think that her life could be pretty positive with all the success she has had. Why does she feel she needs to delve into such darkness? Does she think she is bringing to light dysfunctional families, what happens to kids that are abused, women that are raped, children abandoned? I like that books shine a light on worlds I would not know about otherwise, but the evil thoughts and deeds of our criminal were so repulsive, that this overshadowed any wish I might have had for understanding the hard lives of those less fortunate than myself.