I’d like to start off this
review by saying that I’ve definitely been putting off reading and reviewing Career of Evil for quite a while, not
because I didn’t like The Cuckoo’s
Calling and The Silkworm, I loved
both of those books. The reason I’ve been putting off reading Career of Evil is because I found Paula Hawkins’ book The Girl on the Train to be a rather challenging book to review. When I review
something, I really like to talk about it in great detail, but since that book
is a mystery novel, I was really unsure of how to approach writing a review for
it, and it’s definitely the same thing with this book. Books in the mystery
genre are definitely one kind of book that I don’t think a person should have a
ton of details about the overall plot of the book and especially the end of the
book ruined for them before they read it. I’m really going to try and find the
right balance between discussing my thoughts on this book, while hopefully not
giving too much away in case anybody who reads this review hasn’t read Career of Evil yet; that being said,
here are my thoughts on Career of Evil.
When it comes to Career of Evil, my overall reading
experience with the book was definitely very weird. The reason I say that is
because I started out absolutely loving the book and thinking that it had
potential to be the best book yet in the Cormoran
Strike series, only to have my thoughts on the book to take a turn for the
worse the further into the book that I got. I’ll start this review off on a
positive note and say that I love that Robin was so personally affected by the
case they were trying to solve in this book, which involved an unknown person
sending Robin a woman’s leg in the mail, and Strike and Robin trying to figure
out whose leg it was and who sent it.
Maybe this will sound weird
to some people, but reading Career of
Evil really made me think a lot about the TV show Desperate Housewives and how the season mysteries were the most
interesting when at least one, if not all of the women, were involved with the
mystery in some way. In my opinion, the show definitely suffered in season two
due to the fact that the whole mystery with Betty Applewhite was so completely
splintered off from the show’s core housewives for the most part, but I
digress.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm, and neither Strike and
Robin were all that connected on a personal level to the cases in those books.
However, having Robin be so connected to the case they were trying to solve in
this book really contributed a lot to my enjoyment of the book. It also gave
Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling the chance to really continue to develop Robin as
a character even more in this book. Robin definitely has a very sad past when
it comes to the fact that it was revealed that Robin was raped when she was in
college, which subsequently led to her developing a case of agoraphobia and
leaving college. That whole reveal definitely helped me to understand Robin as
a character even more than I did before. I also found Strike’s reaction to this
reveal and how it impacted their relationship throughout the book rather
compelling, especially in terms of the drama that it caused between them.
Something that I found
myself thinking about a lot as I was reading this book is the fact that I’ve
always had very mixed feelings when it comes to crime procedural TV shows.
While a lot of crime procedurals out there do offer at least something unique
that set them apart from all the other crime procedurals currently on the air, it’s
still one genre of TV that feels rather cliché and cookie cutter to me. Plus, I’ve
often found myself thinking that the characters on a lot of crime procedurals
end up feeling like they aren’t all that fleshed out compared to characters on
a lot of other kinds of TV shows since crime procedurals pretty much revolve
around their jobs and solving the case of the week in each episode, while
things going on in their lives outside of work is usually treated as a subplot.
Honestly, my two favorite crime procedurals on the air at the moment are pretty
much Grimm and Major Crimes. Other than those shows, that’s one genre of TV that
I’ve never been too terribly interested in for the most part.
Getting back to the subject
of Career of Evil and the Cormoran Strike series as a whole, I
feel like Galbraith/Rowling has done a fantastic job of writing Strike and
Robin in such a way that they both feel like very fleshed out and well-rounded
characters. While this is a book series that’s mainly about Strike and Robin
trying to solve a new case and occasionally doing some other jobs in each of
the books, Galbraith/Rowling definitely does a great job of devoting a nice
amount of time to having both Strike and Robin deal with problems in their
personal lives. Robin definitely had quite a bit of drama going on with her
fiancée, Matthew, throughout this book as she prepared for their wedding,
especially when it comes to the whole revelation that he had apparently been
cheating on her for quite a while.
At the risk of giving too
much away regarding everything that happened between Robin and Matthew in this
book, I definitely don’t like how the book ended in terms of Robin and
Matthew’s relationship. Maybe it’s because Matthew is a character that does
feel rather underdeveloped to me, but we’re three books into the series, and I
still don’t like him. He seems like a major asshole, especially when it comes
to the fact that he’s still not very supportive of Robin wanting to work for Strike
and her interest in being a private investigator. I’m absolutely baffled by the
fact that Robin hasn’t kicked Matthew to the curb for good yet, especially
after reading this book.
While the parts of the book
that dealt with Robin’s relationship with Matthew definitely really pissed me
off at times, I really liked the parts of the book that dealt with Strike’s
personal life. That being said, I’d being lying if I said that it didn’t bug me
that Strike only seemed to be interested in Charlotte Campbell because of her
money. Both Robin and Strike definitely really annoyed me at times when it came
to the choices that they made regarding their love lives in this book. Despite
the fact that both Strike and Robin really pissed me off at times, I still
really appreciate the fact that Galbraith/Rowling devoted a fairly significant
portion of this book to focusing on Strike and Robin’s personal lives.
One aspect of the book that
I was definitely really interested in were the parts of the story that focused
on Strike’s financial problems. Unfortunately, that’s also one aspect of the
book that I wish Galbraith/Rowling had explored just a little more than they
did, because I was definitely somewhat confused by how British banks apparently
work when you’re in a situation like Strike’s and have very little money to the
point where Strike’s bank account apparently had a negative balance, or almost
no money if he did have at least some money in his bank account. Personally, I’ve
always found myself being very invested in Strike as a character and the
problems that he’s faced in terms of his private investigation firm. I’ve
always rooted for him and hoped that things with his business and his financial
problems would eventually take a turn for the better and continue to do well
for an extended period of time, perhaps for at least two, maybe three books in
a row.
Moving onto the subject of
what I didn’t like about Career of Evil,
as I said earlier, my overall experience with reading this book was definitely
weird since I started out absolutely loving it; however, I eventually found
myself getting really frustrated and bored with the book at times when I was listening
to the audiobook version of Career of
Evil. There were definitely parts of the book where the story didn’t do a
very good job of holding my attention and I started to kind of zone out as I
was listening to it at times, which led to me having to listen to some chapters
at least twice. Personally, I found the end of the book somewhat bizarre, but
it still left me looking forward to reading the next book in the series when it
eventually comes out.
While I typically enjoy
discovering new quotes and I initially liked the fact that pretty much every
chapter of the book began with lyrics from songs by the band Blue Öyster Cult, it definitely
got old after a while. Eventually, I really started to question what it actually
added to the story, or if it even really helped the story at all. After a
while, I started to feel like the quotes were just…there. That being said, it’s
thanks to Galbraith/Rowling including lyrics from Blue Öyster Cult’s songs in Career of Evil that I learned about the
origins of the “More Cowbell” sketch from Saturday
Night Live. I never knew that sketch was spoofing the band Blue Öyster Cult until I read this review for Career
of Evil on Amazon.
Something else that I
initially liked about this book the first time, or maybe the first two times
Galbraith/Rowling did it was when he/she wrote chapters from the bad guy’s
point of view. It definitely added a real sense of creepiness and suspense to
the story at first, but in the end, the idea of writing chapters from the bad
guy’s point of view was just another aspect of this book that got pretty old
rather quickly. It wasn’t very long before the chapters written from the bad
guy’s point of view really started to feel like a rather cheap and superficial
storytelling tactic on Galbraith/Rowling’s part.
Based on the writing for all
of the other books that Galbraith/Rowling has written at this point in time, I
definitely wouldn’t have expected them to resort to rather superficial tactics
when they’re writing a book. Admittedly, it’s been a few years since I’ve read
any of the Harry Potter books, but I
don’t remember J.K. Rowling ever using cheap storytelling tactics when it comes
to her writing for those books. That’s honestly something that I would have
never expected from her, so I was definitely disappointed to see her do that
kind of thing with this book. I was very surprised (in a good way) by
Galbraith/Rowling’s ability to write very interesting and compelling mystery
novels when I read The Cuckoo’s Calling
and The Silkworm, but this book surprised
me in a bad way to a certain degree. The chapters written from the bad guy’s
point of view didn’t really offer all that much depth or insight into the bad
guy as a character, and those chapters all ended up feeling rather repetitive
after a while, if you ask me.
All things considered,
reading Career of Evil really was a
very interesting experience for me, given the fact that I initially started out
absolutely loving it and thinking that it was perhaps the best book yet in the
series, but the more I read it, the more I found myself being really frustrated
and disappointed with the book at times. Don’t get wrong, there was never any
point in the book where I got so frustrated with it that I thought about not
finishing it. There’s plenty to like about Career
of Evil, and I would still recommend reading it, especially if you’ve
already the first two books in the Cormoran
Strike series. However, Career of
Evil is definitely my least favorite book in the series at this point in
time. I just feel like this book didn’t completely live up to the expectations
that I’ve come to have when it comes to Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling’s
writing. One last thing that I’d like to mention is depending on whether or not
the viewership for this review ends up being fairly high, I’m probably going to
go back and read both The Cuckoo’s
Calling and The Silkworm again
and write reviews for those books as well at some point in time, just so I can
have a sense of completeness when it comes to reviewing the Cormoran Strike series.
That being said, my final
score for Career of Evil is 7 out of
10.
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