Bookish Thoughts

I feel like Career of Evil needs to be reviewed two separate books. The first is the mystery, which is very good and had me guessing until the end (mostly because I missed something pretty obvious). The second is the interpersonal drama Robin and Cormoran are dealing with, which was a mixed bag. The mystery centers on someone who is out to get Cormoran. He starts by mailing the leg of a dead girl to the office. Cormoran immediately comes up with four suspects, because that's the line of work he's in, and most of the book is devoted to eliminating them, one by one, until the last one left is the guilty party. I became convinced early on that the true culprit was none of the men Cormoran identified. Somehow I landed on the theory that it was the son of one of them, even though the text really doesn't support this. Regardless, I got so wrapped up in it that I didn't even come close to actually solving the mystery. But that's okay. I liked that we got a bunch of sc...

Before I read this book, I was warned that there was a cannibalism aspect to the murder mystery. Fearing the absolute worst, I braced myself. But it turned out that the cannibalism was mostly metaphorical, part of the book within a book that the murder is based on. So my first thought upon finishing was that it was much milder than I expected. And my second thought was that that was the strangest reaction I've had to a book in a long time. I love JK Rowling's Cormoran Strike series. Only two books in, but he and Robin are fun, smart people to hang out with. I like the way Rowling doles out clues, which leaves me feeling like I'm constantly on the verge of figuring things out. And I certainly could if I paid closer attention or flipped back to re-read passages. But as it stands I haven't been able to solve the mystery before the big reveal in either of her books. Which is a nice change of pace for someone who often sees the ending coming a mile away. If I have a comp...

I don't read a lot of crime novels. I've picked up the occasional mystery, and I did get into the Girl With a Dragon Tattoo books (also known as the Millenium Trilogy, but apparently no one else knows that) when they were popular. I usually find them enjoyable, but they aren't the bread and butter of my reading. But when I found out JK Rowling had penned a book (soon to be series) in this genre, I had to check it out. Not urgently, obviously, but it's been floating on my to-read list, and I finally found a paperback copy. Not being an expert in the genre, I guess I can't really talk about how it stacks up against other crime and mystery novels. But I found it very enjoyable. The mystery was well-paced, and the clues scattered throughout. There were plenty of reasonable suspects, which kept me on my toes. And I came very close to figuring it out, but hadn't quite put all of the pieces together before Strike's big monologue reveal. (I may have ...