Library Limelights 290

 

Robert Galbraith. The Ink Black Heart. USA: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2022.

At 1,012 pages, Galbraith’s latest in the Cormoran Strike series is one walloping doorstop. The two partners in the now-successful London detective agency, Strike and Robin, make a great business team; personally, they continue to deflect their mutual romantic feelings, constantly second-guessing each other (Dear JK: Fans are beginning to mutter). Other than finding a way to prop the book up comfortably, it’s easy to become completely engrossed. Remember I thought The Appeal (LL283) was brilliant in its usage of email and texts to provide characterization and clues? Trust me, Galbraith has gone over the top with internet chat channels.

Robin turns down potential new client Edie Ledwell, co-creator of a successful YouTube cartoon (“The Ink Black Heart”); Edie is desperate to stop the vicious cyber harassment aimed at herself. An anonymous person called Anomie, who invented a popular internet game (“Drek’s Game”) based on Edie’s cartoon, is turning her fans away with lies and unfounded rumours. Robin has to say no to the job; they presently have a full client load, and they are not cyber specialists. Not much later, Edie and her cartoon co-founder, Josh Blay, are found murdered in a cemetery. Chat rooms related to Drek’s Game—where everyone’s name is disguised―go crazy with speculation about why and who did it. Edie’s agent, Allan Yeoman, and her only kin, Uncle Grant, approach Strike and Robin to hunt for and identify Anomie, who may be the killer; numerous cyber experts have had no luck tracing him/her through internet resources.

Having accepted the new job, every resource in the detective agency is stretched, especially with Strike’s amputated leg acting up. So many suspects require physical surveillance—known harassers, deceitful fans, and even alleged friends of the murdered couple. Luckily Robin is able to slip into the Game to watch its eight moderators, tops on the suspect list. Out of left field comes an added burden: Faced with a bitter divorce, Strike’s ex—the malicious Charlotte―gives him no choice but to help her or see his business destroyed by her vindictive husband, Jago. Digging up some dirt on Jago is necessary, all of it to Robin’s dismay.

That’s merely a skeletal outline, without the numerous threads the characters engender. The sheer number of characters could be dizzying but Galbraith paces them effectively. So effectively, it’s like a ready-made cable series for at least a dozen episodes. A telephone voice urging Strike to “dig up Edie’s body” for revelatory letters in the casket ... a bomb exploding in their office ... are only two of the bizarre elements they have to deal with, plus the alt-right extremists who infiltrate and influence the Game fans.

Even though a techno-dunce, I adapted quickly to the Game’s behind-the-scenes format where the moderators comment among themselves, or simultaneously use private chats—similar to Messenger or Twitter. Interesting, that the activities within the cartoon itself, and likewise the game, are kept obscure because the social issues generated by the fandom and electronic media in general are more important. Yes, the story is highly complex and deserved a longer than usual review, but once in, your detective brain is fully engaged. Reading prior books in the series is not necessary.

In trying to choose pull-quotes, I gave up early on, since they would come from so many different people and contexts; with such a winding road to a climax they could be confusing rather than enticing or amusing. Instead, I began to concentrate mainly on Robin and Strike’s relationship that lies at the heart ♥ of everything. The two earnestly attempt to have a social (sex) life without the other but hey, how long will that work? Enter Galbraith’s busy modern world and play the game. Or game the play!

General bits

▪ What was there in that peculiar little cartoon that could so offend and enrage that the creators would be deemed worthy of assassination? (122)

▪ “They were trying to whip up enough harassment to tip her into killing herself.” (145)

▪ “In my view, Anomie has to be someone who’s been in Edie’s immediate circle at some point or ‒ more likely – in Josh’s.” (164)

▪ “Does Edie Ledwell make the world a more unsafe place for marginalised groups with every thoughtless stereotype she puts on screen? Yes, she does.” (257)

▪ “There’s a rule in the game that you mustn’t use any proper names for people or places.” (353)

By or About Strike

▪ If he were honest with himself, he’d rather still be at the office, speculating about the stabbings with Robin over a Chinese takeaway than heading toward Madeline’s. (106)

▪ He’d bet everything in his bank account that Charlotte sensed he was trying to displace the attraction he felt towards Robin onto Madeline, because she could read Strike just as well as he could read her. (238)

▪ He could tell by the solicitous enquiries of the Finns, all of whom spoke perfect English, that the metal rod of his prosthesis had been revealed in the fall. (404)

▪ Strike’s mobile rang. Robin, reading the name ‘Madeline’ upside down, immediately got to her feet and said, “I’ll let you take that. I need to get on anyway.” (414)

▪ “You want me to get on the tube dressed as Darth Vader?” (523)

▪ “Fuck’s sake!” Strike shouted at Robin again. “How the fuck did you think you were going to lift him?” (549)

▪ The consequences of the bombing were sinking in, now that he had no Pat to look after and no practical tasks to distract him. He had no access to his laptop, no computer and no printer. (723)

▪ “I’m concerned about these spasms,” said the doctor, looking intensely into his face again. (928)

▪ “What if it’s a set-up? What if she’s the bait and Anomie’s lying in wait?” (954)

By or About Robin

▪ While Strike was scowling over his phone, typing search terms with his thick fingers, Robin allowed her eyes to rest on him and to feel the unalloyed fondness that had so often disturbed her peace of mind. (172)

▪ As she edged out from behind the table she bent down impulsively and hugged Strike, her hair falling over his face, and he inhaled the perfume he’d bought her on her thirtieth. (179)

▪ It was at times like this that Robin found it difficult to remain pissed off at Cormoran Strike, however aggravating he might otherwise be. (362)

▪ She could feel the place where her armpit was going to bruise, from where Strike had hauled her upwards out of the path of the train. (550)

▪ Robin soon became angry with herself for dwelling on that display of empathy: this wasn’t the way you fell out of love, and she once again employed the reliable counter-irritants of reminding herself about Strike’s new girlfriend and his ill-defined involvement in his ex-fiancee’s divorce case. (621)

▪ “Hi,” said Strike. “Is that offer of the sofa-bed still open?” (716)

▪ As she dropped a whole chicken into her trolley, she wondered why Strike had chosen to stay with her instead of with Madeline. (727)

▪ “I think it was a man. They said ‘I am going to kill you’, and hung up.” (908)

▪ “You know what?” Robin said, her voice rising in pitch, “I don’t need you shouting at me right now, OK?” (908)

Robin listens to Edie

“So, two fans of our cartoon, this is a few years ago now ‒ I suppose you’d call them fans, in the beginning, anyway ‒ these two fans created an online game based on our characters.

“Nobody knows who the two people who made the game are. They call themselves Anomie and Morehouse. Anomia gets most of the credit and he’s the one who’s got the biggest following online. Some people say Anomie and Morehouse are the same person, but I don’t know whether that’s true.

“Anyway, Anomie” ‒ she took a deep breath ‒ “he ‒ I’m sure it’s a ‘he’ ‒ he’s made it his mission to ‒ to—”

She suddenly laughed, a laugh totally without humour: she might as well have cried out in pain.

“—to make my life as miserable as he can. It’s like ‒ it’s a daily ‒ he never lets up, it never stops.” (59)

Katie Gutierrez. More Than You’ll Ever Know. E-book download from TPL. USA: William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2022.

This was a fairly long novel as well. Cassie is working at her goal: becoming a true crime writer. The genre fascinates her, and she’s found the perfect case for a breakout article beyond her dull day job: confessed bigamist Dolores (“Lore”) Rivera, whose first husband Fabian killed her other husband Andres. Cassie’s fiancé Duke, operator of a food truck, is less than thrilled about her obsession. But our girl Cassie convinces a skeptical Lore, now older and out of the public eye, to cooperate (telling your side of the story). A recall here ‒ of the interview process in My American Friend (LL289). While Cassie’s intent is to present / explore Lore’s frame of mind at the time, she not only finds they are relating their deep secrets to each other, but she also stumbles into new information about the murder. Cassie has lasting guilt about abandoning her baby brother to the care of her alcoholic, abusive father; Lore recounts her two relationships when her banking job required regular stays in two different cities.

Children (now grown) were involved on all sides of Lore’s risky double life and they have their say in interviews. It’s hard to feel empathy for someone whose self-indulgence damaged so many others. As a year or so went by, Lore became a master of deception, but of course it couldn’t go on forever. Cassie suspects that Lore, not Fabian, was the killer. Truthfully, it did get exciting as Lore carefully detailed the day of the murder, but by then I was speed reading. I could scarcely wait to get this book over with. Most characters are rather superficial, with Cassie seemingly putting profit (book sales) first and Lore justifying her two loves as fulfillment of freedom to be herself. Many of their “insights” sound naive or confused. Only the two men deserve some sympathy. The relentless insertion of untranslated, unexplained Spanish phrases is not charming, it’s irritating.

Cassie

▪ When it’s done right, true crime tells us who we are, who we should be, who we should fear, who we are always in danger of becoming. Even if what’s revealed is ugly, it’s true. (48)

▪ I chose my future over Andrew’s safety. And I continued to do so every day since. (136)

▪ But the thing is, how did Fabian know what room he was in? (211)

▪ I saw revealing the truth about someone’s death as a way of saying their life mattered. (212)

▪ Love itself should not be a destructive force. But I’d been reading true crime all my life: love was the most destructive force. (429)

▪ “What I want to know is,” Gabriel said, “why us? Of every fucked-up family in the world, why’d you choose ours?”

Lore

▪ “I don’t have a boyfriend,” Lore says, and before she can finish, Andres is out of his seat, hand outstretched. (45)

▪ “I was greedy. I had the love of two good men at once. And it destroyed them both.” (155)

▪ Our mutual interrogation was becoming its own kind of addiction, an experiment in how far we could push, how much honesty ‒ or at least the perception of honesty ‒ we could demand. (183)

▪ How can shame exist without remorse? (237)

▪ That first weekend there are so many slivers of moments when the secret nearly slides wild from Lore’s throat before she swallows it back down. (239)

▪ And I liked making her talk about the things that made her uncomfortable. (334)