Troubled Blood

★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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I've jumped on each book in this series, but this book sat on my shelf for 16 months after its release. Now that I've finally tackled it, I'm afraid that it'll take me 16 months to write this up the way I normally would.

So, I'm just going to offer some brief thoughts about the book. But first, let's start with:


THE OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough – who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974.

Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike.

As Strike and Robin investigate Margot's disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly . . .

Troubled Blood