The more Strike and his business partner Robin Ellacott delve into the case, the more labyrinthine it gets. The silver shop is no ordinary one: it's located beside Freemasons' Hall and specializes in Masonic silverware. And in addition to the armed robber and Decima's boyfriend, it becomes clear that there are other missing men who could fit the profile of the body in the vault.
As the case becomes ever more complicated and dangerous, Strike faces another quandary. Robin seems increasingly committed to her boyfriend, policeman Ryan Murphy, but the impulse to declare his own feelings for her is becoming stronger than ever.
Comment: This is the 8th installment in the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith, a series I have enjoyed for the past years.
After the events of the previous book, Robin is still dealing with nightmares and to make all worse, she now has a medical issue too, but she doesn't let this affect her dedication to the job. Striker, on his part, is feeling the pressure of not telling Robin how he really feels about her, knowing her boyfriend might propose at any time. However, their personal struggles need to be put aside because they have a new client, Decima Mullins, who believes her missing boyfriend might be the man found killed in a masonic shop. The thing is, a few other men might also be the victim and the detectives need to investigate, but the more they do so, more complications arise... what really happened for the man to be killed in such a way? Who is he really? What happened to the other missing men?
The edition I got has 1049 pages, not counting acknowledgments and other usual information one finds in any book. I just breezed through all of them because in spite of the fact these books are always long, have a lot of detail and secondary elements, it is simply addictive, even if there are things I'd change or wish were different.
As always, the best thing about this book is the smooth combination of an investigation and the little scenes regarding the main characters' lives being interwoven. It is as rewarding to me to know which steps they take to go from one information to the next while investigating as it is to know what Robin and Strike feel and what they do in their personal lives. I can imagine this might seem too much for some readers but to me it is a well done element.
The case being investigated is, at times, a bit confusing. I confess I wasn't always aware of why they had to look into certain things, and the fact there were five (if I recall) men they suspected might be the victim also made some things seem they came out of nowhere. Of course, these five men all had some mystery about them - why they were missing, evidently - and each one of them had something that led Robin and Striker into something else. It all came to a point in which this makes sense, but not always.
At the same time, the imagination and the machination to come up with details about so many things, so many people, while I was reading and feeling confused, I still thought this was well executed,especially when things start to be more obviously connected. Something that keeps surprising me, though, in books with private detectives, is how easy it seems that strangers simply share stuff and tell things to people who are not the police. Still, this is precisely what sometimes advances the plot when it seems no connection can be made.
I won't include details because to do so or I would need to explain a lot or to give the right context, some spoilers would need to be added, thus I will simply say that, as it always happens in these books, the links between events, the explanation about certain seemingly careless details, the motivation behind some characters' attitudes, all this is a lot more complex than what it seems. It came to a point I just had to know how this all played out and when the final scenes about the case are finally happening and we learn how this is all connected, although it wasn't as greatly done as in the book I liked the most in the series, it was still quite incredible.
A good part of the book is also centered on Robin and Striker's personal lives. I particularly liked seeing how dedicated Striker is in regards to his feelings for Robin and how that affects some choices of his too. I really hope that, considering the way this book ends, that the next one will show us a new dynamic between them. Of course it won't be all perfection for them, after all they both have deeper issues to deal with but I'm still hopeful they can deal with them together somehow.
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