Review: The Hallmarked Man

The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am torn about what I think of this book. I love the characters. Strike and Robin are both great characters: complex emotionally and intellectually, not stereotypical, have good moral centers without being overly idealized caricatures. I enjoy ever moment these two are investigating. The writing is always great: the building of tension, the dialogue, the care of character development for minor characters, the avoidance of tropes. (And the audio narration is some of the best there is. Kudos to Robert Glenister)

But I had two main issues. First the core mystery was too convoluted. The cases are always complex and intricate – that’s what sustains the length of these novels. But there were too man moving pieces here and I sometimes got a bit lost about which case was which or the relevance of a particular witness.

Second, Strike and Robin. I love them as characters, I love them as detecting partners. As star-crossed lovers, they are annoying! There is a lot of internal monologue by each character making unwarranted assumptions about the motivations or thoughts of the other character that then predictably creates drama and misunderstanding between them. There were many times I wanted to reach through the book and slap the pair of them. This has always been a part of these novels, but the volume was turned way up here. Which in some ways that I can’t reveal without spoilers, makes some sense. But it had a tendency to overwhelm things.

This is the weakest, I think, of the Strike series. If I could it would be 3.5/5 not 4/5, but I still enjoyed the book even with these flaws. So 4/5 it is.


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Review: All I Did Was Shoot My Man

All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is a heaviness throughout this book. It is the weight of the past and the present and how the past is constantly there in the present. McGill is trying to fix his past, out run it, make amends for it, and yet it hangs there on him, pushing him down, tripping up his present. Many of the other characters are also weighed down by their past and how it is shaping their present. This heaviness of the past underlies a lot of the plot and character motives. Some of the characters are able, seemingly, to move into the future despite (or because) of their past, while this weight crushes others.

The relationship between fathers and sons is a theme in all the McGill books, and it is touched on here as well. McGill is seeing his sons in new ways here. I expect that with Twill now working with McGill, as well as another revelation (no spoilers); this theme will continue to be explored more deeply in the series.

Like the previous books in the series, the plot is not always clear; I often lost the flow of the underlying whodunit part of the story. That’s a weakness to the series, but the characters and dialogue are so captivating, and Mosely’s style and language is so beautiful, it doesn’t really bother me too much.




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