Finished last night. Finally.
My first thought was how the hell is she getting away with this? with regard to the BoJo characterisation. I wonder how all the contemporaneous HIGNFY participants will feel about it?
It’s only the second Strike book I’ve read (downloaded the kindle sample then immediately ordered the print version; while waiting for that to arrive I turned to TRG just to pass the time - and then had to finish that first) and although it was deeply immersive I missed the propulsive fascination of TRG.
I must say I’m impressed with the intense and relentless focus on just how shit women’s lives are; the intergenerational trauma we inflict - either through neglect or a desperate need to lock up our daughters in semi-detached security so Nothing Bad Happens; and the unrelenting search for one good man when the clear evidence is that every single one carries the potential to be revealed as the worst ever. It’s a compelling thesis.
But it’s only out of respect for JKR that I didn’t throw the book out of the window at the first introduction of a character using the ‘Lawyer Ilse’ phrasing. It’s pretty unforgivable. (What was the recent outstanding Edinburgh set TV police procedural, for which the original novels were set in Scandinavia - not Annika - forgotten his name? I tried to read the first novel but it began with the hero looking at his reflection in the mirror so I had to shut the whole thing down.)
Oddly enough, right at the start of THM I instinctively felt that Decima and Rupert’s families were way too closely intertwined - the resolution to that was just hovering on the edges of my mind. Although Strike’s suggestion that the child would never need to know struck me as incredibly stupid - given his own recent brush with DNA tests.
I’ve watched all the existing TV adaptations - unsure now whether to start the novels from the beginning, or to race over to the new Slow Horses volume that’s waiting for me.