The Hallmarked Man: does it get better?

[friedaklein]

A third of the way through, and gosh it's tedious. I have enjoyed all the others in the Strike series, but this one really needs editing plus the Strike-Robin romantic dithering is getting old.
Should I persevere?

Im really hoping JKR doesn't drag the will they/won't they thing and then have one of them die/not get together.

I really didnt enjoy that one or one with the chat room conversations.

They're far too long and have too many characters these days. I can't remember the cliffhanger that PPs are referring to!

Troubled Blood is my favourite by far, and then Running Grave.

Im really hoping JKR doesn't drag the will they/won't they thing and then have one of them die/not get together.

I really didnt enjoy that one or one with the chat room conversations.

They're far too long and have too many characters these days. I can't remember the cliffhanger that PPs are referring to!

Troubled Blood is my favourite by far, and then Running Grave.

I heard there’s a storyline about dog fighting in it - his graphic is that please? I’d started reading but stopped as I didn’t think I could deal with that. Thanks

Definitely keep going.

What helped me as I really wanted to enjoy it was I made notes on my phone about particular characters.

I also couldn’t work out the structure of the Legard/Campbell family tree so I typed into Chat GPT and asked it to explain it to me!

It was better than IBH but still too convoluted. One potential murder victim storyline should have been cut as the book was ridiculously complicated. However, it has some brilliant parts and had major relationship development moments. Strike defeating the awful Kim was fab.

I did reread it again recently and enjoyed it more the second time- I could keep track of the far too many subplot and characters a bit better.

No, it doesn’t, so if you’re not enjoying it move on to something else because life’s too short to finish books that are a bit shit.

She won’t top The Cuckoo’s Calling and Troubled Blood.

I just don’t understand why her plots are always so convoluted and has all these characters? People here have speculated again and again that her editors are too scared of her to tell her to trim the fat, which felt a bit of an obvious observation, but having read all of her books I’m concluding the same. The cases are also usually as boring as hell.

Well, I finished it and hated it.
By the end, I did not care who the hallmarked man was, or who killed him.
To add insult to injury, the book was dedicated to her editor!

I tend to agree. It was the same sort of setup as Career of Evil but this time with too many possible victims instead of villains who by amazing coincidence could all have fitted the same criteria.

There were good bits.

Tried listening to it three times and my brain kept drifting off. Someone please get her an editor! All the unnecessary characters and side roads spoil the narrative drive, and it's especially frustrating when you're invested in the whole series and feel you may have missed a vital piece buried under all the faff.

I think I missed Strike defeating Kim!

I can't even remember who Kim is!

Just saw you said book dedicated to editor? Sack them.

I listen to it on Audible overnight on my Snuzband, just start on any random chapter and if I wake up in the night I listen a bit and drop off again.

I enjoy it more the more I listen.

And I'm putting it out there that Glenister's reading of the Rokeby chapter is one of my favourite audio chapters of all time.

Not sure if anyone agrees, but I actually think Cuckoo Calling and The Silkworm were the best. Maybe she was actually edited then. I also quite liked the Ink Black Heart even with the pages of chat room dialogue.

I didn't really have a clue who was who. Just kept reading for the Robyn/Strike storyline.

Troubled Blood & The Running Grave were superb and I don't really dislike any of the others but THM is at the bottom of the list if I were to rank them top to bottom.

It’s funny that it was the MN excitement over THM that got me into reading Strike. Luckily I went back and read the preceding volumes first - I might not have retained any interest at all if I’d started with this.

Silkworm was great. I found Cuckoo Calling underwhelming - the actual whodunnit, anyway.

Well, I think those of us already hooked on the series probably skim-read the tedious bits to see what Strike and Robin did next.

I'm an editor; I can skim-read for Britain when I have to.

I did enjoy it but agree with you that it needed a better edit, there were passages I skipped over.

I thought Silkworm was the worst of all of them and almost didn’t continue as a result.