Troubled Blood

Ja die Autoren von "harry potte" ist der Überzeugung Transfubische scheiße zu schreiben... Killer verkleidet sich als Frau und tötet Frauen...

I'll admit it: I love the Comoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith (aka JKR. I honestly don't understand why people write under a pseudonym only to reveal who is behind the pseudonym...). I know JKR divides society and honestly, I've always thought the woman was shit, but unfortunately you can't deny she writes damn good books. The plot of Troubled Blood was so interesting! Strike and Robin are asked to solve a mysterious missing person case - which happened almost 40 years ago. At first I thought it would bother me that it was a cold case, but holy cow, I found the whole story around Margot, Talbot and the zodiac signs so, so, SO good!!! I had no idea who the culprit could be until the end and that's always a good sign. The writing style was - as with the other parts of the series - very good. As I said, you can't deny that JKR writes damn good books. However, there is a one star deduction. For me, the book dwelled a bit too much on Robin and Strike's feelings for each other and slowly but surely the two of them get to the point where I wonder why they don't just talk openly to each other. (Lack of communication - my forever pet peeve). I'm really looking forward to the next volume in the series!

I read this book for 2 reasons, I wanted to form my own opinion and honestly, I love Strike and Robin too much to pass up on the opportunity to spent time with them. I don’t want to go too much into the Rowling/Transgender controversy but it doesn’t feel right to write a review for this book without addressing it at all. My very personal opinion is that Rowling isn’t transphobic but has views that are read as transphobic by a vulnerable community. I can totally understand that and their point of view but as someone with the privilege of a neutral viewpoint I try to see both sides. Rowling has a history of male dominated violence, we all know that, and that shapes her reading of situations, statements etc. the same way hers are considered by the transgender community. Her views are biased, her words maybe emotionally tinted and I can’t deny that her phrasing was unwise, to put it mildly. Still the years of following her, reading her books, I can’t find it in me to make her out to be the villain she’s become to so many. Words are amazing but words are also dangerous, that’s true for both sides in this conflict. I so wish that Rowling will find the right words one day, I hope she’ll educate herself further and see how her words were harmful even if she didn’t not intend to but I also hope people will stop sending her death threads, will stop canceling her, as it erases the chance to talk, for both sides to see the fears of the other, to have dialogue. We need dialogue and understanding more than we need hate, hate builds walls where dialogue builds bridges. That being said, I loved the book even though it’s not the strongest in the series. Mainly because it is, and I hate to say it, a bit too long or rather it takes forever till the pace picks up. The problem with stories that take so long to get to the important stuff is that the resolution comes too abruptly and seems rushed compared to the stuff before. For a long time I felt like Rowling lost the grip on her characters. They just seemed off and so did the dynamic between them. Looking back at it now it might have been because both characters were going through some drastic changes in their lives or maybe Rowling needed longer than usual to get in the flow of things. By the end of the book she totally redeemed herself though. The inclusion of a character who uses drag to lure woman into his car before killing them cruelly got a lot of backslash beforehand because of the controversy mentioned above. I was very interested in how that would be handled and I have to say that it was way less significant to the plot than I thought. In fact there where a total of five mentions of cross dressing and only one of them painted it as something bad. That one bit was by the killer himself, through his explanations of his actions. I didn’t get the impression that drag was shown as something bad or abnormal. To me it was clear that someone bad misused it for his own ways. Besides Creed didn’t always use drag it was one way to get his victims to come with him. The balance between good females vs bad males and bad females vs good males seemed pretty even, so the assumption that this book is transphobic is ridiculous and everyone who says so hasn’t read the book. We have so many characters: manly wanna be mafiosi, ex police sending dick pics to their colleagues, silent brooding man, erratic man, feminine man —> all doing various levels of wrong. On the other hand we have female characters of all variations too. The theme of this book seems to be assumptions and their consequences and if that’s not fitting that whole Rowling mess too I don’t know what is.