Ink Black Heart

I've listened to all of the Cormoran Strike books, and this is by far the least successful. It's waaaay too long for one thing, partly because of the endless amount of inane online gaming and chat room babble. Galbraith accurately captures the crudeness and low intellect of the online conversations, but precisely because the level of those conversations is so crude and frankly stupid, and there are so many of them, it gives the book an overall tiresome and seedy feel...a lot like actually being on a social media or gaming site. ;-)

The overall premise is interesting. The creator of an online cartoon, The Ink Black Heart, which others take and develop into an online game and still others want to make into a movie, is killed. Pretty much all of the players in the game are suspects, and Strike and Robin slog through the list, trying to identify the killer. Much of their investigation involves being online as players in the game themselves, and it just gets tedious. After a while, I felt enormous relief every time they went offline to rejoin real life.

New adventure with Robin and Cormoran! I enjoy this series - I like the switch between protagonists - Robin and Strike. I'm actually not really into the whole 'will they- won't they' thing - I just enjoy how awesome Robin has grown and how their business is FINALLY thriving. I do wish Strike would take care of himself though. The mystery takes a while to get in. I think if you don't know much about the internet, you may have a hard time following along some of the story. A woman comes and meets Robin, the firm is swamped and Robin is unable to help. Later, the woman dies and the firm gets hired, to find out the same thing the woman came in and more. There's a lot of talk about internet, chat-style speaking, online vernacular, etc. CW: abuse, pedophilia, murder. I found it all very interesting. The book is HUGE (I first had a hard cover, but it was too unwieldy - then I got an e-book). Although, I will say, the end (ironically because it's such a long book), felt rushed. I like the character development, the way they solve things and how the agency works.