There are a few things I don't like in detective mysteries, and Career of Evil had two of them: serial killers, and detectives-as-victims. The first I don't like because I just find serial killers really creepy, the the second because I feel making it about the detective is both unrealistic and pushes detecting out of the way to make room for personal peril.

If I weren't already a fan of the series, I would have stopped by the end of the first chapter.

The resulting book isn't as bad as I feared. Rowling only has a little of the serial-killer-violence-porn that makes so many of these stories hard to read and the peril stays in the suspenseful area without tipping over into creepy absurdity.

Still, I found this disappointing as a detective novel. While The Cuckoo's Calling took an enoyably plodding procedural approach, and The Silkworm was a brilliant puzzle-box mystery, Career of Evil is a muddle. As it progressed, I began to lose track of which suspect was which, and the solution of the case was humdrum.

The book worked better as a further exploration of the Cormoron/Robin dynamic. The characters are still interesting and the stress put on the relationship by the peril and by Robin's marriage preparations takes us deeper into their dynamics. But I don't read a detective novel just for the characters, and that's all I got this time.

This book also worries me because it suggests that, as with the Potter books, JK Rowling can't let anything be just fun. This book is much darker than the last, with rape and pedophilia and psycho-sexual serial killing, and I'm afraid that Rowling is just going to make this series darker and darker.

Unfortunately, it appears Rowling is getting a lot of positive feedback on this darker, murkier approach, so I guess there's no reason for her not to keep going in this direction.