Hopefully many of you will have read the three previous Strike novels and also will have had the chance earlier this year to watch the excellent BBC Drama adaptations of each of the books starring Tom Burke and Holly Granger.
Lethal White starts very shortly after the ending of the last book at Robin and her fiancé Matt’s wedding. Robin is still in shock after her vicious attack and also is unsure about her emotions and feelings towards both Matt and Strike. She learns on her big day that Matt has been accessing her phone and deleting Strike’s messages requesting that she comes back and works for him. With Strike also making an appearance on her wedding day her and Matt have an almighty row and you question straight away if the marriage will last.
Suddenly after an introduction to the story on Robin and Matt’s wedding day we are thrown forward one year later and business for Strike has been doing reasonably well but neither him or Robin have spoken to each other about events on her wedding day. Out of the office, Strike gets a call from his latest temporary secretary to urgently come back as someone is demanding too see him.
He returns to find a young man called Billy, clearly in distress and suffering from a severe mental illness and looking homeless claiming he has seen a young girl strangled. Before getting the full story from Billy, Billy runs as the secretary calls the police. The story plays on Strike’s mind and he tentatively investigate’s what Billy has told him, albeit with little to go on and he is led to a an anti London Olympics meeting in East London run by Billy’s older brother, Jimmy.
The Billy story appears a dead end until Strike is approached by a senior government minister to investigate a potential black mail against him deep in the heart of the House of Commons. With Robin inserted under cover as the ministers newest intern, Strike and Robin investigate and Billy’s story appears to have connections with the ministers blackmail.
Murder then occurs and the case deepens as Strike, Robin and there expanding team try to get to the bottom of their latest case.
Despite being in excess of 600 pages, this is a very fast paced thriller intwined with the developments of the personal lives of both Strike and Robin. The plot left me very rarely wanting to put the book down as it had me captivated from the moment I picked it up. This for me is the best Galbraith novel to date and probably one of the best novels I have read this year so I have to give this a whopping ten out of ten. The relationship between Strike and Robin bubbles under the surface and develops again nicely in the book and you do wonder will they or won’t they get together?
Despite its size and length don’t be put off of reading Lethal White on your winter Caribbean Cruise, but maybe to help keep the excess luggage down, download it on to your kindle. You will not want to put it down so it will be a read at any time, night or day kind of book, but it will probably help to have read the other Galbraith books first to help you understand some of the storyline and references in the book.
More information on the Comoron Strike novels by Robert Galbraith can be found at https://robert-galbraith.com/
I hope yet again you have enjoyed the review, feel free to leave a comment or to start following all of my book reviews.
Happy Reading 😊
Canberralover
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