I’ll confess to being rather underwhelmed with the first outing for Cormorants strike and this improved for the second. by the third book He is getting to be a well developed character sat in a well developed plot. I can safely say that this is the first of these novels I have truly enjoyed.
Here, our private detective comes up against the police in a live murder enquiry and finds himself en-route to Barrow-in-Furness. Having lived and worked there, it was interesting to read how it had been portrayed and it was quite honest. The only detractor was the attempt to do the ‘accents’ in written text. This author failed to capture ‘Barrovian’, which is quite unique and can only properly be emulated by those who grew up in that God forsaken culdesac. Neither can the author do Scottish accents which is kind of ironic…. for that you need the talents of a born writer e.g. Chris Brookmyre.
However I was reading the Barrow section of this novel whilst sat in a hotel in the same town and not 200yds from the last resort cafe (mentioned), where I had lunch on far too many occasions ! They do great coffee and cakes in there.
Robin (cormoran’s sidekick) has a character arc which takes her on a real journey and finally lets us see that she’s mightier than she appears. Her ‘wedding story’ defines her, and finally asserts her position in this series.
I’m now looking forward to others 🙂
