Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel, 4) Hardcover – September 18, 2018

There’s a lot to be said for success. Cormoran Strike is happy that the bit of fame he’s garnered from previous cases is good for business. But, on the other hand, the fame is annoying because he can’t go incognito anymore – a handicap for a private detective.On the other hand, a little bit of fame might not hurt when dealing with the privileged and those who think they’re above the law. And the case of “Lethal White” will involve the elite. Which also makes it more dangerous.And speaking of dangerous, Cormoran’s relationship with Robin is unsteady. She’s been married a year now, and is now Cormoran’s partner, but it’s getting harder instead of easier between them.I must admit I am not liking where that relationship may be heading. I worked for many years in an industry which didn’t have many women. Friendly interactions with male colleagues were essential for smooth operations. And you had to be friendly and trust each other without it going any further. So I dislike stories where it seems inevitable that two people working together have to “get” together. That usually isn’t how real life works.A bit of trivia. Cormoran’s London flat is at #24 Denmark Street, the building shared with a music store. In real life, Denmark Street was called Tin Pan Alley, as it had the headquarters of many music publishers.

The long-awaited fourth installment of the Strike series has arrived at last! My greedy hands snatched it up and devoured the near-700 pages in a single weekend. Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott are off on another adventure - this one larger and grander than any of their previous tales.This one took about 250 pages to get going. My friends reading along with me had similar feedback. It's a tediously slow and complicated start and just about the opposite of a page turner. Towards page 300 things really get going and the story veers into movement. I really enjoyed it after that. Have some patience for this one if you feel the same. In the end, it was worth the investment and really paid off. In fact, it may be about my favorite book of the series. And even though the first third was pretty meh, I never mind just being in the company of these characters. And the plot itself is pretty complicated, so I suppose the intense set up was more than necessary.On a negative note, I'm not a fan of the Matthew/Robin side story that's been going on for, at this point, about 1500 pages and four entire novels (someone should have stopped that madness!!). I wish I understood the ultimate aim here or why we've had to sit through the longest, most boring breakup in novel history (or which feels like a break up anyway, and has since book one). I get it to an extent, what with Robin's history, but my patience has worn thin. Unfortunately I can't comment further without giving spoilers. But needless to say I was both satisfied and frustrated with some of the outcomes there.There were a few questions I had after I read it. Perhaps some plot holes, things that didn't quite add up to me. I tend to overthink stories and I'm guilty at trying to connect everything. When I was done, I was not satisfied with Billy's role in the story despite the neatly tied up closure we get. Not to be nit picky, but it's a huge part of the story. Discussion with my friends didn't help anything (they all agreed it was loosey goosey) but overall it didn't detract from the overall story. No spoilers of course, so you have to decide for yourself.On a positive note, this was one of the more exciting books in the series. Tons of undercover work, road trips, treks through the woods, lots of interviews and clues and research, all set against the backdrop of the 2012 London Olympics, which was mildly interesting but served well as a juxtaposition for social commentary. Most importantly, I felt like both Strike and Robin really glowed in this one. I felt like I got to know them both even better than before, with their character development really off the charts. The chemistry between these characters is brilliant, and they are at their best when they are looking out for one another. We meet some new friends, and revisit some old ones, and all is good fun. The mystery itself was complicated and challenging, but felt very real. You have tons and tons of twists and turns and surprises waiting for you in this one. Highly recommended! And can't wait for this one to make it to the series. I just love Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger.

Her books are so well written, they don't seem like fiction at all. I want to book a flight from Florida to England, meet Cormoran Strike then tell him to marry Robin and have lots of babies.?

Honestly, the main mystery of this Cormoran Strike book did not start off as super interesting. But the author is such an amazing storyteller and brings such life to the characters that I found myself immersed in the book. Towards the end of Part 2, the book really picked up and the ending was not one I was expecting. Reading a Cormoran Strike novel almost ruins you from being able to appreciate another author's work - reading another author right after finishing one of these books feels almost empty. The storytelling isn't as nicely done.I am obsessed with these novels.

I really enjoyed all the Strike novels and looked forward to this one .Honestly , what a disappointment , i was bored senseless even after the prologue .Over long , tedious , short of decent punchy story , thoroughly snobbish and dislikable characters .one of the worst books i have attempted to read in a very long time ..needless to say ...Didn't finish it , couldn't care less what happened , no wonder it took her a long time to write , she obviously had little or no plan how to progress ....God help us if she has 10 more books of this quality lined upRubbish !...And thats from an ardent fan of the previous books ,

Lethal White is the fourth novel in Robert Galbraith's Cormoran Strike series and has a complicated plot involving blackmail, murder, hypocritical far-left activists, an obnoxious hard-right Tory minister, the Conversative/LibDem coalition and an appalling family of utterly terrible posh people who have nicknames like Fizz and Pong and wear mustard-coloured trousers. And that's just the mystery element: woven into all this, we've also got the ever-present problem of the relationship between Strike and Robin, who at the end of the previous book, went through with her wedding to her childhood sweetheart Matthew, readers worldwide screaming 'Nooooo!' as she walked down the aisle.It's perhaps not surprising, then, that Lethal White runs to 650 pages - considerably longer than the average detective thriller. Whether Robert Galbraith would have escaped the editor's pencil to quite this extent if he wasn't the alter ego of JK Rowling, I'm not entirely sure - but still found myself perfectly happy with the novel's length. There are so many elements to this mystery, brought together with such remarkable skill, that every page was a pleasure. The mystery plot alone is a remarkable achievement, absolutely packed with clues that build up to a satisfyingly neat conclusion I'd defy even the most seasoned crime fan to predict fully. Added to that, Robin and Strike are such utterly likeable characters, despite their many flaws, that it's a joy to spend so much time with them.As in the previous books in the series, the supporting characters in Lethal White are slightly larger than life: this isn't gritty realism, but it's not supposed to be. I've said of the other Strike books that they're much more akin to Golden Age detective fiction than today's police procedural thrillers, and this is evident in Lethal White too. That said, Galbraith does take the step of introducing an element that is often conspicuously ignored in other detective novels: Strike, having solved three high-profile murder cases, is now a minor celebrity, and with fame comes unwanted attention that plays havoc with his surveillance work. That fame also means he can attract a more prestigious clientele - in this case Jasper Chiswell, the Culture Secretary about to preside over the London 2012 Olympics - but at the same time means he becomes a target for fixated obsessives like poor, delusional schizophrenic Billy.This book also has something of a state-of-the-nation feel. AntiSemitic, gaslighting Marxist activist Jimmy and his patronising, middle-class mockney girlfriend Flick will certainly seem very familiar to anyone who follows left-wing politics on social media. The hideous Chiswells, an over-privileged uber-Tory dynasty, also ring true ... as do the observations on London's rental market, in which working adults are crammed two to a room in properties with no communal living space.As for Robin and Strike - well, we know Robin married Matthew at the end of Career Of Evil, and I found the progress of Robin's marriage very convincing (Strike's own relationship situation is rather less so, although the return of his unstable, abusive former partner Charlotte certainly adds interest). To say any more would be a plot spoiler, but there's a certainly plenty of mileage left in the will-they-won't-they storyline that runs through the series.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first 3 Cormoran Strike books and was eagerly awaiting this 4th one. I was very disappointed though, because it just didn't live up to the earlier books. It was about twice as long, with less than half the action and humorous content and was quite frankly boring. Although I did manage to plough all the way through it, by the end I was left wondering why I'd actually bothered.

NB! SPOILER ALERT! To my mind, a great danger faced by any super-successful author is that s/he begins to rest on his/her laurels, indulges him/herself, and fails to police his/her writing adequately... and publishers become reluctant to suggest changes or offer honest criticism because the author has become a SUCCESS, seemingly above mortal criticism. OK. no more awkward gender-neutral writing. We all know this is by Ms Rowling (AKA Roger Galbraith), who wrote a a few very entertaining novels in the Cormoran Strike series (totally recommendable are the first and the third), and has now turned out 'Lethal White'.What an alluring title! I couldn't wait to read it, and ploughed through it with great dedication and hope, constantly expecting THINGS TO START HAPPENING every time I turned a page. It took a long time, and when they finally did, they were uninspiring, formulaic, and MUCH too wordy. Oh dear. So much of the book could have been thrown away without damaging the storyline: that long, self-indulgent lingering over previously hashed-over relationship issues between the two protagonists; the increasingly cardboard cut-out characterisation of MPs, wastrels, washed-up activists, wall-eyed folk with axes to grind; the genuinely unsurprising dénouement/unmasking of the 'real villain' ... all of it, from start to finish, was disappointing and predictable. And what's more frustrating is the insight that it COULD have been so much better, for we all know what this author CAN produce when she sets her mind to it.A good, rigorous editor; brutal use of the 'strike out' key or blue pen; time and self-criticism on the part of the author would have (I trust) produced something much shorter but much more readable. This wasn't it. The magic ended with the title. I'm so disappointed. :-(

This book was so utterly, utterly boring that as a super-fast reader, it took me a month to finish. I was so bored that I didn't want to touch my kindle, because I would feel guilty if I read something else. Characters are not interesting. I couldn't care less about what happened to them. None of them are likeable, not even Strike and Robin with their teenage love drama. Everything takes pages and pages to actually happen, and you can't really be bothered eventually. Robin and Matthew make a good sub-plot line, and the actual story could have been used as a side story, too, but as the main event, it is ridiculously irrelevant and boring. I hated how the "what is it?/ oh we can't tell you" dialogue happen so many times with so many different characters. And when you finally find out what it is, it can't pass the "so what?" test. Such a disappointment.