Synopsis
Cormoran Strike is back, with his assistant Robin Ellacott, in a mystery based around soldiers returning from war.
When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg.
Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible – and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality.
With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them…
Career of Evil is the third in the series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott. A mystery and also a story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives.
Review
This is by far my favorite book in the series so far. I was practically on the edge of my seat right up to those last chapters. The author had me second-guessing everything with a ton of unpredictable twists and details—whodunnit was anyone’s guess.
I think the story though is too long and could have been shortened. As with other Cormoran Strike books, this took me more than a week to finish. It was so slow-paced, and while the guessing game was fun, there were a lot of unnecessary twists that could have been edited out from the story.
Character-wise, Cormoran lacks it in this department. I didn’t like the gender bias he had going on, especially when it came to Robin. She’s a good investigator and could be a lot better if Cormoran takes her seriously. He needs to give her some credit.
I also do not like the romantic vibes between the main characters. It felt forced, a bit off, and honestly kind of unnecessary in my opinion.
Vocab Builder
- Temporized – avoid making a decision or committing oneself in order to gain time
- Prurient – having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters
- Cachet – the state of being respected or admired
- Eschewed – deliberately avoid using
- Inchoate – just begun and so not fully formed or developed
- Forsworn – agree to give up or do without
- Encomiums – a speech or writing that praises someone or something highly
- Scupper – a hole in a ship’s side to carry water overboard from the deck
- Occlude – stop, close, up, or obstruct
- Histrionics – overly theatrical or melodramatic in character or style
- Fug – a warm stuffy or smoky atmosphere in a room
- Profligacy – recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources
- Derisive – expressing contempt or ridicule
- Gnomic – expressed in or of the nature of short, pithy maxims or aphorisms
- Bunting – Old word seed-eating songbird related to the finches
- Elide – omit when speaking
- Propitiatory – win or regain the favor of by doing something that pleases them
- Insalubrious – unhealthy
- Glibness – fluent and voluble but insincere and shallow
- Acrotomophilia – a paraphilia in which an individual expresses strong sexual interest in amputees.
- Concertinaed – small musical instrument
- Churlish – rude in a mean-spirited and surly way
- Spires – tapering conical or pyramidal structure on the top of a building, typically a church tower
- Garrulous – excessively talkative esp. on trivial matters
- Viridian – a bluish-green pigment consisting of hydrated chromium hydroxide
- Recrudescence – break out again, recur
- Comeuppance – a punishment or fate that someone deserves
- Disgorged – cause to pour out
- Avuncular – of or relating to an uncle
- Irresolute – showing or feeling hesitancy, uncertain
- Importuning – ask someone pressingly and persistently for or to do something
- Diffident – modest or shy because of a lack of self-confidence
- Chicanery – the use of trickery to achieve a political, financial, or legal purpose
- Abattoir – slaughterhouse
- Budgerigar – small gregarious Australia parakeet that in the wild is green with a yellow head
- Meerkats – small southern African mongoose
- Estuary – the tidal mouth of a large river, where the tide meets the stream
- Bowdlerized – remove material that is considered improper or offensive, esp. with the result that is becomes weaker or less effective
- Dross – something regarded as worthless, rubbish
- Morass – an area of muddy or boggy ground
- Bucolic – of or relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life
- Genteel – polite, refined, or respectable, often in an affected or ostentatious way
- Miasma – highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor
- Stupendous – extremely impressive
- Reverie – state of being pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts; a daydream
- Frowzy – scruffy and neglected in appearance
- Pierrot – a stock male character in French pantomime with a sad white-painted face
- Inimitable – so good or unusual as to be impossible to copy
- Moroseness – sullen and ill-tempered
- Vociferously – vehement or clamorous
- Peripatetic – traveling from place to place, working or based in various places
- Extraneous – irrelevant or unrelated to the subject being dealt with
- Obsequious – obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree
- Buffoons – a ridiculous but amusing person, a clown
- Mawkish – sentimental in a feeble or sickly way
- Vertiginous – extremely high or steep.
- Gaff – a stick with a hook or barbed spear, for landing large fish.
- Tumescence – the quality of being swollen, or a swollen part of the body, especially caused by sexual excitement
- Apotheosis – the highest point in the development of something; a culmination or climax
- Putative – commonly accepted or supposed
- Loquacious – tending to talk a great deal; talkative.
- Grotty – unpleasant and of poor quality
- Heretic – a person believing in or practising religious heresy.
- Insouciance – casual lack of concern; indifference.
- Bolshy – deliberately combative or uncooperative.
- Forbearance – patient self-control; restraint and tolerance
- Tenner – a 10-pound note
- Onanistic – of, relating to, or involving masturbation
- Tiddly – slightly drunk
- Duplicitous – deceitful
- Abnegated – renounce or reject (something desired or valuable)
- Gamine – a girl or young woman who is thin, has short hair, and is attractively like a boy in appearance
- Carrion – the decaying flesh of dead animals
- Laconically – using or involving the use of a minimum of words
- Skint – (of a person) having little or no money available
- Truculent – eager or quick to argue or fight; aggressively defiant
