Alias Robert Galbraith

Under a pseudonym, J.K. Rowling puts her own distinctive spin on the private eye genre in her Cormoran Strike novels.

- Nancy Bilyeau

Beginning in 2013, an unusual-looking man appeared on the streets of London: over six feet tall, a bit overweight, dark-haired, with the face of a boxer. He didn’t move quickly; in fact, sometimes he limped. The reason: He had half his right leg blown off while serving in Afghanistan. His expression would rarely be warm and welcoming. At best he’d be wary and at his intimidating worst, surly. Meet Cormoran Strike, the 34-year-old private detective created by author Robert Galbraith.

In tributes to detective fiction, after nods to such contemporary private eyes as Easy Rawlins in Walter Mosley’s series, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in Robert Crais’ series, and Kinsey Millhone in Sue Grafton’s series, the prose turns rapturous when listing the legends of the past: Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlow, Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, and Lew Archer. The crime fiction gaining traction in today’s publishing world is dominated not by private eye stories but by domestic thrillers and books that subvert the genre like The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton.

How then to respond to the four-book private detective series of Robert Galbraith? This is a classic contribution to the genre: a private eye with a painful past who operates out of a shabby office in an unfashionable part of a big city. Cormoran Strike takes on missing person, blackmail, and suspicious death investigations, often putting himself in personal peril as he delves into the darkest sides of human nature. He hits the bottle, though not to excess. He has an eye for a voluptuous female figure.