Review: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith
Friday, May 27, 2016
I love crime dramas. When I lived in Japan, we received two Australian TV channels. One was Channel 7, rerouted through Papua New Guinea, so the programs were only half familiar to us, the ads peppered with people recommending betel nut leaf to us, smiling with red-stained teeth. The other channel was ABC, my parents’ favourite, and it soon became mine, too, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon notwithstanding. With our limited range of TV, Friday nights in front of ABC became the norm. It was my first taste of crime dramas, starting with Rosemary & Thyme at 8:30. It was also the first time I had a cup of black tea, and I’ve never looked back from that, either.
I also love JK Rowling. Or, rather, her writing, because I think that it’s important to remain critical of those who create the media we consume, and Rowling has certainly let me down more often than not as of late. Like most people my age, Harry Potter was a seminal text in my youth.
I was a bit of a weird,
lonely kid. I loved school. A lot. In my yearbook from Year 2, I said my
favourite thing about school was writing because it helped me practice my
posture. I obviously didn’t get the memo about recess being the best bit. I
moved around a lot, too. Not just schools, but countries. Friends – good
friends – were few and far between, and long-lasting relationships just weren’t
on my radar. Books, however, were, and Harry Potter was at the top. I
identified strongly with Hermione (hello, I was a teacher’s pet with bushy
brown hair and I loved working on my posture. I mean, come on) and I sought a great deal of comfort in the friendship of
Harry, Ron, and Hermione. To this day, these books still have such a huge
impact on my life, and I have to credit Rowling with helping make me the person
I am today.
That said, it did give me
high hopes when she started writing crime novels. I had been let down by The Casual Vacancy, Rowling’s first
foray into “adult” fiction, but I put that down to the age I was when I first
read it, and perhaps my expectations being too closely aligned with Harry
Potter. But what I knew of Rowling was that she was a brilliant storyteller.
Obviously, managing to weave the magical world she did. It isn’t something that
comes easily, but with her past acclaims, I hoped she would be as talented when
she forayed into crime fiction.
I read The Cuckoo’s Calling the week it was revealed that JK Rowling was,
in fact, the elusive Robert Galbraith. Despite my love of watching crime
dramas, I hadn’t read much of the genre, bar the odd Agatha Christie novel here
and there. Like all good crime novels, it was compelling enough to hold my
attention throughout its entirety. As such, and considering the hype around The Silkworm, I was expecting great
things from the follow up to the Cormoran Strike novels.
True to Rowling’s style, the
plot of this novel is immersive. It’s multi-faceted, and to put it frankly, big. There are plenty of twists
throughout to keep the reader guessing, and whilst I think that that the
story’s inventiveness is one of its biggest strengths, I also think that it
leads to The Silkworm’s biggest
downfall.
Necessary to sustain this
massive plot is a huge cast of characters, and whilst Rowling has done her best
to flesh them out and give them interesting details, unfortunately, they all
seem to feel like stock characters – even the main characters, like Strike
himself and his assistant Robin feel rather two dimensional. The number of characters
that we are introduced to serves to feel even more overwhelming when most of
them simply turn out to be bit parts, though their names are brought up in
conversations throughout the text. In an attempt to make everyone a suspect,
Rowling has introduced too many characters for the reader to cast adequately
supported suspicion.
Aside from the secondary
characters, Rowling has done little to make her two leads particularly
memorable. Strike is what we have come to expect from a leading detective –
gruff, suffering turmoil in his personal life, and constantly so bloody
miserable that it just makes you want to lean right into the page and slap him.
Not only is he annoying, but by the end of The
Silkworm, I was starting to find Strike downright boring, which is far from
what you want out of the lead of a supposedly compelling crime series.
Strike’s assistant, Robin,
unfortunately doesn’t fare much better than her boss. Mostly, it seems that the
author’s attempts to flesh out the leading lady have simply led to the repeated
explanation of Robin’s relationship with various men in her life. You would
hope that in the time of Lisbeth Salander and Lucy Liu’s portrayal of Joan
Watson in Elementary that a female
partner would be defined by something more than just the men in her life, but
alas, we’ve been let down here once more.
The novel has other
shortcomings – at times, the prose turns flowery and overly descriptive,
completely at odds with Strike’s otherwise grim perspective. Descriptions of
snow settling softly on London’s midnight streets seem jarring and out of
place. There are too many sub-plots, fleeting romantic relationships, and far
too much reliance on the long cultivated collection of stock characters in the
crime genre. But, despite all that, I have to say that The Silkworm was still an entertaining read.
Like all great crime novels,
there are a number of leaps and bounds in the plot’s logic. The story is
outlandish, the conclusion shocking, leaving you guessing up until the killer
is finally revealed. Within the many-layered
plot, Rowling’s storytelling abilities truly got to shine, and I think that is
certainly the saving grace of this novel. Regardless of its downfalls, The Silkworm is still a fun, enjoyable
read, though I’m not certain it will stand the test of time alongside other
contemporary crime novels.
So, whilst it certainly
wasn’t my favourite crime novel, there’s little doubt that when its TV
adaptation airs on BBC1, you’ll find me curled up in front of it on the couch,
cup of tea in one hand and biscuit in the other.
FINAL RATING: 3/5
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