Beer, Brexit & Big Ben

J.K. ROWLING — ROBERT GALBRAITH — TROUBLED BLOOD — 2020

This is the fifth volume of the Strike Novels centered on Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott confronted to several cases, two of them finding some closure with the localization and discovery of the bodies of two women assassinated, murdered would be an understatement, some forty years before. The action is situated in Cameron’s England with the Scottish referendum for independence in the UK background, but also with the rising desire for independence, or at least a lot more devolution, among communities like the Cornish Celts or the Scottish Nationalists. Wales is not very much present and Northern Ireland or Ireland, in general, is not at all. It is heavily centered onto England, London for the two murders, but a lot on northern England, Yorkshire particularly, for Robin Ellacott, and Cornwall for Cormoran Strike. Surprising enough other Europeans are rather very limited in this book, and in London. Apart from a few Italians who are the local Mafiosi gangsters, there are very few Europeans. The most prominent foreign family in the novel is the Bayliss family from the Indian subcontinent but in no way qualified religiously. The main case is centered on Saint John’s medical practice. Three doctors altogether. Dr. Dinesh Gupta from India, Dr. Joseph Brenner from Germany and a survivor of the Bergen Belsen…