The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith
The Running Grave is the seventh Strike novel by Robert Galbraith, published in September 2023. Remarkably, as I’m obsessed with the Strike novels and always count down the days to publication, I had no idea this one was coming out. So about 10 days had elapsed from publication before I bought it! It is 945 pages of pure quality and I got it for half price in Waterstones (£12.50, rather than the published price of £25).
In The Running Grave, a father gets in touch with Strike and Robin because he is concerned about his son, who has been living with a ‘church’ for several years. The father, Sir Colin Edensor, is concerned the church is a cult. He is especially upset that his son didn’t make contact when his own mother died. Sir Colin had been in touch with an ex-church member, who had been working on a book about his experiences. But the ex-church member had died in tragic circumstances.
Nobody seems willing to talk about what really goes on in the church. So Robin volunteers to go undercover as a church member to find out what she can. When she has gone undercover in the past, it has just been for a day job. This job will be on a totally different level – immersed in a potentially dangerous environment 24 hours a day for weeks on end. Strike is uncertain whether she should go, but Robin is determined. She prepares herself a new identity and back story, which should appeal to the church principals, and gets on a minibus to Norfolk.
Meanwhile, Strike and the rest of the team continue to track down cheating spouses, all while doing what they can to ensure Robin stays safe. And Strike has a couple of difficult personal matters to juggle alongside his work.
I’ll be honest, the first 100 pages or so of this book didn’t feel quite as a good as the previous two or three books. But then I really got sucked in. I felt very scared for Robin, as life with the church took one dangerous turn after another.
The Running Grave is another brilliant read from Robert Galbraith. If you love the series, it is a must-read. If you’ve never read a Strike book before, and you enjoy detective novels and thrillers, you should definitely give them a go. While you could read this as a stand-alone novel, it would be better to start from the beginning to really understand Strike and Robin as people and business partners. And don’t be put off by the incredibly long books. They really are the definition of page turners.
Just in case you didn’t know, Robert Galbraith is actually J K Rowling. She had the first Strike book published without anyone realising her true identity.
