Strike - a review

 I think, by now, the cat is so far out of the bag that it can hardly be called a spoiler anymore. Joanne K. Rowling is also Robert Galbraith.

Which is something I always rather liked. I noticed when her first post-Harry Potter book (The casual vacancy) came out that reviewers couldn’t stop linking this new book to the boy-wizard series. And, to be honest, that would be a hard thing to top indeed.

However, when it was revealed that she was also a he naturally this caused quite a happy possibility for the promotional department. Again to be honest, would the Strike books have sold as well if it wasn’t this famous author behind it.

I too only read the first book (Cuckoo’s calling) after the reveal.

Now I don’t believe that Rowling wilfully let the truth behind the pseudonym slip just to sell more books. She’s got more than enough money. I assume that by now she’s living the life we all want: to do a job you love without the financial pressure of mortgages and whatnot.
Creating this pseudonym, to me, really was what it was: to create a new series of books to stand on their own merit regardless of the author.

Rowling loves making series.

I don’t really like the books.
Having said that I don’t always enjoy the Strike novels. Writing the reasons down in this very article caused me to create an entirely separate article which you can find here . The bottom-line is this: A detective novel automatically comes with suspects that need to be questions. And I don’t really like the style that the Strike-novels use. 

That and the moaning about the leg and the poisonous ex-girlfriend.

But (after reading the first two books) something wonderful happened in the TV-adaptation. Whereas in a book each chapter visiting and questioning another suspect becomes dull rather quickly, in a TV-show it is nothing more than one scene after the other. 

You don’t need to start the chapter with the hero waking up and getting a bus to the next suspect. You can immediately cut to it.
 

This because TV (and movies) is such a timed medium that each and every bit of filling has to be left out the door. You’ve only got two/three hours to tell the story.

The same goes for  the ex-girlfriend or the leg trouble. Yes they are important to the character. But for time reasons they can quickly be inserted in fast flashbacks or the occasional grunt or two.
And then there’s another thing I like about the TV-show from the get go: the series fixes a lot of the mistakes the books make.

For instance, in Silkworm there’s a whole car crash-sequences that has no real goal except that it layered the Robin character a bit. Now, inventing a car crash to make a character more interesting is –to me- like making the sky split open and making God appear. There must be a simpler way of doing this.

The TV-show heard my prayers and instead of a car crash it opts from some off-road problem solving. Far more believable and the character development stays intact.
So I guess I can say that, to me, the TV show is far better than the books it is based on. 

With the small exception that intense sequences like fighting or danger are of course less immersive if you see it happen to other people instead of reading the thoughts and prayers.

The TV show
One of the biggest plusses of the TV-show is the way it depicts the words on the screen. For me this involved some corrections of my ‘reading mind’s-eye’. For instance Strike’s office, to me, always looked like a grubby Trainspotting-toilet kind of place. Which is silly of course since, well, who would be willing to hire a detective living in shambles.

The same goes for Strike and Robin. The Strike that I read in the books kept on appearing like an elderly man (Brian Cox maybe). So this love between Strike and Robin (maybe sexual, maybe brother and sister) felt off to me. But now on screen I can believe the tension (and the envy of Robin’s fiancé).
 
I think Tom Burke is well cast as Cormoran Strike. He is as big and impressive as the character demands but also has a quirky sense of humour and an intelligence to top it all off. When he’s thinking you know he’s already three steps ahead in his mind. And in plain conversation his dark eyes hardly ever show the wheels spinning behind them.
 
The same goes for Holliday Grainger as Robin (who has a delicious telephone scene in Cuckoo). The problem with her character, though, is the same as in the books – she hasn’t had her moment to shine yet with a case of her own. This’ll probably happen soon enough. The books are building up to it anyway.

I haven’t read the third book yet.

Then, as I said before the show strips the novels down to the basics. Whole paragraphs are reduced to an equally impressive ‘look’ or ‘cough’. That’s the strength of images. If you do it right you (literally) don’t have to spell it out for the audience.

This gives the show it’s speed. And when a detective show is on a roll those silence moments in time when Strike is thinking things through are the moments the audience is invited to do the same.
 
Visually
Visually Strike manages to appeal to the viewer by showing the uptown and downtown world of London. Silkworm, for instance, has a fabulous architectonical house that, just by looking at the outside, fits in the story marvellously. The inside then is a set decorator’s dream of an odd painting here and there and the tone of light just right.
This very same episode also includes a nice reflection-shot that showcases the skill behind the camera.

So in short: Strike is a great work of television that improves on the books.
Now; I’ve read the first book (got the killer wrong), the second book (pinpointed the killer), but haven’t got ‘round to reading the third one. So I’ll see it next year's time. Time to go sleuthing.