Elderly Uncle Ted, who did his best to protect the young Cormoran and his half-sister Lucy from the consequences of their chaotic mother’s peripatetic lifestyle, is sinking into dementia.Īgainst a background of all this, plus the 2016 Brexit referendum, is a tale of how the human desire for approval, validation and a sense of purpose can sometimes lead us astray. His reckless, unbalanced ex-lover, Charlotte, is intensifying her usual emotional blackmail by claiming – perhaps truthfully – to have cancer, and there are family problems to contend with, too.
The decade-long will they/won’t they romantic suspense shows no sign of being resolved, although Robin is increasingly ill at ease with her police officer boyfriend, and Cormoran’s ill-advised displacement activity with a “man-hungry pain in the arse” named Bijou is threatening to have serious repercussions for him and the agency.
As ever, the private detective and his business partner Robin Ellacott’s personal lives are at the fore.