R = The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith

 

"I'd rather face an honest skeptic than a hundred who believe they know God, but are really in thrall to their own piety."

 In their latest adventure, Detectives Strike and Robin are hired by a worried father to find dirt on the Universal Humanitarian Church (cult) so his son can be freed. Robin chooses to go undercover at the local branch, Chapman Farm, subjecting herself to, and witnessing first-hand the abuses of the church. Meanwhile, Strike is trying to keep his other active cases progressing forward without the help of his trusted partner and discovers his job under threat by his usual too beautiful, scorned lovers and an incompetent surveillance team of unknown origin. 

 

The book starts slow, with a series of letters between Strike's client, his son, and his lawyer. So slow in fact, I doubted the book would ever speed up. But speed up it does, making 900+ pages read like a hundred. I couldn't put the book down once it got rolling. The concept of a cult is in itself fascinating, trying to understand how it's so easy to brainwash a large group of people while getting away with it. I can see the amount of research the author put into this book to make the UHC believable as Scientology and as horrifying as Waco. 

 The book thankfully doesn't have time for the frustrating 'will they, won't they' vibe between Robin and Strike; Robin's stay at the cult taking up the majority share of the book, and Strike's personal problems taking up the rest, but the author manages to squeeze in a little tension at the end for the 'shippers. Which I don't know, I'm largely torn on. I hate the longstanding stereotype that men and women can't be friends, but I do believe Robin and Strike are turning out to be perfect for each other, so I guess your perception of the ending is based on what you want most for the characters.

With every novel in this series, the stories and the quality of the stories get better and better... The author is creating a world made of suspense and it's hard not to like.