History Literature / TroubledBlood

* AloneWithThePsycho: In a nice change of pace, it's Cormoran who does it this time. It's all the more chilling for being a quiet, calm, scene, as befits a master poisoner who's killed with impunity for forty-plus years.

The plot takes place over more than a year, October 2013 - November 2014. Robin Ellacott has now joined her former employer, Cormoran Strike, as a fellow private detective and partner in his firm. Both Robin and Cormoran are dealing with problems in their private lives. Cormoran's Aunt Joan, who was a steady and dependable mother figure for Cormoran throughout his childhood (as opposed to his mother Leda, a rock groupie), is terminally ill with cancer. Robin for her part is going through a protracted divorce from her husband Matthew, one which should be easy as they have no children and few joint assets, but which Matthew is prolonging out of sheer spite. Other complications include Cormoran's neurotic, unstable high-society ex-girlfriend Charlotte, who keeps texting him despite now being a married mother of two, and Morris, an investigator for the detective agency who keeps up a mild but unmistakable campaign of sexually harassing Robin.

* AloneWithThePsycho: in a nice change of pace, it's Cormoran who does it this time. It's all the more chilling for being a quiet, calm, scene, as befits a master poisoner who's killed with impunity for forty-plus years.

* ContinuityNod: Many references to previous novels. Anna notices the long scar on Robin's arm, which Robin has because she was stabbed by a SerialKiller in ''Literature/CareerOfEvil''. There are multiple references to the sexy green dress Cormoran bought Robin in ''Literature/TheCuckoosCalling'', which was the first time the two of them showed intimacy, and which pissed Robin's fiancé Matthew off badly. Robin remembers when Strike fired her in ''Career of Evil'' for disobeying orders and spooking a suspect into flight.
* ContrivedCoincidence: Anna just happens to run into Cormoran at a Cornish pub. But that's less contrived than her mother actually disappeared in London forty years ago, close enough to be a convenient distance from Strike and Robin's offices, and Anna just happened to be on a night out to Cornwall, close to where Strike's aunt lives.

* EvilerThanThou: Discussed briefly when Strike tells Creed [[spoiler:That Margot was really killed by a far more successful and clever killer than he is. While Creed is a horrid monster who tortured and raped people for months, and seems fully aware of what he was doing, Janice killed even more people than him, wasn't shy on inflciignt a lot of pain on her victims and watching them die just for the heck of it either, tried to kill her own son and granddaughter, is just as unrepentant and proud of her killings as Creed, and has a less prominent FreudianExcuse, which Strike wonders if she's even bring honest about after all of th lies she's told.]]

** Speculated with Dr. Brenner, one of Margot's partners (who has died of natural causes). Janice says that his obituary revealed that he saw a concentration camp during the second world war and it's speculated the mental trauma of that might be why later in life he was an all around MeanBoss, had disturbing sexual tastes and was suspected of being addicted to pharmaceutical drugs. [[spoiler:This is subverted though with the reveal that Janice never even read Brenners obituary and was probably lying about that.]]
* GlorifiedSpermDonor: One of the subplots has Cormoran's father, Jonny Rokeby the rock star, continually trying to reach out to Cormoran. In 39 years of life Cormoran has only met Rokeby twice, and he is not interested, even when (in a heavily foreshadowed moment) it's revealed that he has prostate cancer.

* MasterPoisoner: In the denouement, [[spoiler:Janice Beattie is revealed to have a whole house full of poisons, be they chemicals, drugs, or naturally poisonous plants. She also uses her nursing skills to judge how much poison will kill and how much will just make someone sick. She is able to judge the dose of the sedative she gave to Margot Bamborough just finely enough that Margot is incapacitated on the way to the pub, rather than before or after.]]

** Margot Bamborough. From the memories of everyone who knew her the character of Margot comes alive: the fiery young woman, the tall blonde beauty who rose from poverty and worked as a PlayboyBunny to put herself through medical school. Feminist, loving mother, fierce friend, who helped Gloria Conti out of an abusive relationship. She becomes very real to Robin, who sympathizes with a woman struggling in a male-dominated profession who happened to be the exact same age as Robin when she disappeared.

* TheScapegoat: After the case is solved, Strike is observed as watching reporters harass/blame [[spoiler:Dr. Gupta, Margot's surviving partner, who'd always liked and trusted Janice]] and [[spoiler:The son of Talbot, who'd focused on suspecting Creed]] and feels a bit of sadness about it. It's also speculated that [[spoiler:Steve Douthwaite]] might also experience some of this treatment due to having actual suspicions and information about the truth but being too afraid to act on them.

* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: [[spoler:"Clare Spencer", the social worker who calls Strike to talk about the Athorns, is actually Janice Beattie. Janice, who speaks with a thick Cockney accent, adopts a more middle-class accent as "Clare" and succeeds in fooling Strike.]]

** Cormoran and Robin's mutual friend Ilsa makes "very little secret" of how she's hoping Cormoran and Robin will get together. Both Robin and Cormoran are uncomfortable about this; at one point Cormoran refuses to go out for drinks with Robin and Ilsa and Ilsa's husband Nick because he thinks Ilsa's trying to match them up. Aunt Joan is on the Cormoran-Robin ship as well, and other characters often wonder when Strike and Robin are going to get together.

* BrutalHonesty: Lucy's guilt-tripping Cormoran about how he only likes one of his nephews, Jack, finally provokes Strike to burst out with his assessment of the other two: "Adam's a whiny little prick and Luke's a complete arsehole."

* BrattyHalfPint: A RunningGag through the series involves Strike the casual ChildHater always getting annoyed by bratty kids. His nephew Luke is a SpoiledBrat who steps on and breaks Strike's headphones and whines when he's not allowed to take his [=iPad=] along when the family is scattering Aunt Joan's ashes. Another scene has Robin and Cormoran meeting in a restaurant, and barely being able to communicate because of a family's screaming children running around the place. Still another scene has Gregory Talbot's foster kids toppling furniture in his house.

The plot takes place over more than a year, 2013-2014. Robin Ellacott has now joined her former employer, Cormoran Strike, as a fellow private detective and partner in his firm. Both Robin and Cormoran are dealing with problems in their private lives. Cormoran's Aunt Joan, who was a steady and dependable mother figure for Cormoran throughout his childhood (as opposed to his mother Leda, a rock groupie), is terminally ill with cancer. Robin for her part is going through a protracted divorce from her husband Matthew, one which should be easy as they have no children and few joint assets, but which Matthew is prolonging out of sheer spite. Other complications include Cormoran's neurotic, unstable high-society ex-girlfriend Charlotte, who keeps texting him despite now being a married mother of two, and Morris, an investigator for the detective agency who keeps up a mild but unmistakable campaign of sexually harassing Robin.

* ContrivedCoincidence: Anna just happens to run into Cormoran at a Cornish pub. But that's less contrived than her mother actually disappeared in London forty years ago, close enough to be a convenient distance from Strike and Robin's offices, and Anna just happened to move to Cornwall, close to where Strike's aunt lives.

* GlorifiedSpermDonor: One of the subplots has Cormoran's father, Jonny Rokeby the rock star, continually trying to reach out to Cormoran. In 39 years of life Cormoran has only met Rokeby twice, and he is not interested, even when (in a heavily foreshadowed moment) Rokeby reveals that he has prostate cancer.

* PlayboyBunny: In the backstory, Margot Bamborough supported her dirt-poor family and paid her way through medical school by working as a "Bunny Girl" at a Playboy Club. That's how she met Paul Satchwell, the hippie artist who later becomes a suspect in her disappearance.

* EvilerThanThou: Discussed briefly when Strike tells Creed [[spoiler:That Margot was really killed by a far more sucseful and cover killer than he is. While Creed is a horrid monster who tortured and raped people for months, and seems fully aware of what he was doing, Janice killed even more people than him, even trying to kill her own son and granddaughter, is just as unrepentant and lacks any major FreudianExcuse.]]

** Speculated with Dr. Brenner, one of Margot's partners (who has died of natural causes). It's mentioned that he saw a concentration camp during the second world war and it's speculated the mental trauma of that might be why later in life he was an all around MeanBoss, had distrubgin sexual tastes and was suspected of being addicted to pharmaceutical drugs,

** Speculated with Dr. Brenner, one of Margot's partners (who has died of natural causes). It's mentioned that he saw a concentration during the second world war and it's speculated the mental trauma of that might be why later in life he was an all around MeanBoss, had distrubgin sexual tastes and was suspected of being addicted to pharmaceutical drugs,

* TarotMotifs: An insane DI Talbot used TarotMotifs as well as astrology in his attempts to solve the Bamborough case. Strike eventually figures out that Talbot's drawing of the Queen of Cups in his notes is a reference to Janice, the poisoner.

* DisposableSexWorker: Alluded to in the case of the "Essex Butcher", later revealed as Dennis Creed. The Butcher was said to be more terrifying because he didn't confine himself to prostitutes, a SerialKiller's "natural prey." Strike also points out that this perception is somewhat distorted, as Creed's only surviving victim was a "working girl".

* DisposableSexWorker: Alluded to in the case of the "Essex Butcher", later revealed as Dennis Creed. The Butcher was said to be more terrifying because he didn't confine himself to prostitutes, a SerialKiller's "natural prey."

** The cranky fellow who lives under the Athorns' flat complains that his ceiling is cracking because of how poorly the Athorn flat is kept. It turns out that his ceiling is cracking because of the ottoman upstairs that is filled with concrete and the body of Margot Bamborough.
** Cormoran gets violently ill after eating some chocolates at Christmas. He thinks it's part of having the flu. It's actually because Janice Beattie sent him poisoned chocolates.

* FinallyFoundTheBody: Margot is found by Robin and Barclay, after forty years, entombed in concrete in an ottoman in the Athorn's flat. And Louise Tucker, another long-missing woman who it turns out actually was killed by Dennis Creed, is found at the bottom of a well behind a hotel that Creed knew.

* MasterPoisoner: Janice Beattie is revealed to have a whole house full of poisons, be they chemicals, drugs, or naturally poisonous plants. She also uses her nursing skills to judge how much poison will kill and how much will just make someone sick. She is able to judge the dose of the sedative she gave to Margot Bamborough just finely enough that Margot is incapacitated on the way to the pub, rather than before or after.

* PosthumousCharacter: Margot Bamborough. From the memories of everyone who knew her the character of Margot comes alive: the fiery young woman, the tall blonde beauty who rose from poverty and worked as a PlayboyBunny to put herself through medical school. Feminist, loving mother, fierce friend, who helped Gloria Conti out of an abusive relationship. She becomes very real to Robin, who sympathizes with a woman struggling in a male-dominated profession who happened to be the exact same age as Robin when she disappeared.

** The ending reveals that Margot was killed by a nurse at her clinic, Janice Beattie. It turns out that by that point Janice had been poisoning people for years--patients, a neighbor boy, her own son, a man she fancied--often fatally, just because she liked it. She murdered Margot because Margot had grown suspicious and was going to have some chocolate, chocolate that Janice had laced with poison, tested.

* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: "Clare Spencer", the social worker who calls Strike to talk about the Athorns, is actually Janice Beattie. Janice, who speaks with a thick Cockney accent, adopts a more middle-class accent as "Clare" and succeeds in fooling Strike.

* WesternZodiac: As DI Bill Talbot went insane, he began believing that Margot Bamborough's disappearance had something to do with astrology and occult. The files are covered with references to astrological signs and part of Strike's difficulty is figuring out who Talbot meant when he refers to "Capricorn" or "Aquarius", a problem made even harder when he eventually figures out that Talbot was using an alternate 14-sign zodiac invented by a (RealLife) fellow named Steven Schmidt.

* SecretOtherFamily: A bit of comic relief early in the novel has Robin tailing a man they nicknamed "Tufty" because of his DodgyToupee. Tufty's wife in Windsor suspected he was cheating on her. It turns out that while Tufty does have a mistress, he ''also'' is a bigamist with another wife. And Robin discovers that their client and her children are actually the SecretOtherFamily, as the other wife is the legal wife that Tufty has been married to for twenty years.

* SurpriseParty: On Strike's birthday, Robin and Strike stop at a pub. Strike goes in but Robin doesn't and when he enters, the first thing he hears is a sudden chorus of "HappyBirthdayToYou" He is immediately horrified until his senses catch up with him and he looks around realizes he recognizes none of the guests and the balloons make a figure 80. The party is for an old woman. After realizing this, he muses that even Charlotte had never tried that with him.

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: DI Talbot, the initial investigator in the Bamborough case, had a psychotic breakdown in which he became convinced that Margot's disappearance was part of some sort of occult, Satanic conspiracy. When Strike gets the case files he discovers that they are filled with bizarre scribblings, drawings of Baphomet, astrological signs and motifs, and nonsense taken from the works of Creator/AleisterCrowley. Talbot's descent into madness crippled the investigation in its early days. Talbot's files are basically a RoomFullOfCrazy on paper, but Strike becomes convinced that real leads to the investigation are buried amongst the nonsense, and much of the plot has Cormoran and Robin trying to figure out what Talbot, now long dead, was talking about.

* SecretOtherFamily: A bit of comic relief early in the novel has Robin tailing a man they nicknamed "Tufty" because of his DodgyToupee. Tufty's wife in Windsor suspected he was cheating on her. It turns out that while Tufty does have a mistress, he ''also'' is a bigamist another wife. And Robin discovers that their client and her children are actually the SecretOtherFamily, as the other wife is the legal wife that Tufty has been married to for twenty years.

** Cormoran and Robin's mutual friend Ilsa makes "very little secret" of how she's hoping Cormoran and Robin will get together. Both Robin and Cormoran are uncomfortable about this; at one point Cormoran refuses to go out for drinks with Robin and Ilsa and Ilsa's husband Nick because he thinks Ilsa's trying to match them up.

* ChekhovsGun: The cranky fellow who lives under the Athorns' flat complains that his ceiling is cracking because of how poorly the Athorn flat is kept. It turns out that his ceiling is cracking because of the ottoman upstairs that is filled with concrete and the body of Margot Bamborough.

* ContinuityNod: Many references to previous novels. Anna notices the long scar on Robin's arm, which Robin has because she was stabbed by a SerialKiller in ''Literature/CareerOfEvil''. There are multiple references to the sexy green dress Cormoran bought Robin in ''Literature/TheCuckoosCalling'', which was the first time the two of them showed intimacy, and which pissed Robin's fiancé Matthew off badly.

* WesternZodiac: As DI Bill Talbot went insane, he began believing that Margot Bamborough's disappearance had something to do with astrology and occult. The files are covered with references to astrological signs and part of Strike's difficulty is figuring out who Talbot meant when he refers to "Capricorn" or "Aquarius", a problem made even harder when he eventually figures out that Talbot was using an alternate 14-sign zodiac invented by a (RealLife) fellow named Robert Schmidt.

* BrattyHalfPint: A RunningGag through the series involves Strike the casual ChildHater always getting annoyed by bratty kids. His nephew Luke is a SpoiledBrat who steps on and breaks Strike's headphones and whines when he's not allowed to take his [=iPad=] along when the family is scattering Aunt Joan's ashes. Another scene has Robin and Cormoran meeting in a restaurant, and barely being able to communicate because of a family's screaming children running around the place.

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: DI Talbot, the initial investigator in the Bamborough case, had a psychotic breakdown in which he became convinced that Margot's disappearance was part of some sort of occult, Satanic conspiracy. When Strike gets the case files he discovers that they are filled with bizarre scribblings, drawings of Baphomet, astrological signs and motifs, and nonsense taken from the works of Creator/AleisterCrowley. Talbot's descent into madness crippled the investigation in its early days. Talbot's files are basically a RoomFullOfCrazy on paper, but Strike becomes convinced that real leads to the investigation are buried amongst the nonsense, and much of the plot has Cormoran and Robin trying to figure out what Talbot, now long dead, was talking about.

* ContinuityNod: Many references to previous novels. Anna notices the long scar on Robin's arm, which Robin has because she was stabbed by a SerialKiller in ''Literature/CareerOfEvil''.

* ShipperOnDeck: Cormoran and Robin's mutual friend Ilsa makes "very little secret" of how she's hoping Cormoran and Robin will get together. Both Robin and Cormoran are uncomfortable about this; at one point Cormoran refuses to go out for drinks with Robin and Ilsa and Ilsa's husband Nick because he thinks Ilsa's trying to match them up.

* CreepyCrossdresser: Dennis Creed wore women's clothing, and sometimes affected the manner of a WholesomeCrossdreser, to get his victims to let their guard down.

** The ending reveals that Margot was killed by a nurse at her clinic, Janice Beattie. It turns out that by that point Janice had been poisoning people for years--patients, a neighbor boy, her own son, a man she fancied--often fatally, just because she liked it. She murdered Margot because Margot had grown suspicious and was going to have some chocolate, chocolate that Janice had laced with poison, tested.