MixedEvening Standard (UK)... the novel crawls through a sludge of witnesses, clues, delusions and never-ending astrological \'insights\'. At times the mystery feels as unrewarding for the reader as it appears to be for the detectives. When the threads are finally pulled together, you feel not so much surprise at discovering whodunnit, but relief that something coherent has emerged from such a tangle of possibilities. Despite the lack of pace, some clumsily shoe-horned views on Scottish/Cornish nationalism, and dialogue in accents so broad as to be distracting, presumably done with love but the result doesn’t always reflect that, Troubled Blood succeeds when it comes to the detectives and their personal journeys as they dance around their developing feelings for each other, and wrestle with the impact of past relationships ... I am lukewarm about the will-they/won’t they tension, and wonder whether the author feels, as her characters do, that getting together risks ruining a good thing. Both seem to end this story in less self-destructive states than at the beginning, though not without some major bumps along the way. Good news for Robin and Strike, but not necessarily for the reader who has taken the journey with them.
