Critic Reviews
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The season has a slightly sour atmosphere along with an airless, puzzle-solving approach to its mystery. This renders “The Ink Black Heart” a disappointment in the wake of earlier chapters like “Lethal White” and “Troubled Blood,” which were textured family dramas that used crime-solving as a framework. It still has the show’s great strength, however: the relationship between Cormoran and Robin.
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What saves The Ink Black Heart from structural collapse is that, despite the aborted smooch, the chemistry between Strike and Robin powers along beautifully. Whatever else is going on, the star-crossed sleuths remain eminently watchable.
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Strike is often a little silly, even am-dram, and the script is clunky with exposition. .... Nevertheless, amidst the perfunctory nature of it all – the crime, the clues, the assorted malcontents – it still made for compelling comfort viewing.
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It’s all a bit tiresome, because Rowling has such a winning set-up with Strike and Robin. All we want is for them to have a rollicking good crime to solve, without all this other stuff getting in the way. Although there’s always room for a bit more romantic longing.
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The compromises made for The Ink Black Heart both defang it and render the mystery too abridged to be truly satisfying. All the same, both the books and their adaptations are not really about crime, but the chemistry between Strike and Ellacott. .... There is vanishingly little room for a proper slow-burn relationship. But here we have one of the few convincing, and compelling, long-term love stories left to the format.
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In the absence of any interesting crime-solving to distract us, the actors’ excellence doesn’t transcend the frustration of their characters’ relationship not being allowed to progress. Like everything else in Strike, the detectives’ love is starting to go stale.