Strike and Money
‘You’ll have noticed he’s got a massive chip on his shoulder about people with unearned wealth.’
The Running Grave, Robert Galbraith
Cormoran Strike is the illegitimate son of a rockstar, Jonny Rokeby, and when people hear about his parentage, their thoughts leap at once to trust funds and handsome hand-outs, but Strike has never wanted anything to do with his father’s wealth.
At first, he did want his father’s attention, but obviously regretted his one-night stand with Strike’s mother, Leda Strike, and only a DNA test forced him to acknowledge Cormoran at all. While his siblings through his father were raised in luxury, with all the advantages in life money can buy, Strike lived a peripatetic and ramshackle life with his mother and half-sister Lucy. Rokeby did send money, but it melted away through Leda’s hands in handouts to friends and boyfriends, and in reckless ventures including a jewellery business, an arts magazine and a vegetarian restaurant. Rokeby eventually exerted controls over the money due to his son, and Leda continued to bring Strike and his sister up in a variety of squats and temporary housing, their only sense of permanence coming from their aunt and uncle, Joan and Ted Nancarrow, and their modest home in the Cornish village of St Mawes. The experience made Lucy seek safety in suburban conformity, but made Strike ardently independent.
Having been rejected by his father, Strike rejected him in turn. While investigating the disappearance of Margot Bamborough (Troubled Blood), Strike finally talks to Robin in detail about his painful relationship with his father and describes to her meeting Rokeby for only the second time in his life when he had just turned eighteen and was about to go to university to read history at Oxford. Rokeby told him he had a ‘nice little nest egg’. Strike told him ‘to stick his fucking money up his arse and set fire to it.’
It wouldn’t be the last time Strike showed a similar contempt for money, and for those who have it.
How come,’ said Somé, swerving suddenly off the conversational track, ‘Jonny Rokeby’s son’s working as a private dick?’
The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith
When Robin and Strike first meet on the day the Lula Landry case begins (The Cuckoo’s Calling), Strike has endured an eighteen-month spiral into financial ruin. He has taken a loan from his father to establish the business and caused offence by not taking the cash as a gift, and now having broken up with his wealthy fiancée, Charlotte Campbell, is homeless and sleeping in his office. He has one client, is owed money by others, and can’t afford a lawyer to pursue payment. Then Robin arrives because of a mistake made by the temp agency. He is very relieved then when Lula’s uncle, John Bristow, offers to pay part of the retainer in cash.
The case shows Strike the value of having an employee like Robin, and its successful conclusion causes a storm of publicity which brings in new work. Still, Strike can’t afford to hire Robin for anything like the pay she would get at a corporate job. Robin is like him though in valuing a career she really wants above money and is ready to take a much lower wage than she deserves, for the chance to work as an investigator. Her fiancé, Matthew, is much more concerned with material success and resents her taking the job.
He was finally making money after working almost non-stop for months, attracting clients not only because of that first glaring bout of notoriety but because of a quieter word-of-mouth.
The Silkworm, Robert Galbraith
Business improves, but Strike is working round the clock when the writer, Owen Quine, goes missing a few months later (The Silkworm). At least he is now living above the office rather than in it. The tiny flat consists of two and a half-cluttered rooms with ill-fitting windowpanes, but it’s convenient. Strike takes on the case of Owen Quine and fires his high-paying client in a fit of irritation after a sleepless night, and as the expenses mount, he wonders if he made the right decision. Luxuries are modest and hard-won. He cheerfully charges a pub lunch, a steak and ale pie, to a client who loves spending her ex’s money, but snaps at Robin when he thinks she is chiding him for working for Quine’s wife, a person in similar financial straits to him. Robin, who constantly must put up with Matthew’s sniping about her not earning what she could, resents it. The case also brings Strike into contact with his half-brother Al Rokeby, who obviously admires Strike for not trading off the Rokeby name, even while he enjoys his life of clubs and fine restaurants, staffed houses in Mayfair and driving round London in a bright red Alfa Romeo while considering going into business with a friend.
Nobody wanted to hire a man so notorious; nobody liked the idea of a detective so intimately connected with unsolved murder.
Career of Evil, Robert Galbraith
After the investigation into Owen Quine, Strike is finally in a position to invest in Robin’s training, but when a severed lag is delivered to the office (Career of Evil), clients flee. Strike must sell his watch to cover expenses as he traps and exposes the Shacklewell Ripper, after a long and harrowing investigation. It is only because his friend, Shanker, says just this once Strike can owe him, he manages to get a ride up to Yorkshire in time for Robin’s wedding. There he’s met with delight from the bride, suspicion from the groom, and admiration from the rest of the guests who have just learned about his stunning capture of a killer.
Strike had spent sixteen years with another woman who had been far richer than he was. Charlotte had alternately brandished money as a weapon and deplored Strike’s refusal to live beyond his means.
Lethal White, Robert Galbraith
While rushing to Robin’s wedding, Strike realises he’s forgotten to break up with Elin, his latest girlfriend. Probably unnecessary as on their last date he spills wine over her in the exclusive Mayfair restaurant, La Gavroche. He had not wanted to be there even before the wine was spilt – Elin’s hints about having a ‘decent dinner for a change’ at the expensive restaurant had made his hackles rise, and as he drinks and listens to Elin’s talk of property she might buy, his sense of alienation increases. His ex-fiancée Charlotte came from a very wealthy, yet disjointed and dysfunctional family, and their finances were always an issue during their time together. She would call him puritanical or sanctimonious, plebeian or penny-pinching, when he had refused to emulate the reckless and ostentatious spending of her family and friends. Before the wine is spilt, Strike decides the relationship should end, though he decides not to break up with her over the meal she has offered to pay for, and which his remaining credit would not cover if she walked out.
After a year of working on as many jobs as the enlarged agency could handle, Strike had managed to give Robin an overdue pay rise, settle the last of his outstanding debts and buy a thirteen-year-old BMW 3 series.
Lethal White, Robert Galbraith
In the year following the capture of the Shacklewell Ripper, the problem is too much work rather than too little. Strike gives Robin her overdue pay rise and takes on Andy Hutchins, an ex-policeman, and former soldier Sam Barclay to help cover their case load but Strike, trying to keep a low profile, and cover payroll, still spends very little on himself. He remains in his small flat, cooking on a single-ring hob. As he tells his brother-in-law Greg, his aim is to build up enough reliable employees to sustain a steady workload and make some decent money. And short term, he wants to build up enough money in the bank to see them through the lean times. Greg might think the plan under-ambitious, but Robin is very much in agreement when she and Strike discuss the future over Doom Bar and a half-bottle of champagne at Newbury Racecourse. The champagne is to celebrate Robin’s separation from her husband, after a miserable year of marriage, she finds evidence of his infidelity and leaves him, first for her friend Vanessa’s sofa bed and then at Strike’s urging for Nick and Ilsa Herbert’s spare room. Showing that she and Strike share similar ideas about independence, she has to be persuaded this wouldn’t be ‘sponging’ off his friends.
There was a brief silence, broken only by the tinkling of silver and china; that plush kind of silence achievable in London only by people with plenty of money.
Lethal White, Robert Galbraith
The racecourse is one of the haunts of the elite Strike and Robin visit after taking on the case of Jasper Chiswell, a government minister who is being blackmailed (Lethal White). Going between galas and art dealerships, private clubs and fine restaurants, Strike finds himself in the world of Charlotte Campbell again, and she, unhappy in her marriage with banker and aristocrat Jago Ross, inserts herself back into his life. Strike’s dislike for ostentatious wealth persists as he must face the reputational damage of being mentioned in the press in the same feature with the most entitled members of the entitled classes.
He continued to live a Spartan existence in the two and a half rooms over the office, and there were months when she, the salaried partner, took home more pay than the senior partner and founder of the firm.
Troubled Blood, Robert Galbraith
Strike and Robins’ continued success means more work, and soon the agency has a growing list of subcontractors, an office manager, and a waiting list of clients. They handle numerous cases while searching for the missing Margot Bamborough (Troubled Blood), and Robin, free of her disastrous marriage, is also at liberty to throw herself into the work. Strike’s tastes remain simple, though for Robin’s thirtieth birthday he does push out the boat, buying her expensive perfume (as well as a balloon in the shape of a donkey) and taking her for drinks at the Ritz.
‘If I’m named in your poxy divorce, my business will be fucked. It’ll mean paps following me, my face all over the papers—’
The Ink Black Heart, Robert Galbraith
Strike, Robin and the agency are officially a success when Edie Ledwell first arrives at the office in Denmark Street asking for their help (The Ink Black Heart). With a full case load and a waiting list of eager clients. Strike can take his new girlfriend, Madeline, to whatever trendy bar or club she prefers, and Robin is in the process of buying her own flat. Then, Charlotte’s acrimonious divorce from Jago Ross puts it all at risk. Strike has always been careful to keep his face out of the news, even strategically growing his beard if he needs to give evidence in court. Being named in the divorce of a beautiful socialite like Charlotte would be fatal, meaning he would be confined to the office, and as he has already told Greg, if he had wanted a desk job, he’d have stayed in the army. The dedication and ability of the whole team is required to gets the agency through tracking down a murderous online troll, surviving a bomb attack on the office, and finding enough evidence of Jago Ross’s abusive behaviour to skirt the fallout of the divorce. By the end of the novel whatever appeal Charlotte, her beauty and her life, ever held for Strike has now fallen away. Perhaps it is also a sign that Strike is no longer bound to Charlotte, that his latest affair with Madeline who shares Charlotte’s social circle and tendency for drama, ends messily but as far as Strike is concerned, conclusively.
From the oak floorboards and the wide mahogany sleigh bed to the sleek, modern chandelier, long gauze curtains and wall-mounted flat-screen television, everything spoke of good taste and plenty of money. Strike might be living like this, Robin thought, if he’d swallow his pride and rage, and accept his father’s largesse
The Running Grave, Robert Galbraith
The agency continues to go from strength to strength, with the number of very rich Londoners who come to them for help steadily increasing year on year, and when Strike takes his police officer contact Eric Wardle out for a curry, he can invite him to upmarket restaurant, the Cinnamon Club rather than the Bombay Balti. Strike is also easy enough around wealth now to happily spend time with his half-sister Prudence, Jonny Rokeby’s other illegitimate child, at her luxurious home in Strawberry Hill. Things become more complicated though as the investigation into the Universal Humanitarian Church continues and it becomes clear that one of Prudence’s wealthy clients might once have been involved with the church (The Running Grave). Money and the privilege it bestows looks like it might cause a split in the new sibling relationship. Robin, knowing how good the relationship with Prudence is for Strike, intervenes before Strike has the chance to say something he will regret.
Strike might have the money to treat Wardle now, but his own pleasures remain modest. When he spends the night in Cromer after interviewing a witness, he chooses an average hotel with a damp beer garden and his only indulgence is what it always was – a pint of Doom Bar and a pub meal, and Strike remains in his attic over Denmark Street for now.
