The Female Detective
‘The only girl in a family of boys, Robin had been raised, she knew, to keep everyone happy,’
Troubled Blood, Robert Galbraith
Robin has gone from being a temp at Strike’s struggling detective agency to a partner at the flourishing firm with her name on the door. Her career, though, has involved negotiating various personal and professional challenges which stem from her being a young woman in a male dominated and occasionally dangerous profession. What challenges has she faced and how has she dealt with them? And how has being a woman helped her in her work?
‘Matthew, who had once been one of her primary sources of comfort and support, had become merely another obstacle to be navigated.’
Career of Evil, Robert Galbraith
When Robin arrives at the agency on the same day the Lula Landry investigation begins (The Cuckoo’s Calling), she is thrilled to have accidentally ended up at a place which awakens her long-held, and long-suppressed, ambition for investigative work.
The biggest hurdle she faces as her interest in the work blossoms is the attitude of her fiancé, Matthew. While Robin is overjoyed to take a full-time role at the agency, he is resentful that she could be earning more money in HR. He’s also threatened by Strike, as her mother Linda mentions as they prepare for the wedding (Career of Evil). Robin struggles to explain to Matthew her love of the job, and its importance to her, but is met with constant complaints and belittling comments about ‘googling people’ and going for afternoon walks when she and Strike visit a crime scene.
She tells Strike during their search for the truth behind the death of Owen Quine (The Silkworm), that Matthew is not worried about her safety, she doesn’t think he has the imagination for that. Instead, he sees her work as a threat to his preferred lifestyle. He determinedly treats her work as a joke, but when forced to take it seriously becomes angry rather than concerned. Then, when he has the opportunity, he does his best to sabotage her career.
‘At the age of eight she had informed her brothers that she was going to catch robbers and had been roundly mocked, for no better reason than that she ought to be laughed at, given that she was a girl and their sister.’
Career of Evil, Robert Galbraith
The resistance to Robin’s new career comes doesn’t just come from Matthew. Her family too have their doubts. Robin’s brothers teased her for wanting to be a police officer when she was a child, as her older brother, Stephen tells Strike at her wedding (Lethal White). As a result, she never told anyone she chose to study psychology with a secret eye towards investigative profiling. Her attacker put an end to her studies, when the agoraphobia which resulted from the attack forced her to drop out of her course. When she afterwards expressed a vague interest in something related to investigative work her family took it as a sign of continuing sickness, and her inability to shake off what had happened to her.
In spite of her advanced driving and self-defence courses, she became what her boyfriend and family expected her to be: a devoted partner and a woman who works quietly in HR and stays home safely after dark.
But the temp agency’s mistake gives Robin a chance to fighting her way back to the person she should have become before the attack altered the trajectory of her life. Unfortunately, that is not the woman her family recognises. Stephen is ready to embrace the change though, saying he’s never seen Robin happier than she is working with Strike, and that she’s become better at standing up for herself.
‘It’s fine, I’m fine,’ said Robin feverishly. ‘My mother’s just driving me up the wall.’
The Running Grave, Robert Galbraith
Even after Robin has her name on the door and aced a dangerous and demanding undercover operation investigating the Universal Humanitarian Church, her mother struggles with her work. Whenever Linda speaks about Robin’s handsome new boyfriend, Ryan, there is an unspoken contrast with Robin’s business partner, Strike. Ryan calls Robin’s parents while she is undercover, asks after her baby niece and tells Linda he would like children. Robin, having thought long and hard about the demands of the job and her devotion to it thinks she will not have children. After her long stint undercover, Ryan begins showing some signs of the jealousy and protectiveness which poisoned Robin’s marriage too. Robin ends up suspecting Ryan’s been winding her parents up, telling them how worried her undercover mission made him.
‘I don’t need Winn to tell me I’m basically a pair of walking tits, a stupid, deluded girl who doesn’t realise that’s my only useful attribute.’
– Lethal White, Robert Galbraith
Robin is used to her family and fiancé telling her, subtly or explicitly she is not up to the job and constantly has to battle against the way those attitudes have become ingrained in herself, especially while she is still with Matthew. As a result, she is quick to believe any hesitations Strike has over her ability to do the work are based on her assumed fragility.
When Robin first tells Strike about the attack which ended her university career, she wakes up the next day sick with worry that he won’t think she’s tough enough for the job anymore (The Silkworm), and cries over her burger in Leamington Bar services when he explains, gruffly, his concerns are about her availability not her ability. He knows from experience the job is impossible when one’s home life is bad and reminds her that plenty of people don’t understand their work is a vocation.
Robin nevertheless conceals her panic attacks resulting from her encounter with the Shacklewell Ripper from Strike for almost a year (Lethal White). A misogynistic rant from target Geraint Winn causes her to lash out while in the car with Strike, forcing her to admit to what she’s been going through. Strike recognises that her reaction is not just to Geraint, but to Matthew, and reminds her she’s twice fought off a killer, which is more than he thinks Matthew could do. Still, he needs her to be honest and trust him not to see that as weakness.
if she was honest, she was feeling insulted by Strike’s gift of unwrapped salted caramel chocolates,
Troubled Blood, Robert Galbraith
Strike’s not perfect though. He does not realise for a long time how much she uses her training as the peacemaker in her family to make life easier for him too. He is forced to confront the truth when, exhausted and pushed to the brink, Robin explodes on him outside the flat she shares with Max Priestwood after her marriage ends (Troubled Blood).
Strike’s subsequent efforts to be more friendly to the office manager, Pat, lead to a crucial break in the case.
‘Morris, Robin thought, as she headed towards the Tube, didn’t actually like women. He desired them, but that, of course, was an entirely different matter’
Troubled Blood, Robert Galbraith
Strike though, despite his size, has never made Robin feel uncomfortable in the office. Saul Morris though, with his slightly too personal comments and double entendre ‘jokes’, is an issue from the moment he starts working at the agency (Troubled Blood). While Strike deals with his aunt’s illness and the agency is pushed to its limits, Robin asks herself why she laughs at Saul’s jokes, and puts up with him calling her ‘Robs’. She knows such behaviour is often about the fear of what men might do when rejected, but she also knows it’s also due to her ingrained habits as a people-pleaser. She may have escaped her marriage, but she hasn’t escaped them yet.
When Morris has difficulty taking orders from her, she handles it, but his attitude is obvious enough for Sam to mention it to Strike. Even after Saul sends Robin inappropriate photos at Christmas, Robin still finds herself covering up for him.
Her final definitive response to his inappropriate behaviour is an instinctual physical retaliation after a particularly long day, but it’s deeply satisfying.
‘If I saw that once, I saw it fifty fookin’ times when I was in the force. Men like them get cut too much fookin’ slack, and everyone’ll act surprised when one of the fookers is charged with rape.’
The Running Grave, Robert Galbraith
Robin is not the only woman working in investigations. Her first friend in London is Vanessa Ekwensi, a posed and steely DS with the Met, and by the time the agency are looking into the identity of online troll, Anomie, (The Ink Black Heart), they have employed Midge, an extremely fit ex-police officer from Manchester. Midge has left the force after a bad break-up, but occasional remarks show she was also frustrated with the way the force investigated threats to women.
‘I know. I can’t wear a wig at Chapman Farm, so I’m thinking of a radical haircut.’
The Running Grave, Robert Galbraith
Being a woman as a detective does have its advantages. Robin has become adept at make-up techniques which make a significant difference to her appearance when coupled with wigs and coloured contact lenses, so she can pose as both the goddaughter of Sir Jasper Chiswell in the House of Commons, and the goth Yorkshire girl, Bobbi Cunliffe, in the same investigation (Lethal White). Her good looks too, as well as attracting catcalls and wolf whistles, mean some targets like Pez Prince are eager to spend time with her.
‘I think I should meet her alone. She doesn’t know anything about you, and you might be a bit scary for a teenager.’
The Ink Black Heart, Robert Galbraith
Young women often find it easier to share their secrets with Robin than they do with the bear-like Strike. The people-pleasing training she received at home have made her a very effective interviewer, and Robin’s particular combination of clear-headedness and warmth draws information from many difficult witnesses, such as Owen Quine’s former friends Kathryn Kent and Pip (The Silkworm), or the shy and vulnerable Zoë at North Grove Art Collective (The Ink Black Heart).
By the time Robin has her name on the door, some of her challenges have been transmuted into strengths. The youth and good looks that have often made people underestimate her, she can now use to encourage openness and confession; her bad marriage has given her stories she now uses to build rapport, and the family dynamic which taught her to protect the feelings of others has made her subtle and insightful in her professional life.
Robin has never been as fragile as her parents fear she is, but her work with Strike has changed her. She’s uncovered killers, saved lives and grown. She’s also learned to stand up for her own feelings and ambitions, leaving her marriage and insisting her new boyfriend respects her commitment to her work.
The Robin who is aflutter at the idea of working at Strike’s agency might have already taken advanced driving and self-defence classes, but the Robin who can with honesty and clarity negotiate a difficult conversation with Prudence, Strike’s half-sister, at the end of the investigation into the Universal Humanitarian Church (The Running Grave) is a very different woman, and the woman perhaps Robin was destined to be before the attack which derailed her university career, and one to be celebrated.