Grisly, gory, gruesome, and far, far too long, it’s Robert Galbraith’s Career of Evil, a five-hundred-page career unto itself, even if it’s little more than a footnote to the career of JK Rowling, who we mention for … some reason. (The reason is that Galbraith is a Rowling pseudonym.)

It’s the episode that airs Clsn’s eighth-greatest shame, as this is a book with more than one reference to Blue Őyster Cult in literally every single chapter, which he had to be physically restrained from explaining, at some length, in lieu of having anything else to say about this tremendously turgid tome. (Fun roundup of one way to read the connection between the two can be found here if you’re so inclined. And tune in next episode to hear us talk, and talk at length, about why Patti Smith gets credited by name when Michael Moorcock and John Shirley (and others!) do not.) (NOTE: we will not be talking about this.)

A real monkey’s paw: we wanted to read a thriller with some connetions to music, and, for our sins, we got a sub-Patterson doorstop where every character’s regional dialect is carefully presented on the page (and, lamentably, in the audiobook, particularly lamentably when it comes to the Thai runner of a massage parlor) and every single negative stereotype about poverty and mental illness is given a couple of chapters (of BŐC references). Enjoy! because we sure didn’t.