Lethal White by Robert Galbraith

Things aren't going the way Robin Ellacott expected.  Her marriage of less than a year is faltering; the result of her realizing right before the wedding that she didn't really love him anymore.   She had felt a sense of obligation to him and to her parents and gone through with it but you can't force love.  That just leaves her job and things aren't going that well there either.  Her last big job at the detective agency had resulted in her facing down a killer and being attacked; now she is having panic attacks.  There is also a strain in her relationship with her partner, Comoran Strike.  A distance has crept into their working relationship and nothing really feels right to her.

But regardless of feelings, the cases come in.  The latest two cases may be related somehow.  A young man in the midst of what seems to be a psychotic break comes to the office and tells Strike of a murder he witnesses years ago as a child that he has never been able to put aside as everyone around him tells him it never happened.  A government minister, whose estate the young man grew up on, has coincidentally come to Strike for help.  He is being blackmailed and he doesn't know who the blackmailer is.  Can Strike and Robin help?

Robin agrees to go undercover, to pose as the minister's newest secretary.  They find plenty of suspects.  The man is in a loveless marriage, his third which is about to fall apart.  One of his sons has been killed in the military while the one left behind is freshly out of prison after killing a young mother in a hit and run accident.  There is a left-wing radical who is out to get him and who is the psychotic man's older brother.  Finally, there is political in-fighting with a minister just down the hallway leading the opposition.  When the minister is killed, Strike and Robin are faced with a complicated case.

This is the fourth installment in the Comoran Strike series.  The mystery is enticing and complex but the reader falls in love with the characters and the relationship that is always about to burst into a full-fledged love between Comoran and Robin.  There are plenty of thorny personal issues facing both of them and a new character joins the agency.  The book is set both in the political arena and the world of horse racing and the country life that surrounds horses.  This book is recommended to mystery readers.