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While enjoying a largely positive reception, @RGalbraith's #TheRunningGrave is, like other #CormoranStrike novels, apparently being criticized for its length - that it's too long for "popular fiction." But, respectfully, I think this view is misguided. The criticism is in part "generic" -- that is, having to do with the genre of crime fiction. Conan Doyle wrote short stories, Agatha Christie novels are modestly sized. And readers have become accustomed to thinking that "poplular fiction" comprises short beach reads. But Wilkie Collins's pioneering works of English detective fiction like The Moonstone (1868) are nearly twice as long as Murder on the Orient Express. TS Eliot cited the length of Collins's work as one of its virtues, describing it as the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels." Most importantly, @RGalbraith / @jk_rowling is not, it seems to me, setting out simply to write "popular fiction" - the #CormoranStrike series ought to be considered in the tradition of the Bildungsroman, or Coming-of-Age Novel which examines the psychological maturation of its central character(s). And a more just comparison would be the socially aware novels of Charles Dickens, whose "popular fiction" averaged in the hundreds of thousands of words! Bearing in mind that Dickens published in weekly and monthly serials, the salient point is that his "popular fiction" aimed to educate readers about what he believed were the urgent social issues of his time -- and so does @RGalbraith. In conclusion, #TheRunningGrave may be too long for you -- and that's fine. But with its keen spotlight on cults, crime, domestic violence, & so much more (I wish to avoid spoilers) it is for many of us NOT long enough... And could have been at least one chapter longer!