Probably the most satisfying character portrayal beyond Cormoran and Robin was Robin’s fiance Matthew I thought the development of the tension between them over their upcoming marriage and Robin’s job with Cormoran was handled with considerable insight and subtlety, especially on the visit to their home town in Yorkshire. Several old friends and new acquaintances of Cormoran’s come in for minor helpful roles, and it was nice to meet them, but I felt there wasn’t enough time to get a good sense of them as people they did contribute a lot, however, to Cormoran’s backstory. What an ill-tempered, self-absorbed, mentally unsound bunch they are, both when they get together and when they’re one on one with Cormoran and/or Robin.

That’s partly because the mystery is placed in the world of writers, editors, and publishers and feels at times like satire, even caricature. For one, the detective Cormoran (whose name, we learn, is that of the giant that Jack killed in a Cornish folktale) and his assistant Robin are still fully developed characters whom we got to know even better but the suspects and other sidekicks aren’t so three-dimensional here.

The Silkworm is another masterfully constructed mystery, but with a few differences from the first Cormoran Strike novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, by Robert Galbraith aka J K Rowling. When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before…īook Review: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives-meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days-as he has done before-and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.īut as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realizes. When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. Narration: Third-person limited omniscient perspectiveīook Summary: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith Major Characters: Cormoran Strike, Robin Ellacott, Matthew Cunliffe, Owen Quine, Leonora Quine, Christian Fischer, Liz Tassel, Daniel Chard, Michael Fancourt, Jerry Waldegrave, Jonny Rokeby, Charlotte Campbell, Detective Inspector Richard Anstis, Alexander Rokeby, Catherine Kent, Philip Midgely, Orlando Quine, Dominic Culpepper Genre: Crime, Mystery Thriller, Detective Fiction Publisher: Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company

The silkworm strike