Book #64: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

I really enjoyed the first Robert Galbraith book Cuckoo's Calling, so when I heard another one was coming out I immediately got on the library waitlist (or I guess, I immediately did when we moved in to Frisco). (I just looked at the blog post I wrote for Cuckoo's Calling and I read the two books exactly a year apart. What a coincidence.) As soon as I started reading The Silkworm, I couldn't put it down. Yesterday evening was one of those where I ignored all my responsibilities and poor Tommy and just powered through this book. I was up until 1 a.m. but it was so worth it to just get through it.

I really like Galbraith's style (or, as we all know, J.K. Rowling's style) in this series. I love the character she creates for Cormoran Strike--he's the quintessential moody, mysterious (ish) detective with a very interesting past (illegitimate son of a famous rock star, crazy on-again off-again relationship with the most gorgeous woman in the world for 16 years, blew off his leg in Afghanistan). I also love the character of Robin, his assistant, who really wants to be more involved in the actual crime-solving aspects of her job, although I hate her fiance, Matthew (who hates her job and is jealous of Strike), and I don't necessarily like the hints of potential romance between Robin and Strike--I don't necessarily think they would go well together and I like how the series works with them separate as they are. And this mystery was a doozy. The wife of a temperamental novelist comes to Strike and asks him to help her find her husband, who's run away and hidden himself (which he's done before, a number of times). Strike agrees, although it's obvious she doesn't have any money to pay him, and it's not long before he finds the husband's body in a gory, unexpected murder scene. It turns out that his murder is written about in his last, unpublished novel, which only a few people have had access to. The police suspect and eventually arrest the wife, but Strike is sure it's not her--so the race is on between Strike and the police for more evidence to support their ideas. I really hadn't seen the ending coming, with how the murder was committed, although I did suspect who the murderer was (but there was still a very satisfying revelation scene of how everything happened at the end). VERY satisfying.

I read somewhere online that there are supposedly going to be seven Cormoran Strike novels eventually (or that Rowling supposedly has plans for at least seven) and I know I will be happy to read all of them. The only thing I didn't like about this book was the description of Owen Quine's novel that supposedly caused his murder, which was filled with gratuitous fantasy sex and violence and was pretty off-putting. . . but it was just a few pages within the whole rest of the book if you want to skip that. That part was really too "adult" for me and probably for most people.