The Silkworm (A Cormoran Strike Novel #2) (Mass Market)

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The Silkworm (A Cormoran Strike Novel #2) By Robert Galbraith Cover Image

The Silkworm (A Cormoran Strike Novel #2) (Mass Market)

Staff Reviews


I love J.K. Rowling. Well, yes Harry Potter. But. Her ex-Hogwarts work is first rate. In this, the second of a series of British murder mysteries, she delivers the goods with a solid punch. Any reader of whodunits will find this a satisfying compelling thriller of an experience.

Cormoran Strike (named after the giant that Jack killed) is a character you have to love. Crippled, haunted, lovelorn, driven and chained to a self-imposed code of ethics that is harshly strict, he begs the reader to want to back him up, to accompany him to dangerous meetings, to defend him against unwarranted skepticism by the police and the frequent social disaffection elicited by his rough appearance. As a character, he puts me in mind of the famous noir detective Sam Spade. He has strong morals deployed in a mileu most of us don't inhabit.

Grisly murder, British publishing and its attendant eccentrics, an attractive but unavailable associate, a developmentally challenged teen, a naive widow, a painful prosthesis where his lower leg used to be: these are some, only some of what Strike has to deal with to get the job done. Add to this the perception among the police that he's a glory hound due to his solving a high-profile murder at which they had failed and a personal life that's a minefield of toxic relationships and the unfortunate illegitemacy that his rockstar father bequeathed to him and you have a helluva hill to climb, if you're Cormoran Strike.

Forget Harry P. Here Galbraith/Rowling has moved into completely adult realms with a bloody good tale. The writing is superb, elegant even, and flows briskly with no doldrums. Try it: you'll like it.

— Eric has been a fixture at Tattered Cover for decades and he has always been an insatiable reader

Published under a pseudonym, J. K. Rowling's brilliant debut mystery introduces Detective Cormoran Strike as he investigates a supermodel's suicide in "one of the best books of the year" (USA Today), the first novel in the brilliant series that inspired the acclaimed HBO Max series C.B. Strike   After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he's living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry -- known to her friends as the Cuckoo -- famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man. You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.
Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, bestselling author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy. Career of Evil is the third book in the highly acclaimed Cormoran Strike crime fiction series. The Cuckoo's Calling was published in 2013 and The Silkworm in 2014.

Product Details ISBN: 9780316351980
ISBN-10: 0316351989
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Publication Date: December 22nd, 2015
Pages: 672
Language: English
Series: A Cormoran Strike Novel