The Silkworm (A Cormoran Strike Novel, 2)
Private investigator Cormoran Strike must track down a missing writer -- and a sinister killer bent on destruction -- in this "wonderfully entertaining" mystery (Harlan Coben, New York Times Book Review) that inspired the acclaimed HBO Max series C.B. Strike.
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. 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. But as Strike investigates, he discovers that Quine's disappearance is no coincidence. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published, it would ruin lives -- meaning that almost everyone in his life would have motives to silence him. When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, Strike must race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any he has encountered before . . . A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, The Silkworm is the second in J. K. Rowling's highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike and his determined young assistant, Robin Ellacott.
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. 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. But as Strike investigates, he discovers that Quine's disappearance is no coincidence. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published, it would ruin lives -- meaning that almost everyone in his life would have motives to silence him. When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, Strike must race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any he has encountered before . . . A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, The Silkworm is the second in J. K. Rowling's highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike and his determined young assistant, Robin Ellacott.
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Community Reviews
This book is yet again filled to the brim with what Rowling does best -- character development. For the second time, we follow offbeat private detective Cormoran Strike and his now permanent assistant Robin Ellacott in a satisfyingly slowly unfurling murder mystery.
This time, deep in divorce cases of the uber-wealthy, Strike decides to take up the case presented to him by a plain, odd little woman who says her famous writer husband has gone missing. To no one reading's surprise, a little less than halfway through the book the said missing husband is found murdered, exactly as is the main character at the ending of his most recent novel, a novel which has portrayed everyone he knows in wildly unflattering, sexually grotesque ways. Everyone's a suspect, but it seems like the only person worthy of the police's attention is the little odd widow, so it's Strike's job to sort out the real murderer.
As with the first Cormoran Strike novel, there are many things Rowling does well and a few I wish she was stronger at doing. Like always, I simply adore her character development. Strike is a delightful mixture of everyman and odd man out. Ex-army, ex-Special Intelligence Branch, amputee, down-on-his-luck detective, Strike is not an attractive man but he is alluring. His outstanding features are that he is taller and bigger than everyone else with short curly hair reminiscent of pubes. He is definitely someone who would make an impression. At the same time, I found myself empathizing with him often. He doesn't want to be coddled or pitied because of his missing leg, yet pushes himself to the breaking point and thus requires help, which sometimes comes tinged with pity.
Something that I actually really like about Rowling's books is that I feel she's quite good with depictions of those who are disabled. It is a delicate thing, discussing and depicting the disabled and the handicapped. I feel like it's rife with politically incorrect mines. Her portrayals are honest without being unkind, and she steers very clear of the note of pity. Both with Strike and with a mentally handicapped character, she manages to capture both how the disabled person might be feeling and how those around them are reacting. Strike is missing half of his right leg and he is keenly aware of how he is at a disadvantage and how he is constantly trying to make up for his lack by overcompensating and pretending that he is, in fact, whole and able. The mentally handicapped character creates discomfort from all the people around her, yet she is one of the only people that Strike really likes because she is both frank and unconcerned with the opinions of others, coming and going as she pleases, essentially being herself. He dislikes the falsity of so many of the people he comes into contact with and though he feels compassion for the character and her support system and can't seem to get on comfortable footing around her, everything is just as he likes -- straightforward, no pity anywhere in sight. That is one of the characteristics he appreciates so much in his own assistant. She knows to do little things like give him painkillers, drive him places, contravene him in just the right instances, but she never does it in such a way that belittles him or crushes his pride. She is helpful without being harmful, and his appreciation is understood because it, like her concern, cannot be uttered in actual words or that would allow pity to enter.
His assistant Robin is almost a more interesting character to me, perhaps because Rowling clearly articulates her process of realization about the dissonance between her professional life and her private life, and it really hit home with me. As a woman with parts of her life that don't always mesh, I found Robin's epiphanies painfully accurate. The plot does not move particularly quickly at times, but it clips along nicely at other points. A slow plot doesn't matter to me as long as it doesn't drag (which this doesn't) and you feel as though you are getting a full impression. With its lush descriptions of people, places, and conversations, this book doesn't fall short.
Where it does fall a little short is perhaps the mystery component. I'm not great at figuring out who the murderer is, but I had inklings, so that could have been done better. There were plenty of little clues along the way and a quicker deductive person would have figured it out before the end, I'm sure. The other big fault of this book isn't so much a fault but is a bit too on the nose for me, and that is that Rowling's Strike books always seem to capitalize on something that has nettled her personally. In the last book, it was the paparazzi and in this book it is the publishing business and the intrigues of its inner circles. It comes off as personal, as if she's taking jibs at people who have wronged her in the past. It may well just be that she's going off of what she knows, but I would like her next book to be free of such topics. In this one there's also a lot of talk of writers that were only good once and then fizzled, writers who have genius but squander it on self-aggrandizing ego-stroking novels, and shunted aside, bruised writers who are excellent at sick, twisted parody. It just smacks of her echoing her own fears: that she's not a proper writer because she hasn't had the success with her adult novels that she had with Harry Potter, that her literary light has burned out, or, alternately, that she isn't like so many of these horribly depicted writers and editors. I honestly hope that this was just her writing about something that she knew lots about, rather than the unflattering psychological portrait it kind of comes across as. I really can't think what her next book will be about but let's pray it's not something like cosplayers or crazy, overzealous fans. That would feel a bit cruel, I think.
At the end, however, I was satisfied. I have come to expect a certain something from Rowling, which I very much enjoy (she reminds me pleasantly of Dickens but without being quite as long-winded), and I received what I expected. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am dying for the next one! Metaphorically, of course.
This time, deep in divorce cases of the uber-wealthy, Strike decides to take up the case presented to him by a plain, odd little woman who says her famous writer husband has gone missing. To no one reading's surprise, a little less than halfway through the book the said missing husband is found murdered, exactly as is the main character at the ending of his most recent novel, a novel which has portrayed everyone he knows in wildly unflattering, sexually grotesque ways. Everyone's a suspect, but it seems like the only person worthy of the police's attention is the little odd widow, so it's Strike's job to sort out the real murderer.
As with the first Cormoran Strike novel, there are many things Rowling does well and a few I wish she was stronger at doing. Like always, I simply adore her character development. Strike is a delightful mixture of everyman and odd man out. Ex-army, ex-Special Intelligence Branch, amputee, down-on-his-luck detective, Strike is not an attractive man but he is alluring. His outstanding features are that he is taller and bigger than everyone else with short curly hair reminiscent of pubes. He is definitely someone who would make an impression. At the same time, I found myself empathizing with him often. He doesn't want to be coddled or pitied because of his missing leg, yet pushes himself to the breaking point and thus requires help, which sometimes comes tinged with pity.
Something that I actually really like about Rowling's books is that I feel she's quite good with depictions of those who are disabled. It is a delicate thing, discussing and depicting the disabled and the handicapped. I feel like it's rife with politically incorrect mines. Her portrayals are honest without being unkind, and she steers very clear of the note of pity. Both with Strike and with a mentally handicapped character, she manages to capture both how the disabled person might be feeling and how those around them are reacting. Strike is missing half of his right leg and he is keenly aware of how he is at a disadvantage and how he is constantly trying to make up for his lack by overcompensating and pretending that he is, in fact, whole and able. The mentally handicapped character creates discomfort from all the people around her, yet she is one of the only people that Strike really likes because she is both frank and unconcerned with the opinions of others, coming and going as she pleases, essentially being herself. He dislikes the falsity of so many of the people he comes into contact with and though he feels compassion for the character and her support system and can't seem to get on comfortable footing around her, everything is just as he likes -- straightforward, no pity anywhere in sight. That is one of the characteristics he appreciates so much in his own assistant. She knows to do little things like give him painkillers, drive him places, contravene him in just the right instances, but she never does it in such a way that belittles him or crushes his pride. She is helpful without being harmful, and his appreciation is understood because it, like her concern, cannot be uttered in actual words or that would allow pity to enter.
His assistant Robin is almost a more interesting character to me, perhaps because Rowling clearly articulates her process of realization about the dissonance between her professional life and her private life, and it really hit home with me. As a woman with parts of her life that don't always mesh, I found Robin's epiphanies painfully accurate. The plot does not move particularly quickly at times, but it clips along nicely at other points. A slow plot doesn't matter to me as long as it doesn't drag (which this doesn't) and you feel as though you are getting a full impression. With its lush descriptions of people, places, and conversations, this book doesn't fall short.
Where it does fall a little short is perhaps the mystery component. I'm not great at figuring out who the murderer is, but I had inklings, so that could have been done better. There were plenty of little clues along the way and a quicker deductive person would have figured it out before the end, I'm sure. The other big fault of this book isn't so much a fault but is a bit too on the nose for me, and that is that Rowling's Strike books always seem to capitalize on something that has nettled her personally. In the last book, it was the paparazzi and in this book it is the publishing business and the intrigues of its inner circles. It comes off as personal, as if she's taking jibs at people who have wronged her in the past. It may well just be that she's going off of what she knows, but I would like her next book to be free of such topics. In this one there's also a lot of talk of writers that were only good once and then fizzled, writers who have genius but squander it on self-aggrandizing ego-stroking novels, and shunted aside, bruised writers who are excellent at sick, twisted parody. It just smacks of her echoing her own fears: that she's not a proper writer because she hasn't had the success with her adult novels that she had with Harry Potter, that her literary light has burned out, or, alternately, that she isn't like so many of these horribly depicted writers and editors. I honestly hope that this was just her writing about something that she knew lots about, rather than the unflattering psychological portrait it kind of comes across as. I really can't think what her next book will be about but let's pray it's not something like cosplayers or crazy, overzealous fans. That would feel a bit cruel, I think.
At the end, however, I was satisfied. I have come to expect a certain something from Rowling, which I very much enjoy (she reminds me pleasantly of Dickens but without being quite as long-winded), and I received what I expected. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am dying for the next one! Metaphorically, of course.
There were characters/suspects who's characteristics were similar to each other and it made them a little difficult to keep separate in my mind. The writer is very good with details and slipping things in subtly. The mystery was complex and took me a while to figure out why the killer did it after I had figured out who it was.
There is a book within the book which Strike read and explained what had happened in the story even though it wasn't something he enjoyed. I understand why this needed to happen and I understand that most of the mystery is focused around the book, but the story was really not my type of genre. It was not something I would ever read and honestly it was not something anyone I know would ever read. I found that part of the book slow to get past and most of the rest of the book was Strike traveling or interviewing suspects. It does seem more realistic for what an investigator would actually experience, but at certain points it did get boring.
I think Robin, Strike's secretary, should dump her fiancee. He was really not good enough for her, he didn't listen to what she said, refused to support her decisions, belittled her job and for most of the book he was a jerk. Just needed to say that because she was my favorite character.
There is a book within the book which Strike read and explained what had happened in the story even though it wasn't something he enjoyed. I understand why this needed to happen and I understand that most of the mystery is focused around the book, but the story was really not my type of genre. It was not something I would ever read and honestly it was not something anyone I know would ever read. I found that part of the book slow to get past and most of the rest of the book was Strike traveling or interviewing suspects. It does seem more realistic for what an investigator would actually experience, but at certain points it did get boring.
I think Robin, Strike's secretary, should dump her fiancee. He was really not good enough for her, he didn't listen to what she said, refused to support her decisions, belittled her job and for most of the book he was a jerk. Just needed to say that because she was my favorite character.
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