The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

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, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives—meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.
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...

I loved this book, truly. Galbraith Rowling is a fantastic writer and I will read every single word she publishes. I love the gritty reality in it, I love how each sentence is crafted and how every word paints a picture in my head. It is, in short just really really great.

But this book, like it's predecessor, The Cuckoo's Calling, is incredibly heavy. It's not a  book you fly through, heart throbbing eyes wide open, whilst trying to figure out who done it. Instead you walk slowly through it, sometimes even crawling, trying to keep up with the minute clues scattered around the pages. I did find this book a bit easier to keep abreast with than The Cuckoo's Calling, but it's still a heavy read. There are so many people and stories to keep track to try and figure out who's lying and whatnot and who's implying something else and it's just all so massive, but the author here manages to keep every single string in play without ever tangling it.

In the first book I wasn't actually every terribly bothered about the crime plot because I found the main characters far more fascinating, and while this time around the crime also got a better hold on me, I still remain big fan of Strike and Robin and all the sub-characters, for in this book, they are all equally interesting and well written. No character is thrown in there just to serve a plot purpose and then never seen or heard of again; all play a decent part. Also, I really loved the many jibes at the whole book publishing industry, both at authors and editors, etcetera alike.

If you can handle it's volume it's definitely a worthwhile read. I loved it and can't wait for more.

THE SILKWORM Cormoran Strike #2 by Robert Galbraith [ Pseudonym = J.K. Rowling ] ISBN13: 9780316206877 455 pages / Published in 2014

Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2014