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Robert Galbraith

The Silkworm (A Cormoran Strike Novel, 2) Hardcover – June 19, 2014

by Robert Galbraith (Author)

14,170 ratings

Book 2 of 5: Cormoran Strike

Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

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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... A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, THE SILKWORM is the second in the highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike and his determined young assistant, Robin Ellacott.

Print length

455 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Mulholland Books
Publication date

June 19, 2014
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.73 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

9780316206877
ISBN-13

978-0316206877
Lexile measure

970L
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Strike shares a trait with many great fictional detectives: He is darn good company...The Silkworm is a very well-written, wonderfully entertaining take on the traditional British crime novel...Robert Galbraith may proudly join the ranks of English, Scottish and Irish crime writers such as Tana French, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, John Connolly, Kate Atkinson and Peter Robinson."―Harlan Coben, The New York Times Book Review

"Cormoran Strike is back, and so is his resourceful sidekick, Robin Ellacott, a gumshoe team that's on its way to becoming as celebrated for its mystery-solving skills as Nick and Nora Charles of "Thin Man" fame, and Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander (a.k.a. the girl with the dragon tattoo)."―Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"The plot zings along...Swift and satisfying"―Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times

"'The last line of The Silkworm, which will lift the hearts of readers who have come to love its deeply sympathetic characters, offers the prospect of more of that joy both for her and for us."―Charles Finch, USA Today (3.5/4 stars)

"A compulsively entertaining yarn."―Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly

"Robert Galbraith... has written a second absorbing whodunit starring detective Corcmoran Strike to follow last year's stealth hit, The Cuckoo's Calling.... Astutely observed, well-paced... The Silkworm thoroughly engages as a crime novel."―Sue Corbett, People

The Silkworm is fast-paced and entertaining... Strike is heroic without intending to be and has a great back story. He's the illegitimate son of a rock star whose half-siblings grew up in privilege... And he's brooding, but not annoyingly so. Strike has all kinds of potential. It'd be a crime not to keep up with him."―Sherryl Connelly, Daily News

"Why is "likable" the first word that comes to mind upon finishing The Silkworm? Surely, that has something to do with Rowling's palpable pleasure in her newly chosen genre (the jig may be up with her Robert Galbraith pseudonym, but the bloom is still on her homicidal rose) and even more to do with her detective hero, who, at the risk of offending, is the second husband of every author's dreams."―Louis Bayard, The Washington Post

"The story is enthralling, not only for its twists and turns, but for the fun of the teamwork.... [It's] a cast of characters who you'll want to meet again and again."―Ashley Ross, Time

"[The Silkworm is a] swift-paced, suspenseful mystery....Robert Galbraith has announced himself a fresh voice in mystery fiction: part hard-boiled, part satiric, part poignant, and part romantic."―Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

"Bring on the next one, please....Galbraith writes with wit and affection for detective-novel tradition (it's impossible not to see her central duo as a modern-day Nick and Nora, minus the marriage), and races us through a twisty plot so smoothly that you won't notice as the hours tick by."―Moira MacDonald, The Seattle Times

"Having just the better part of a day and a night making my way through the 455 pages of The Silkworm ... I must say, I don't mind at all... The murder mystery at the heart of The Silkworm is a genuine mystery with an altogether satisfying resolution." ―Malcolm Jones, The Daily Beast

"[Galbraith] weaves a pleasurably wicked literary murder mystery with all its attendant aspects of publishing politics, from the peevish to the pompous, into Strike's personal and professional lives....Only two books in, and Galbraith's characters already feel like familiar-and welcome-friends."―Daneet Steffens, The Boston Globe

About the Author

Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potterseries and The Casual Vacancy.

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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0316206873
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mulholland Books; 1st edition (June 19, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 455 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780316206877
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316206877
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 970L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.6 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.73 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #163,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,535 in Kidnapping Thrillers
- #2,292 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Books)
- #2,637 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Books)

Customer Reviews:
14,170 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		58%
4 star		26%
3 star		10%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Josh Mauthe

The plot is decent, but the character work is rich and enjoyable, and the storytelling is addictive

Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2018

Verified Purchase

It’s somewhat surprising that publishers have allowed The Silkworm to continue to be listed under the name Robert Galbraith instead of J.K. Rowling – after all, this is an industry where female writers are often asked to abbreviate their names so that sales don’t get affected, so I can’t imagine that leaving Rowling’s name off is appealing to them. And yet, in a lot of ways, it’s completely appropriate – the Galbraith books don’t feel like the public assumptions of what J.K. Rowling writes. They’re private detective books with a little dose of hard-boiled mixed in – they’re occasionally violent (even graphically so, in the case of The Silkworm), suspenseful, and full of shady characters.

Even so, much like that more famous other series she wrote, the joy here isn’t always so much the plot as it is the rich characterization and general gift for storytelling. In creating the jaded war veteran Cormoran Strike and his Girl Friday Robin Ellacott, Rowling’s come up with two outstanding characters that have a way of pulling you along even as the plotting occasionally gets bewildering in the way so many mysteries do. After all, The Silkworm is full of absurd touches, red herrings, colorful characters, and elaborate plot ideas, not the least of which is the central hook – the absolutely brutal and graphic killing of a notorious author that seems to have been inspired by his unpublished manuscript, which mocked and ridiculed pretty much everyone in his life and in the publishing industry.

The result is a pretty solid detective novel that scratches all the right itches for the genre – tense interviews with reluctant witnesses and suspects, power plays, bluffs to draw out the villains, covert surveillance, lots of red herrings, and secrets galore. If you know the genre, you know what you’re getting, and it’s no small thing to say that Rowling generally does it incredibly well. The Silkworm feels silly at times, especially when you try to put it all together – and that’s especially true with the answers of who did it and why – but none of that keeps it from being an incredibly entertaining and gripping read, nor does it stop it from being a really great piece of detective fiction (one that feels different enough from Rowling’s other writings to merit the pseudonym).

But the real treat here is the character work, which gives The Silkworm the investment you need in a good detective story. The contrast between cynical, world-weary, literally walking wounded Cormoran Strike and his hopeful, eager, earnest secretary / assistant / trainee Robin Ellacott is easy and obvious, but Rowling makes it work incredibly well, bringing both characters to rich life and letting their friendship and mutual respect speak volumes. It’s a great central dynamic to the book, and the way Rowling plays with it – and the tensions between them – and uses them to supplement her labyrinthine (but engaging) mystery is what makes The Silkworm so satisfying. That Rowling got so pigeonholed that she felt like she couldn’t write the Cormoran Strike books under her own name is a bit sad; that she’s writing them, though, and that there are more to come? That’s very welcome news indeed, because if they’re all this fun and captivating, well, I won’t be complaining.

38 people found this helpful

Helpful

Michael Haywood

Comes to a grinding halt halfway through

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

My biggest issue with the first Strike book was that it was too long and too slow. The second Strike book fixed one of those issues. Being 100 pages shorter really helped with the pacing early on but nearly halfway through, The book comes to a grinding halt and becomes another slow and tough to finish read. This isn't an insult to the characters or the plot. It just gets boring and it's tough to read more than a few pages at a time before getting sick of it.

I do love how Rowling gave Strike and Robin much more development in this book. A good chunk of the book is about their relationship and Robin wanting to be more than a simple assistant. We also see more backstory about the two characters' past and social lives. The plot was kind of predictable, Not to the point where you knew what was gonna happen but it was pretty easy to eliminate a good handful of suspects early on. A few typical mystery novel tropes are followed but again that doesn't stop it from being interesting plot wise.

Overall, It's not a terrible book. If you could finish the first then you should have no issue finishing this one. It's not for everybody though. IDK why but Rowling's pacing issue always hits her half way into the book and it just ruins it a bit.

26 people found this helpful

Helpful

Well-Read Woman

IT WOULD GOOD, IF PARTS WEREN’T SO BAD

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

I gave the first book in this series a scathing review, and this one wasn’t much better, but reading it allowed me to realize exactly what annoys me so much about this series: it would be good if there weren’t small portions that make you cringe. I am eternally flabbergasted that this series is written by JK Rowling (under a pen name) because she is an experienced author and the mistakes in these books are very amateur. Similar to the first book, a little editing would have gone a long way. A reduction in word-count and faster pacing would have elevated this from “okay” to “good.” It builds slowly, and similar to the first book, it is about 400 pages of the detective walking around (or limping, more accurately) and drinking beer and talking to people. The reveal at the end (ala Agatha Christie) really just serves to prove Rowling is... not Christie. All of this was very similar to the first book, so I’d you liked that one then you will like this one, and if you didn’t then don’t waste your time expecting this one to be better.
Lastly, and this drove me CRAZY about the first book too, there is an underlying misogyny throughout (not just in regards to the detective’s viewpoint, but in the portrayal and view of women throughout the series. I am ASTOUNDED this was written by a woman...). In the first book, the female character’s greatest contribution was wearing a sexy dress. This time it is driving a car. Yep. She can drive. Drive well, actually. *Cue collective inhale of astonishment*
Ugh. It’s the small things like that which ruin this otherwise so-so, slow series.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

NotTreadingGrapes

Lost the will to live with this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 22, 2020

Verified Purchase

Somebody get this woman an editor.
Unpleasant and unbelievable characters and a vaguely murky setting that almost has you thinking you're reading some fantasy world story.
I started skim-reading at 85% (Kindle) in a desperate attempt to get it finished, no longer caring who had done it, or why.
Too many characters and the "literary" device of character A telling the reader via a long-winded conversation with Strike what the writer wants us to know about character B (very little by the end, I just wanted them out of my life) is tedious and very Creative Writing Lesson 1 for such an accomplished writer.
In any case, that's me done with Robert Galbraith. The first one was OK, this was like wading through treacle.

10 people found this helpful

Leigh

The 2nd Strike Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

This book is the second book of the Cormoran Strike novels and is written in much the same way, with the chapters alternating between P.I Cormoran and his assistant Robin. The style of writing is much the same as the HP series and as I said in my review for the first book in the series, Cuckoo's Calling, I don't think it works. It makes the writing style awkward and hard to read I feel, I struggled with it at times.

Once again the story focuses on Cormoran Strike as he investigates a murder. This time Owen Quine author has been murdered in the same way one of his characters was murdered in his new manuscript. We then follow Strike as he investigates the murder, Quine it doesn't seem is short of enemies and there appears to be hidden clues in the manuscript.

I found the book odd. Dislike is too strong of a word for how I feel about this book. But there were many things about this book that I didn't like; the snide almost nasty way I felt the author described the press and the "famous" people in the first book are here too with the added bonus of there appearing to be a complete dislike of the literary world. The snippets of the manuscript that we got to read through Robin reading it, were very strange, they were very wacky and confusing and I didn't feel added anything to the plot at all.

I do thing the author has done a good job with the characterisation of Strike and he is intriguing, but he seems to be the only character who has any real depth to them. The story is also well paced, but is quite predictable in places.

Of course I might be one of the few that are not overly fond of these books, but they just didn't gel with me. I don't think I will be reading any more in the series, there was more about this book that disliked than I liked and to me, that usually means it’s time to stop reading in a series. So I won't continue reading.

9 people found this helpful

Jippu

Depressingly bad

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 27, 2020

Verified Purchase

I am a fan of Harry Potter. But Cormoran Strike! Why did J K Rowling want to write about a grubby, one legged detective, who has definitely chosen a wrong profession, trying to shadow unfaithful wives or husbands (nobody will miss a big man with only one leg), who often behaves like a child (works in potter books but not here) has a young female admirer attracted inexplicably to him who also behaves like a teenager, and is in horrible pain for most of the time. Why not a competent woman who succeeds against difficult enemies? And the plot: an unreadable book which is supposed to be libellous against the murdered author's colleagues but where the characters are so surreal that there is surely no risk that they could have sued the author. The only concrete thing is that the author describes his own, extremely complicated murder in the book and then is promptly killed in precisely this, totally impossible way. Almost all characters except the female admirers of Cormoran Strike are highly unpleasant or unsympathetic. The plot is extremely convoluted and improbable. The writing is bad, with even some errors a competent editor should have corrected. Interestingly, many readers seem to think that this is the best book of the Cormoran Strike series. Would not dream to try another!

2 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

) I've spent happy hours trying to untangle the clues

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 14, 2017

Verified Purchase

I'm very late to the Strike novels and now I'm an addict. I was quickly immersed in the narrative - more gruesome and nightmarish than 'The Cuckoo's Calling' - and thoroughly invested in Strike and Robin. (Leave Matthew, Robin, for heaven's sake.) I've spent happy hours trying to untangle the clues, literal, figurative and linguistic, engaged and frustrated as the author has played me like a fish. I'm already binge reading the next one, with my hair standing on end. I can't wait for 'Lethal White'. Entertaining, puzzling, funny and frightening - can I call something grisly a treat?

15 people found this helpful

DGol

Very good, unputdownable mystery thriller

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 16, 2021

Verified Purchase

I thought The Silkworm was a gruesome (and in places downright unpalatable), but competent thriller. I found Strike and Robin more developed as characters (more so than they were in Cuckoo’s), and it was good that they are shown with flaws and a shared theme of having terrible tastes when it comes to romantic partners.

While Strike is pretty much a wreck (is that quite appealing in some men, do you think?), Robin is good-looking, highly intelligent, capable, and someone who reveals ‘hidden talents’. Although, in every way, insufferable like the know-it-all, Hermione. Other depictions of women in the book were considerably less flattering, elevating Robin’s status further. I don’t know if this was intentional, but I felt like HP and Ron rolling their eyes while Hermione patronised, or condescended to them.

The saving grace is I do love reading about London, and can follow the characters on their journeys with ease and nostalgic delight. This above all are some of my more favourite parts of these books. Warts and all - having to go past gangs of youth and not quite making your train etc., well, in the days before the virus.

All the characters in this book, to certain degrees, are treated sympathetically and they are essentially not wholly good or evil. This does help keep things believable, and the less believable bits are down to luck or serendipitous events. Sometimes detectives need to get lucky (in the words of Columbo), which happens here.

Another thing, the unravelling of plots and themes happens a bit too quickly in places, because a couple of times it was difficult to follow Strike’s train of thought, and I found myself reading back the last couple of pages to see anything I might’ve missed the first time round. The author demands complete attention from the reader and presses on whether the reader can catch up or not. Perhaps, in doing so, some readers will just give up on the somewhat convoluted narrative.

However, the main lead is not typically handsome, a traumatised veteran and disabled. Yet he overcomes daily pain to focus on his tasks. I can relate to this in terms of dealing with and managing daily pain, but still having to make a living.

Strike’s work is not at all glamorous in some places, when stalking unfaithful spouses. I wonder if the editor could’ve been a bit more heavy-handed and removed a couple of these segues into irrelevant events. I do get, however, that the author wanted to show the more unglamorous side of private detective work. This could have been covered in a couple of pages, not several.

The other characters are ambiguous and sometimes like ghastly caricatures, which reminded me of Roald Dahl’s style. This does make for compelling reading and despite my irritation of not being able to follow or understand Strike in places, I found myself getting absorbed into this thrilling tale.

The real question though: is Robin really Top Gear’s ‘Stig’?!