new cormoran strike book review

J.K. Rowling reveals title of Strike #8: “The Hallmarked Man”

Unexpectedly and through Twitter, J.K. Rowling has revealed the title of the eighth book in the Cormoran Strike series: “ The Hallmarked Man .”

Apparently, from the Isle of Sark (in the English Channel), Rowling tweeted a photo of the place she had previously used to give hints about the book in progress. Now, she has revealed the title that will follow the seventh installment, “The Running Grave.”

Now that Rowling has unveiled the title, we’ll have to wait to find out the publication date, hopefully it will be later this year.

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J.K. Rowling’s transphobic new novel sees her at the mercy of all her worst impulses

In the detective novel Troubled Blood, Rowling spends most of her time explaining why she’s mad at modern feminism.

by Constance Grady

J.K. Rowling’s latest novel made headlines for generating controversy well before its US release date of September 29. That’s because Troubled Blood , the newest installment of the detective series Rowling publishes under the pen name Robert Galbraith, features a serial killer who lures his victims into a false sense of security by dressing as a woman.

Fears of a bad man in a dress are one of the main justifications for anti-trans legislation across the globe. In the US and the UK over the past few years, that’s taken the form of the bathroom bill controversies : Trans people want to be able to use public restrooms and changing rooms that correspond to their gender identity.

But opponents argue that if trans people were allowed to use the public bathrooms that corresponded to their gender identity, women and children will undoubtedly be menaced by sexual predators using this legal loophole to ogle women in their most vulnerable state. In practice, however, US states that have allowed trans people to use the facilities corresponding to their gender have seen no increase in sexual harassment or assault in public restrooms .

Rowling, however, has stated that it is “the simple truth” that allowing trans women to use women’s bathrooms will lead to violent men using those loopholes to attack “natal girls and women.” She began outlining her views on gender in a series of tweets last fall, then elaborated on them in a long essay published this June . There, Rowling perpetuated a series of outdated myths about trans people while repeatedly stating that she’s not transphobic, because she knows and likes trans people. She just also thinks that trans women aren’t real women, that they’re taking advantage of resources meant for “biological women,” and that they are enabling predatory men to commit violence against those “biological women.”

To be clear, regardless of Rowling’s personal feelings toward trans people, all of the ideas she expressed in her essay are transphobic. They actively seek to take rights away from trans people, and they treat trans identity as something that is up for debate, rather than an intrinsic part of human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity. But Rowling has threatened to sue publications who describe her and her views as transphobic, forcing at least one children’s site to issue a public apology .

So to some critics , Troubled Blood is just the latest sign of J.K. Rowling’s increasingly outspoken and retrograde ideas about gender. Others have countered that the book contains no trans characters , that detractors were judging the book without reading it, and that dismissing Troubled Blood before its publication over worries about a trope is cancel culture at its worst. What it would mean to cancel J.K. Rowling, a billionaire with theme park attractions built around her intellectual property, remains unclear. But in any case, Troubled Blood debuted at No. 1 in the UK .

I’ve read all of Troubled Blood ’s many pages, and I can say that this book is transphobic. But it’s also just not very good.

What Troubled Blood is, above all else, is an example of Rowling at the mercy of all her worst impulses.

Troubled Blood is the fifth volume in Rowling’s Cormoran Strike books, a series of noir-inflected murder mysteries. The name of the series comes from their protagonist, a grizzled army police officer-turned-private detective named Cormoran Strike, who solves crimes with his partner/obvious eventual love interest, Robin.

The Cormoran Strike books have never been perfect, but they’re usually fun. The part of writing that Rowling is best at is constructing a mystery, so her whodunnits are always absorbing and twisty. And writing under a (masculine) pen name seems to grant Rowling freedom to be playful and flippant in a way she hasn’t been since the very first Harry Potter novels. (Rowling published the first volume in the Strike series, 2015’s The Cuckoo’s Calling , in genuine anonymity. She was unmasked a few months after the book came out, but she’s continued to use her Robert Galbraith pen name for all the books in the series that have followed.)

But Troubled Blood is not fun, and it’s not playful. It feels bloated and resentful, turgid with an ethos of grim duty. It’s the writing of someone who feels she has no choice but to bring some home truths to you, the reader, and damn the consequences.

Troubled Blood also reads like nothing so much as a stylistic sequel to Rowling’s incredibly boring 2012 novel Casual Vacancy .

Casual Vacancy was a dour class satire that seemed to be animated most strongly by Rowling’s desire to be taken seriously as an author of literary fiction for adults. Troubled Blood seems to be animated most strongly by Rowling’s desire to share her political opinions on feminism and other gender issues with the world.

It features Strike and Robin setting out together to solve the disappearance of one Margot Bamborough, a feminist doctor who vanished from the world in 1974. The police strongly suspected that Margot was abducted by the serial killer Dennis Creed (the one who wears women’s clothes), but they were never able to solve the case. And now, 40 years later, Margot’s daughter Anna — a lesbian, Rowling notes with an air of triumph, as if to say, see, she’s not homophobic — has hired Strike and Robin to try to bring her closure on the mystery once and for all.

Over the course of the year-long investigation that ensues, Strike and Robin manage to establish the following: Fourth-wave feminism , with its Slut Walks and pro-porn stance, is nothing but a bunch of idiotic children having airy, academic discussions about words, while enabling the sexual assault of women and the sex trafficking of children.

In contrast, Margot’s brand of ’70s second-wave feminism was correct and righteous, except for its lamentable pro-choice stance. (All sympathetic characters in Troubled Blood , except for poor misguided Margot, are pro-contraception but anti-abortion.) Moreover, women are all bound together by their biological destiny, which leaves them in danger of being victimized by predatory men. And the most dangerous predator of all is the predator who cloaks themselves in femininity.

This final category of dangerous predators includes Creed the serial killer, who is obsessed with women’s clothing. Creed wears a wig and a women’s coat and lipstick to abduct his victims, because his disguise makes the drunk women he targets perceive him first as another woman and then as a harmless drag queen. But his interest in cross-dressing isn’t purely utilitarian. He also steals trophy garments from his victims and masturbates into them.

“I felt I stole something of their essence from them,” says Creed of his penchant for taking women’s underwear, “taking that which they thought private and hidden.” ( Per Rowling’s Galbraith website , Creed is loosely based on two real serial killers. Per the Guardian , both of them stole women’s clothes from their victims, and one of the two may have worn them, although the evidence there seems to be fuzzy.)

But there are other predators besides Creed in this most dangerous category of deceptive femininity, and one of them manages to fool Strike. “Like the women who’d climbed willingly into Dennis Creed’s van,” Strike muses of this villain at the end of Troubled Blood , “he’d been hoodwinked by a careful performance of femininity.”

This particular predator who manages to best Strike is cis. But within the world of Troubled Blood , it’s this predator’s cold-blooded and inauthentic performance of femininity that makes them monstrous. And in her nonfiction writing, Rowling has strongly suggested that she believes trans women are cold-bloodedly performing a gender identity that does not truly belong to them, and that, in the process, they are stealing away resources that exist to help what Rowling calls “biological women” cope with the world’s misogyny.

In Troubled Blood , the overt performance of gender is done with an eye to deceive, to misdirect, to harm. Cis women may experiment with their femininity — there’s a recurring motif that sees Robin test driving different perfumes as she decides what kind of woman she wants to be in the wake of her divorce — but men who take an interest in femininity are dismissed even by open-minded Robin as “camp.” Meanwhile, the good gay man who Robin lives with is clean-cut enough to get an acting job playing a straight army vet. Anna the good lesbian is non-threateningly feminine, by which Rowling usually means pretty. (When Rowling writes a woman in touch with her masculine side, the result tends to look like Harry Potter’s wicked Aunt Marge.)

And anyone in this book who wields their gender across boundaries with deliberate intent is a monster.

All of these political ideas are what Troubled Blood is, broadly speaking, “about.” They are where the narrative tension lies, where the juice of the book is. But Troubled Blood is also ostensibly a murder mystery, and the murder plot provides the skeleton from which the political ideas are hung.

So is it a good murder mystery? Not really. It is way, way, way too fucking long.

Rowling’s always had a tendency to go long and sprawling whenever the pressure is on. The Harry Potter books turned into doorstoppers with Goblet of Fire , right at the time they’d become such a phenomenon that the midnight release parties were starting. And Troubled Blood , which comes just as Rowling is beginning to speak more and more publicly about her views on gender, is even longer — it clocks in at a hefty 927 pages, with a plot stretching out across a full year.

Within that year, Strike and Robin sift their way through innumerable red herrings. Ordinarily, this is a part of plotting at which Rowling excels; she’s very good at flashy authorial sleight of hand, directing the reader’s attention this way while she seeds the information that will turn out to be vital just where you’re not looking. But in this case, the red herrings pile on so heavily and for so long that they begin to feel meaningless. There’s no pleasure to be had in trying to figure out what’s worth paying attention to and what can be discarded, because there’s just more information than any reader could possibly hold on to.

I began to feel unpleasantly reminded of that part of Deathly Hallows that turns into a long, sad, pointless camping trip where nothing happens: Are we really just checking every random tree in this forest for clues? That’s how we’re going to solve this one?

In a way, the plotting in Troubled Blood is even less satisfying. While the second half of the Harry Potter series is bloated, there’s still pleasure to be had in those books from all the genre-blending Rowling is doing. When the mystery fails, the fun of the magic and the friendships and the boarding school coziness can take over. Maybe you don’t particularly care about where Voldemort’s Horcruxes are, but there’s still magical camping and teen angst and wizarding revolutionary radios to be had, right? Maybe you’re getting distracted by the frankly wild ethics of the house-elves and their slavery, but boy, that Marauder’s Map sure is a blast, right?

In Troubled Blood , when the mystery falters and you aren’t taken by the political ideas animating it, what’s left for you to care about is the long slow-burn romance between Robin and Strike. And I do more or less want Robin and Strike to be together, in the same way I sort of vaguely wanted Ron and Hermione to be together but never bothered over it much. I definitely don’t care about Robin and Strike one-thousand-pages-of-refusing-to-talk-about-feelings much. At this point, with both of them single and both of them gazing endlessly at each other, what is even keeping them apart anymore? It’s exhausting just to contemplate.

There’s a plotline in the Cormoran Strike books that I’ve been thinking about ever since Rowling first began to talk about trans issues in public.

Other critics have already discussed the way she treated trans women in the second volume of the series, The Silk Worm . In that book, the two trans women Strike meets in the course of his investigation are ostensibly sympathetic characters, but Strike treats them as mockable. When one of them isn’t forthcoming with the information he wants, he casually threatens her with prison rape.

But what’s haunting me is a subplot from the series’s third volume, Career of Evil .

In Career of Evil , Strike’s investigation leads him to a subculture built around people who want to become physically disabled. On hidden forums, they discuss the operations they plan to get in order to manifest the disabilities they believe they already spiritually possess, and they complain bitterly that the rest of the world doesn’t understand their plight. Does anyone think they would choose to live like this, with such inaccessible and easily mocked desires? Don’t people understand that they were born with these wishes, that these desires are an intrinsic part of their identity?

Strike, who lost a leg in the war, takes this group’s obsession personally. He is incensed and offended by them. How dare they try to playact at an identity which became his so painfully, at such great cost? How dare they try to appropriate his own personal, private pain?

He has lunch with two people from the forum, and they rudely force him to pay while ordering the most expensive options on the menu. One of them is in a wheelchair. Strike at last loses his patience and pushes her out of the chair, only to find that she can walk just fine without it.

I don’t know what’s going on in J.K. Rowling’s mind or how she sees the world. But she writes about trans people the way Strike thinks about this particular subculture: as people appropriating a disability — and Rowling does write about womanhood, and its attendant dangers, as if it were a disability —  that is rightfully hers. And that idea is becoming more and more central to every book she writes.

I don’t know what to do with J.K. Rowling anymore. I don’t know what anyone should do with her and her books.

I don’t believe that it’s sustainable or valuable or even really possible to ask every author you follow to enact some sort of ideologically pure, progressive worldview in every book they write. Most readers, I think, would agree with me on that . That’s part of why so many readers stuck with Rowling despite the politics embedded in the subtext of the Harry Potter novels, which have always been centrist at best , and through the increasing crankiness of the Cormoran Strike series.

I don’t think that you have to throw away the Harry Potter series to prove you’re a good person. I don’t know if it’s even possible to avoid those books: They’re so embedded into the grid of pop culture by this point that they feel like a utility, like an electric company. How do you avoid electricity every single day without becoming a hermit? How do you choose to throw out a series you grew up on, that you built beloved childhood memories around?

Every reader has to have their own dividing line between what they are willing to work with and what they are not. Every reader has to choose the way they will approach a text , and what they’re going to take out of it and what they’ll leave behind. And that’s a choice you have to make for yourself.

• What do we do when the art we love was created by a monster?

I’ve written positively about the Cormoran Strike books before, despite what happened to the trans women in book two and that bizarre trans-disability subplot in book three, and despite that ongoing thing where Rowling always treats fat people as inherently grotesque and probably evil. I thought the mysteries were fun, and I found it easy to ignore the politics. That was a choice I was used to making after growing up on Harry Potter , and because I am a thin cis non-disabled woman, it was easy for me to make that choice without thinking too hard about it.

But I can’t ignore the politics of Troubled Blood , and I don’t think that’s just because of all of the essays and tweets Rowling’s written over the past year. I think that’s because the politics are the only part of Troubled Blood she really cares about, and that shows in the writing.

So here is what I do know.

Troubled Blood is a book in which aesthetics have been rendered subordinate to politics. There is no “there” there besides Rowling’s political ideas. And those ideas are reactionary and hateful.

I don’t see anything left in this book worth sticking around for.

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The Best Fiction Books » Popular Fiction Books

The running grave, by robert galbraith.

The Running Grave is  the 7th book in Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling)’s Cormoran Strike series , one of the most enjoyable crime fiction series out there. It features Cormoran Strike, a British war veteran-turned-private investigator, and Robin Ellacott, who starts out as a temp but becomes his business partner. In The Running Grave , Robin goes undercover to join a religious cult on behalf of a client who is worried sick about his son. The books in this series tend not to be fast-paced thrillers, but get you into the daily lives of the main characters, with the plot/mystery driving the story forward. If you haven’t read any of the books yet, it’s best to start with the first, The Cuckoo’s Calling ,  published exactly a decade ago.

Other books by Robert Galbraith

The cuckoo's calling by robert galbraith, the silkworm by robert galbraith, career of evil by robert galbraith, lethal white by robert galbraith, troubled blood by robert galbraith, the ink black heart by robert galbraith, our most recommended books, three eight one by aliya whiteley, the tower: a novel by flora carr, funny story by emily henry, the last murder at the end of the world by stuart turton, the tainted cup by robert jackson bennett.

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• Cormoran Strike Book 8

Introducing the eagerly awaited eighth installment in the enthralling Cormoran Strike series penned by the acclaimed author, Robert Galbraith.

• Robert Galbraith

Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike series is classic contemporary crime fiction from a master story-teller, rich in plot, characterisation and detail. Galbraith’s debut into crime fiction garnered acclaim amongst critics and crime fans alike. The first three novels The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013), The Silkworm (2014) and Career of Evil (2015) all topped the national and international bestseller lists and have been adapted for television, produced by Brontë Film and Television. The fourth in the series, Lethal White (2018), is out now.

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Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym of J. K. Rowling , bestselling author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults. After Harry Potter, the author chose crime fiction for her next books, a genre she has always loved as a reader. She wanted to write a contemporary whodunit, with a credible back story. 

J.K. Rowling’s original intention for writing as Robert Galbraith was for the books to be judged on their own merit, and to establish Galbraith as a well-regarded name in crime in its own right. 

Now Robert Galbraith’s true identity is widely known, J.K. Rowling continues to write the crime series under the Galbraith pseudonym to keep the distinction from her other writing and so people will know what to expect from a Cormoran Strike novel.

• Cormoran Strike

Cormoran Strike consists of seven books, and the series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.

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The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith review – a riveting race against time

JK Rowling’s will they/won’t they detective duo return in a hefty but immersive tale of an attempted rescue from a cult

I n the 10 years since a debut crime novel entitled The Cuckoo’s Calling was published and its author – Robert Galbraith – revealed to be none other than JK Rowling , the Cormoran Strike books have, like the Harry Potter novels before them, steadily expanded in size. The hardback of 2022’s The Ink Black Heart, sixth in the series, was very nearly twice the length of that first volume, and this year’s offering, The Running Grave, is similarly hefty.

Some judicious trimming wouldn’t have gone amiss – the subplot, about the stalking of a female actor, often seems an impediment to the primary narrative – but it’s worth staying the course for an immersive and, for the most part, riveting read.

As ever, the private detective and his business partner Robin Ellacott’s personal lives are at the fore. The decade-long will they/won’t they romantic suspense shows no sign of being resolved, although Robin is increasingly ill at ease with her police officer boyfriend, and Cormoran’s ill-advised displacement activity with a “man-hungry pain in the arse” named Bijou is threatening to have serious repercussions for him and the agency. His reckless, unbalanced ex-lover, Charlotte, is intensifying her usual emotional blackmail by claiming – perhaps truthfully – to have cancer, and there are family problems to contend with, too. Elderly Uncle Ted, who did his best to protect the young Cormoran and his half-sister Lucy from the consequences of their chaotic mother’s peripatetic lifestyle, is sinking into dementia.

Against a background of all this, plus the 2016 Brexit referendum, is a tale of how the human desire for approval, validation and a sense of purpose can sometimes lead us astray. Sir Colin Edensor, a retired civil servant, approaches the pair with a request to help extricate his vulnerable neurodivergent son from the clutches of a cult. Several years earlier, Will dropped out of university to join the Universal Humanitarian Church. All attempts to dislodge him from its headquarters, a farm in Norfolk, have proved fruitless: Will has now cut off communication with his family, and his trust fund is being systematically drained.

The UHC, which presents as a benign organisation with worthy aims, has a charismatic leader known as Papa J, some high-profile followers, a lot of prime real estate, and expensive lawyers to rebut any claims of indoctrination or ill treatment. Added to which, it’s very difficult to find any former members who will discuss their time at the farm. Those who can be persuaded talk of supernatural happenings, in particular the apparition of the “Drowned Prophet”, believed to be a divine reincarnation of Papa J’s seven-year-old daughter Daiyu, who supposedly disappeared during a dip in the North Sea in 1995.

Robin goes undercover and soon discovers that, despite the chanted slogans about freedom and happiness, both are in very short supply. In a world with no calendars or clocks, let alone wifi, the undernourished disciples, exhausted by back-breaking work, are denied medical assistance if they are ill, routinely coerced into unprotected sex – referred to as “spirit bonding” – and made complicit in various crimes. Forced to agree that “black’s white and up’s down” and fearful of punishment, the participants begin, after a while, to gaslight themselves.

Posing as a rich woman who might make a donation can only provide Robin with so much protection. Before long, she has incurred the wrath of Papa J’s baleful wife, and she’s running out of excuses not to spirit bond. It’s a race against the clock to uncover enough evidence of wrongdoing – not least what really happened to young Daiyu – to persuade Will to return to his family before Robin is rumbled.

With enough jeopardy and tension to overcome the longueurs, and despite the author’s continuing predilection for unnecessary and distracting phonetic dialogue, The Running Grave is testimony to Rowling/Galbraith’s skill as a storyteller. And, as the nights draw in, it’s a pleasure to curl up with two characters who have all the pleasant familiarity of old friends.

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The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith, review: JK Rowling’s latest is fat-shaming and sexist

The Running Grave is the seventh Cormoran Strike book by Robert Galbraith (the pseudonym of JK Rowling ), which based on where it comes in the series makes it the equivalent of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows .

But while that adventure ended the Potter saga, there is every indication that the Strike books will go on forever – even if this novel has as many shortcomings as qualities to recommend it.

Let’s start with the positives. The setup here is instantly compelling – detective partners Strike and Robin are hired by a family whose son has disappeared into a religious cult on a farm estate in Norfolk. The troubled young man, Will, has cut off all contact with his family and they are worried about him.

The decision is made that Robin will go undercover, posing as a new recruit at the farm, which makes for fascinating and very tense reading, though there is a weird similarity with Harry Potter , because the farm is like a distorted, evil version of Hogwarts.

The recruits are put into groups – I kept expecting the Sorting Hat to arrange it – and they have to learn a whole new vocabulary and way of living, but instead of potions and spells there are spirit wives, free love, and a resistance to notions of family.

The cult details are horrible – the new recruits and lower-level members are forced to do manual labour, are not fed properly, and are subject to cruel and degrading punishments. Rowling is very good on the effects on the rest of the family outside the cult when one member goes rogue – the difficulties for siblings and their variable attitudes to what is going on.

But it takes 200 pages just to get Robin into the cult HQ, and that points to a major issue: The Running Grave is a total doorstopper of more than 900 pages, and seems to be suffering from the same problem as afflicted its predecessors – no-one dares to tell Rowling that it would be a better book at half the length.

There are long scenes where people are questioned – their answers infuriatingly rendered in weird phonetic speech with every “like” and “you know” included.

And there is far too much detail about Strike and Robin’s detective agency – they have clients on the go other than Will’s family, who are endlessly described, which seems neither necessary nor a good idea. When Rowling starts telling us the shift patterns of the employees you think this really is getting out of hand.

What’s more, plenty of elements simply don’t ring true. Strike is rude and unpleasant, but magnetically attractive to women, and also tabloid-famous for being a private detective, not something we are familiar with in the real world.

Characters make mistakes because they haven’t charged their phones, or because they are upset. If you are going to write 900 pages I think you could spend some time thinking of better reasons to miss something vital.

Rowling’s last book, The Ink Black Heart , looked at the kind of online pile-on she was familiar with due to her views on trans rights. The real-world parallels are subtler here, but there are still hints of commentary about our increasingly black and white public debates as she examines the idea of people being brainwashed and unable to see past the lines they are being fed.

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But despite Rowling’s engagement with current issues, in places the book’s treatment of women feels outdated; Rowling has, most unexpectedly, taken on the persona of a male thriller writer.

The books would fail a Bechdel Test – women characters do not have meaningful discussions that don’t involve men. Robin is an excellent, well-rounded character, but she is too much obsessed by and in awe of Strike and spends any time with friends hearing about, and worrying about, Strike.

And the unattractive women in the book are described as fat, chubby, porky, in a casual way. This made me realize that there has been a change for the better in most modern books, so Rowling comes over as judgmental: someone should suggest cutting the fat-shaming .

Somewhere, here, there is a good book, but it is hidden in a baggy and flawed outer shell. Rowling is one of our richest and most successful writers, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need advice – or an editor.

‘The Running Grave’ is published by Sphere, £25

'The Cuckoo's Calling reminds me why I fell in love with crime fiction in the first place' VAL MCDERMID

Now a major BBC drama: The Strike series  

When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, and calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case. 

Strike is a war veteran - wounded both physically and psychologically - and his life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the more he delves into the young model's complex world, the darker things get - and the closer he gets to terrible danger . . . 

A gripping, elegant mystery steeped in the atmosphere of London - from the hushed streets of Mayfair to the backstreet pubs of the East End to the bustle of Soho - The Cuckoo's Calling is a remarkable book. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. 

*** The latest book in the thrilling Strike series, TROUBLED BLOOD, is available to pre-order now! ***

PRAISE FOR THE STRIKE SERIES:

'One of the most unique and compelling detectives I've come across in years' MARK BILLINGHAM 

'The work of a master storyteller'  DAILY TELEGRAPH 

'Unputdownable. . . Irresistible'  SUNDAY TIMES 

'Will keep you up all night' OBSERVER 

'A thoroughly enjoyable classic' PETER JAMES, SUNDAY EXPRESS

Now a major BBC drama: The Strike series

When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, and calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case.

Strike is a war veteran - wounded both physically and psychologically - and his life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the more he delves into the young model's complex world, the darker things get - and the closer he gets to terrible danger . . .

A gripping, elegant mystery steeped in the atmosphere of London - from the hushed streets of Mayfair to the backstreet pubs of the East End to the bustle of Soho - The Cuckoo's Calling is a remarkable book. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

'One of the most unique and compelling detectives I've come across in years' MARK BILLINGHAM

'The work of a master storyteller' DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Unputdownable. . . Irresistible' SUNDAY TIMES

'Will keep you up all night' OBSERVER

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***The 7th novel in the Strike series, THE RUNNING GRAVE, is coming in September 2023. Pre-order now and be the first to read it*** 'Teems with sly humour, witty asides and intelligence ... A pleasure to read' TIMES ----- Now a major BBC drama: The Strike series When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he 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 realises. 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 - so there are a lot of people who might want to silence him. And when Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances, it becomes a 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 the highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike and his determined young assistant Robin Ellacott. *** The latest book in the thrilling Strike series, TROUBLED BLOOD, is out now! *** ----- PRAISE FOR THE STRIKE SERIES: 'One of the most unique and compelling detectives I've come across in years ' MARK BILLINGHAM 'The work of a master storyteller' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Unputdownable. . . Irresistible' SUNDAY TIMES 'Will keep you up all night' OBSERVER 'A thoroughly enjoyable classic' PETER JAMES, SUNDAY EXPRESS

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***The 7th novel in the Strike series, THE RUNNING GRAVE, is coming in September 2023. Pre-order now and be the first to read it*** 'Deliriously clever' GUARDIAN ----- Now a major BBC drama: The Strike series When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman's severed leg. Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible - and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality. With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them... A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, Career of Evil is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives. You will not be able to put this book down. *** The latest book in the thrilling Strike series, TROUBLED BLOOD, is out now! *** ----- PRAISE FOR THE STRIKE SERIES: 'One of the most unique and compelling detectives I've come across in years ' MARK BILLINGHAM 'The work of a master storyteller' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Unputdownable. . . Irresistible' SUNDAY TIMES 'Will keep you up all night' OBSERVER 'A thoroughly enjoyable classic' PETER JAMES, SUNDAY EXPRESS

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***The 7th novel in the Strike series, THE RUNNING GRAVE, is coming in September 2023. Pre-order now and be the first to read it*** 'Hugely absorbing. . . the best Strike novel yet' SUNDAY MIRROR 'Highly inventive storytelling' GUARDIAN 'Outrageously entertaining' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Come for the twists and turns and stay for the beautifully drawn central relationship' INDEPENDENT 'Blistering piece of crime writing' SUNDAY TIMES 'Fans will love it' HEAT ----- *** The latest book in the thrilling Strike series, TROUBLED BLOOD, is out now! *** When Billy, a troubled young man, comes to private eye Cormoran Strike's office to ask for his help investigating a crime he thinks he witnessed as a child, Strike is left deeply unsettled. While Billy is obviously mentally distressed, and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic. Trying to get to the bottom of Billy's story, Strike and Robin Ellacott - once his assistant, now a partner in the agency - set off on a twisting trail that leads them through the backstreets of London, into a secretive inner sanctum within Parliament, and to a beautiful but sinister manor house deep in the countryside. And during this labyrinthine investigation, Strike's own life is far from straightforward: his newfound fame as a private eye means he can no longer operate behind the scenes as he once did. Plus, his relationship with his former assistant is more fraught than it ever has been - Robin is now invaluable to Strike in the business, but their personal relationship is much, much more tricky than that . . . Epic and enthralling, Lethal White is the gripping fourth instalment in the ongoing story of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. ----- PRAISE FOR THE STRIKE SERIES: 'One of the most unique and compelling detectives I've come across in years ' MARK BILLINGHAM 'The work of a master storyteller' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Unputdownable. . . Irresistible' SUNDAY TIMES 'Will keep you up all night' OBSERVER 'A thoroughly enjoyable classic' PETER JAMES, SUNDAY EXPRESS

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***The 7th novel in the Strike series, THE RUNNING GRAVE, is coming in September 2023. Pre-order now and be the first to read it*** Winner of the Crime and Thriller British Book of the Year Award 2021 'One of crime's most engaging duos' Guardian 'Magnificent' Sunday Times 'Finely honed, superbly constructed' Daily Mail 'Terrific' Daily Express Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough - who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974. Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. Plus the pair are still battling their feelings for one another, while Robin is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention. As Strike and Robin investigate Margot's disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly . . . A breathtaking, labyrinthine epic, Troubled Blood is the fifth Strike and Robin novel and the most gripping and satisfying yet. Praise for the Strike series: 'A blistering piece of crime writing' Sunday Times 'The work of a master storyteller ' Daily Telegraph ' Unputdownable ' Daily Express 'Highly inventive storytelling' Guardian 'Superb . . . an ingenious whodunnit' Sunday Mirror 'Come for the twists and turns and stay for the beautifully drawn central relationship' Independent 'Outrageously entertaining ' Financial Times

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***The 7th novel in the Strike series, THE RUNNING GRAVE, is coming in September 2023. Pre-order now and be the first to read it*** THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, JULY 2023 'A superlative piece of crime fiction' SUNDAY TIMES 'There can be no denying [Galbraith's] considerable talents as a crime writer' GUARDIAN 'Fans will be as entranced as ever' DAILY MAIL When frantic, dishevelled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn't know quite what to make of the situation. The co-creator of a popular cartoon, The Ink Black Heart , Edie is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. Edie is desperate to uncover Anomie's true identity. Robin decides that the agency can't help with this - and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart . Robin and her business partner Cormoran Strike become drawn into the quest to uncover Anomie's true identity. But with a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts to navigate, Strike and Robin find themselves embroiled in a case that stretches their powers of deduction to the limits - and which threatens them in new and horrifying ways . . . A gripping, fiendishly clever mystery, The Ink Black Heart is a true tour-de-force.

• Hardcover £16.54
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'The work of a master storyteller ' Daily Telegraph 'One of crime's most engaging duos' Guardian THE SUNDAY TIMES CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2023 ________ Private Detective Cormoran Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside. The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organisation that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths. In order to try to rescue Will, Strike's business partner Robin Ellacott decides to infiltrate the cult and she travels to Norfolk to live incognito amongst them. But in doing so, she is unprepared for the dangers that await her there or for the toll it will take on her . . . Utterly page-turning, The Running Grave moves Strike and Robin's story forward in the epic, unforgettable seventh instalment of the series. ________ PRAISE FOR THE STRIKE NOVELS 'A blistering piece of crime writing' Sunday Times ' Unputdownable ' Daily Express 'A page-turner that will keep you up all night ' Observer 'Superb . . . an ingenious whodunnit' Sunday Mirror 'Strike and Robin are just as magnetic as ever' New York Times ' Outrageously entertaining ' Financial Times

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Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike series is classic contemporary crime fiction from a master story-teller, rich in plot, characterisation and detail. Galbraith’s debut into crime fiction garnered acclaim amongst critics and crime fans alike. The first three novels The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013), The Silkworm (2014) and Career of Evil (2015) all topped the national and international bestseller lists and have been adapted for television, produced by Brontë Film and Television. The fourth in the series, Lethal White (2018), is out now.

Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym of J.K. Rowling, bestselling author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults. After Harry Potter, the author chose crime fiction for her next books, a genre she has always loved as a reader. She wanted to write a contemporary whodunit, with a credible back story.

J.K. Rowling’s original intention for writing as Robert Galbraith was for the books to be judged on their own merit, and to establish Galbraith as a well-regarded name in crime in its own right.

Now Robert Galbraith’s true identity is widely known, J.K. Rowling continues to write the crime series under the Galbraith pseudonym to keep the distinction from her other writing and so people will know what to expect from a Cormoran Strike novel.

https://robert-galbraith.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CormoranStrikeNovelsOfficial

Twitter: @RGalbraith

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Sky swoops for max’s ‘the penguin’ tv series.

• ‘Strike’ Star Tom Burke Requested BBC Media Training To Prepare For J.K. Rowling Trans Questions

By Jake Kanter

Jake Kanter

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Tom Burke says he requested media training from the BBC to help him handle questions about J.K Rowling’s strident views on transgender rights.

Burke is currently on the publicity trail for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga , but he has recently filmed Season 6 of BBC/ HBO series Strike , which Rowling pens under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

The actor told The Independent that he asked for media training ahead of an interview with the publication, during which he was careful to remain neutral on the trans debate.

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He added: “I hate this term ‘culture war’ … Maybe it’s naive of me to say that, but I don’t want to be part of it. I want to bring people together.”

Burke said his “integrity sits fine” with starring in Strike , despite a well-documented backlash against Rowling’s views, including from Harry Potter stars including Daniel Radcliffe.

Burke said he did not wish to take sides in the debate, but said he felt sympathy for anyone who has faced “any kind of anger” for expressing their views.

“My integrity is to step away,” he said. “I’m aware that might mean people think I’m on the fence; it’s just what sits well with me right now. I’m not saying I’ll never speak out; it’s not that I don’t feel part of it. It’s just that I want to say something that’s helpful to resolution.”

Burke stars in Strike as Cormoran Strike, a war veteran turned private detective. Season 6 will adapt  The Ink Black Heart , which has echoes of Rowling’s own experience of being caught up in the culture wars. It centers on the murder of a successful YouTube animator after she becomes the target of relentless online hate. At one point, Edie Ledwell is accused of being transphobic.

Rowling has been clear that the character is not based on her own life, but recognizes that she experienced similar online hate during and after writing the novel, published in August 2022.

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In the Corporate World, Woke Is the Rage but Greed Is Still King

Three new books chronicle businesses where executive self-enrichment at the expense of workers — and sometimes the law — prevails.

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By James B. Stewart

It’s been 14 years since Goldman Sachs was vilified as a “vampire squid” by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone. “Organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy,” he concluded then.

Goldman has since experienced some hard times, tarred by scandal (the looting of a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund ) and forced to bail out of consumer banking. Big companies like Walt Disney are under attack not so much from the socialist left, but by conservatives for being too “woke.” Yet organized greed lives on, a seemingly intractable aspect of human nature, as three new business books make clear.

The age-old swing of the pendulum between greed, excess and regulation is the subject of TAMING THE OCTOPUS: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation (Norton, 290 pp., $29.99), by Kyle Edward Williams, a history of efforts to temper capitalist excess through social responsibility, whether self-directed by corporations or imposed by regulators. Inevitably, greed and scandal breed regulation, which in turn provokes proponents of the free market to decry government overreach. Consider the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banking from more speculative investment banking during the Great Depression only to be relaxed by the Clinton administration more than six decades later. The cycle then begins anew.

In Williams’s telling, the free-marketers may engage in tactical retreats but always re-emerge, perhaps because they can fall back on the rigorous logic of economics, divorced from the messiness of the real world. Though nowhere near as widely known as Milton Friedman and George Stigler, his fellow free-market apostles, Henry G. Manne, a co-founder of the law and economics movement centered at the University of Chicago, emerges as an important figure in this swing of the pendulum. (Manne may be best remembered for his belief that insider trading should be legal, on the ground that it helps create a more efficient market — a purist’s view rejected by the courts, which continue to uphold convictions for the practice.) Manne died in 2015, but his protégés are many and influential, ready to pounce at the next sign of reform.

Williams, a historian and editor, offers a brisk and evenhanded overview of corporate regulation, tipping his hand only at the end, when he comes down on the Rolling Stone side of the divide. He isn’t the first — and surely won’t be the last — to conclude that “the corporate octopus is an institution incapable of being tamed.”

Like “Taming the Octopus,” BEHIND THE STARTUP: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (University of California Press, 311 pp., paperback, $29.95), by Benjamin Shestakofsky, began life as a Ph.D. thesis, this one in sociology, with the premise that its author would go to work at a San Francisco start-up and then write about it, on condition that he not name the company or its employees. The start-up, which he calls AllDone, aims to be the Amazon of service providers, matching customers with mostly small, local businesses. (Pseudonym notwithstanding, it took me only a few minutes on Google to identify the company.)

Readers willing to wade through the book’s sometimes academic prose will find a real-life “The Office,” Silicon Valley version, alternately comical and poignant, with satellite operations in the Philippines and Las Vegas.

The San Francisco location is AllDone’s nerve center, filled with software engineers and highly educated tech bros (they are mostly men) who earn high pay and stock options and experiment at a head-spinning pace. Their “first guiding principle,” according to the company’s introductory email: “Play to win: We’re a professional sports team, not a family.”

That intensely competitive environment is in stark contrast to the nurturing “family” culture in the fast-growing Philippines hub, where human labor is cheaper than using artificial intelligence (even though it’s clear that A.I. will eventually render the local workers’ jobs — mainly devoted to information processing and customer support — obsolete).

To judge from the obsequious emails that Shestakofsky quotes, the mostly college-educated Asian employees — many toiling for $2.50 an hour in the middle of the night, owing to the time zone — are thrilled with their jobs, their co-workers and the kindness shown them by their San Francisco bosses. As one employee writes, “AllDone is such a blessing. I always thank God for it every morning. (Praying hands emoji.) AllDone is (heart emoji).”

Las Vegas was the base for the company’s call center, where contractors (nearly all women) fielded customer questions and complaints and, as in the Philippines, worked for low pay with no benefits. It appeared to be a tough job. As one supervisor commented, callers were “pissed off and they want someone to yell at.” She advised a rattled employee: “Deep breath in , deep breath out ! Go to your happy place!”

Despite efforts to foster the same warm familial feelings and gratitude as in the Philippines (and the AllDone president’s rather callous observation that “Las Vegas is the Philippines of America”), the Las Vegas workers “failed to meet performance objectives, violated managerial directives, squabbled with each other and openly expressed dissatisfaction with managers in San Francisco,” Shestakofsky observes. The Las Vegas operation was eventually shut down, its functions moved to Salt Lake City.

AllDone has emerged as a “unicorn”: a successful start-up now valued at more than $1 billion. Its founders and the company’s venture capitalist investors are enormously rich, at least on paper — unlike its work force. Many readers will no doubt find these discrepancies troubling, as does the sociologist in Shestakofsky. “Among the most glaring social problems associated with venture capitalism is its role in reproducing vast disparities in wealth,” he writes. “Venture capitalism is designed to further enrich the wealthiest among us.”

At the same time, AllDone does supply a useful service for millions of customers. And what about all those heartfelt messages from workers in the Philippines? Would they be better off had AllDone never existed?

THE WOLVES OF K STREET: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government (Simon & Schuster, 612 pp., $34.99), by the journalists and brothers Brody and Luke Mullins, is less about how lobbying — now a $4 billion industry — shapes policy than about the machinations of its often colorful practitioners.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that an industry based on access, personal connections, influence and money would attract a rogues’ gallery of strivers and opportunists for whom conflicts of interest are cultivated rather than shunned.

These include Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. (a lobbying pioneer nicknamed “King of the Hill”); Tony Podesta ( investigated but never charged as part of the inquiry by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia); Paul Manafort ( convicted of multiple felonies connected to his lobbying for Ukraine before being pardoned by Trump ); and Roger Stone (also convicted of felonies related to the Mueller investigation before Trump commuted his prison sentence ), as well as lesser-known names like Evan Morris and Jim Courtovich.

The Mullins brothers cleverly set up their story as a mystery: the 2015 death of Morris by gunshot near the 18th green at the exclusive Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, outside Washington, D.C., a $1,500 bottle of Bordeaux at his side. (The death was eventually ruled a suicide.)

Many of the tales they recount received extensive news coverage, but the authors bring them to life with considerable narrative skill and novelistic detail. Podesta, for example, was so obsessed with collecting expensive art that he stayed in Turin, Italy, for an art fair even as his once powerful lobbying firm imploded.

After reading about these lobbyists’ lavish spending, self-indulgence and outright frauds, their ensuing downfalls (in most cases) come as a not-so-guilty pleasure.

The Mullins brothers sought comment from Courtovich, who is still plying his trade on Capitol Hill despite brushes with scandal and repeated run-ins with the police at his South Carolina beach retreat. His written response consisted of profanities unprintable here.

James B. Stewart has been a reporter and business columnist for The Times since 2011, focusing on the human drama of the business world and the struggle for corporate power. More about James B. Stewart

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Troubled Blood (A Cormoran Strike Novel, 5) Hardcover – Illustrated, September 15, 2020

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Book 5 of 7 Cormoran Strike
• Print length 944 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Mulholland Books
• Publication date September 15, 2020
• Dimensions 6.5 x 2.13 x 9.63 inches
• ISBN-10 0316498939
• ISBN-13 978-0316498937
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mulholland Books; Illustrated edition (September 15, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 944 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316498939
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316498937
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.6 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 2.13 x 9.63 inches
• #648 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Books)
• #1,518 in Murder Thrillers
• #3,915 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Robert galbraith.

Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike series is classic contemporary crime fiction from a master story-teller, rich in plot, characterisation and detail. Galbraith’s debut into crime fiction garnered acclaim amongst critics and crime fans alike. The first three novels The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013), The Silkworm (2014) and Career of Evil (2015) all topped the national and international bestseller lists and have been adapted for television, produced by Brontë Film and Television. The fourth in the series, Lethal White (2018), is out now.

Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym of J.K. Rowling, bestselling author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults. After Harry Potter, the author chose crime fiction for her next books, a genre she has always loved as a reader. She wanted to write a contemporary whodunit, with a credible back story.

J.K. Rowling’s original intention for writing as Robert Galbraith was for the books to be judged on their own merit, and to establish Galbraith as a well-regarded name in crime in its own right.

Now Robert Galbraith’s true identity is widely known, J.K. Rowling continues to write the crime series under the Galbraith pseudonym to keep the distinction from her other writing and so people will know what to expect from a Cormoran Strike novel.

https://robert-galbraith.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CormoranStrikeNovelsOfficial

Twitter: @RGalbraith

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To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

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Tom Burke reveals rare Cormoran Strike season 6 details at Cannes Film Festival - exclusive

Season six is based on the ink black heart.

Tom Burke has made a major move into Hollywood with his star turn in  Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga , but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t up for chatting about the hit BBC series Strike over the Cannes Film Festival ! 

While heading to a press conference for 2024’s most anticipated blockbuster movie, the actor opened up about what to expect from season six of the series, titled The Ink Black Heart. Speaking to HELLO!, he joked: “It's gone out my head because I've been talking about Furiosa. 

“I can't even remember who the murderer is! The biggest change going from Furiosa to Strike is the weather!” 

The actor is set to play the character Praetorian Jack in the new blockbuster. A far cry from his turn as the rugged detective in the BBC drama, Jack is a wasteland driver with loyalties to Immorton Joe, transporting food in exchange for fuel across the plains of the dystopian world. 

While the actor has starred opposite several major stars, including Florence Pugh in The Wonder, this is his first time in Cannes - and certainly for such a huge movie. His favourite thing about the festival? "Being with people who love movies,” he explained. 

HELLO! goes to Cannes Film Festival

HELLO! is heading to Cannes Film Festival this year to be on the ground for Europe's most glamorous, lavish and exciting movie event - and we will be sharing it all with you! Our TV and Film Editor Emmy Griffiths alongside reporter Isabelle Casey are on the ground to bring you the biggest moments from the week - what what's the plan, Cannes? You can catch up with us via our day-to-day video diaries posted on HELLO!'s YouTube channel. 

You can also join us on TikTok Live, Instagram Stories and our daily diary here on  hellomagazine.com . À bientôt!

In a recent interview with the Guardian, the actor opened up about playing the lead role in the JK Rowling adaptation. When asked if he is troubled by the author’s controversial views on the trans community and if his friends discuss working with her to him, he replied “Yeah [they talk about it] Certainly.

“I discuss it with them now and again. And we’re still friends. Look, I don’t think you’re not coming from a place of integrity when you say, ’I’m not going to watch it.’ And I don’t think Jo’s not coming from a place of integrity. But my place of integrity is what I’m doing. I sleep well at night.” He added: “When I said, ‘I sleep well at night’… Well, you know, that’s just a figure of speech. I do wrestle with all these things.”

JK Rowling has opened up about the Strike books, as she is currently working on the 8th instalment after The Running Grave, while the show is currently a little behind with season six. 

Speaking to The Times about when the series might end, she said: “I’ve got six books in my head. I’ve got the one I’m currently writing. There’ll be two more Strikes, and then there are three more books that I want to get to.” 

What is The Ink Black Heart about? 

The show is currently in production and has no release date yet - but watch this space. The synopsis for the latest series reads: “When frantic, dishevelled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn't know quite what to make of the situation.

“Robin decides that the agency can't help with this - and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart. 

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“Robin and her business partner Cormoran Strike become drawn into the quest… But with a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts to navigate, Strike and Robin find themselves embroiled in a case that stretches them to their limit.” 

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• Cannes Film Festival
• J K Rowling

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