THE SILKWORM BY ROBERT GALBRAITH
SPHERE (PAPERBACK), 2014
580 PAGES
BLURB FROM THE COVER
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…
EXTRACT
‘Someone bloody famous’, said the hoarse voice on the end of the line, ‘better’ve died Strike’.
The large unshaven man tramping through the darkness of pre-dawn, with his telephone clamped to his ear, grinned.
‘It’s in that ballpark’.
REVIEW
This is my first time reading Galbraith, J.K Rowling’s pseudonym. I really enjoyed The Silkworm. One of my favorite sub genres of crime fiction is the detective novel (i.e. Charlie Parker novels by John Connolly). I really warmed to Strike’s character. I haven’t read the first Strike novel and had no idea he’d lost part of one leg until he takes off his prophesies a couple of hundred pages in. I’m glad Galbraith didn’t make Strike’s disability a sympathy stick to beat people over the head with. I thought the plot was original. I love it when a writer uses characters who are writers. The writer in me finds this fascinating. I had no idea who killed Quine. I love it when a writer surprises me. The only criticism I have of The Silkworm is that I thought it was overly long and dragged a bit in the middle. I could have happily lost a hundred pages in the middle. I’ll probably read The Cuckoo’s Calling. The Silkworm was a great read.
RATING
