#BookReview :: The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike #2) by Robert Galbraith

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 . . . 



After the success of the Luna Landry case, Cormoran Strike has no shortage of clients. So when novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife turns up at his office uninterested in involving the police. Owen is known to take off on his own for days at a time and his wife thinks that he is holed up in some writers’ retreat. But there is more to Owen’s disappearance this time. It becomes crystal clear when his body is discovered by Cormoran Strike. The novelist’s latest manuscript features caricatures of a lot of big names and a lot of them could go long way to stop it from being published. But did they go as far as murdering the novelist? Cormoran Strike has to find out before time runs out or the ruthless killer catches up to him!

J.K. Rowling is master at creating worlds for her characters and Harry Potter series is proof of that. Cormoran Strike belongs to a different world on the whole. The retired military personnel take on a wide range of cases… So it is no surprise when a simple missing person’s case turns into a murder case. Rowling has also created a new world within a world with Owen’s characters and world of writing. It was a pleasure to read about Cormoran Strike’s second case. And while Cuckoo’s Calling was an interesting read, Rowling has raised the stakes even higher with her second book. Also, on the side we learn more about Cormoran and Julia’s personal life that keep developing along with the individual and independent case of Owen’s murder.

The unique thing about this book is its pace. Usually I prefer fast pace when it comes to Thrillers and Mysteries but The Silkworm sets up its own pace which is much slower than one expects  yet it doesn’t irritate you, such is the caliber of the narration.

Overall, an interesting case of whodunit where the pages fly by and the plot keeps a tight grip on you.