194. The Silkworm
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by:
Author: Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling)
Genre: Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Thriller
455 pages, published June 24, 2014
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
The second in J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike’s detective series (the first was The Cuckoo’s Calling which I really enjoyed), The Silkworm picks up where the first book left off. We rejoin Strike and his talented assistant Robin Ellacott in a new mystery. Strike is hired by Leonora Quine to find her missing husband, novelist Owen Quine. As Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist had just completed a poisonous book portraying many of his friends and acquaintances in a harsh light which means that there are plenty of motives for murder and a web of deceit and avarice for Strike to untangle and solve.
Quotes
“The whole world’s writing novels, but nobody’s reading them.”
“We don’t love each other; we love the idea we have of each other. Very few humans understand this or can bear to contemplate it. They have blind faith in their own powers of creation. All love, ultimately, is self-love.”
“Though they spent so much time trying to make themselves beautiful, you were not supposed to admit to women that beauty mattered.”
“…writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.”
“Strike had always marvelled at the strange sanctity conferred upon celebrities by the public, even while the newspapers denigrated, hunted or hounded them. No matter how many famous people were convicted of rape or murder, still the belief persisted, almost pagan in its intensity: not him. It couldn’t be him. He’s famous.”
“In the depths of his tiredness, surrounded by these blank, sheep-like visages, he found himself pondering the accidents that had brought all of them into being. Every birth was, viewed properly, mere chance. With a hundred million sperm swimming blindly through the darkness, the odds against a person becoming themselves were staggering.”
“Keeping busy was the only answer: action had always been his drug of choice.”
“She emanated that aura of grandeur that replaces sexual allure in the successful older woman.”
“I said that the greatest female writers, with almost no exceptions, have been childless. A fact. And I have said that women generally, by virtue of their desire to mother, are incapable of the necessarily single-minded focus anyone must bring to the creation of literature, true literature. I don’t retract a word. That is a fact.”
My Take
The Silkworm provides a new murder mystery for Private Detective Cormoran Strike and his Assistant/Partner Robin Ellacott to solve. After thoroughly enjoying the fantastically creative world created by J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series, I was happy to see that her writing talent translates to Detective/Crime Thriller genre. While the details of the mystery are not the most gripping, her two lead characters of Cormoran and Robin are so richly drawn, nuanced, and compelling that I loved spending time with them in the gritty world of modern day London. The solution to the book’s central mystery was almost beside the point.
