I am a massive fan of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, and the thought of reading anything else by her scared me, which is why The Casual Vacancy has sat unread on my bookshelf for more than a year now.
But for work purposes, I decided I really needed to read her first novel as Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling, before the second one, The Silkworm, was released. And in doing so, I discovered I had nothing to be scared about (at least not when Rowling is writing as Galbraith).
Private detective Cormoran Strike isn't exactly having the best time. He's broken up with his fiancee, losing his home, and his business isn't doing too great. On the same day a new temp arrives at his office - the unassuming and fiercely intelligent Robin Ellacott - Cormoran is hired by the brother of a troubled model who fell to her death from the balcony of her home. Everyone assumes it was an accident, but Lula Landry's brother is convinced foul play was involved.
Full disclosure from the off, I only got three quarters of the way through The Cuckoo's Calling before I had to abandon it to read The Silkworm (my review of which you can read here). That was really annoying, because as brilliant as The Silkworm is, I was so caught up in this novel that I really wanted to know who murdered Lula Landry. For me, all the characters were suspect, and I couldn't work out whodunnit.
There are plenty of twists and turns in The Cuckoo's Calling, perhaps one too many, but I loved the old school detective novel style Rowling adopts, with Cormoran working out who the murderer is before the end, and then leaving you in suspense for a number of chapters. It's very Poirot or Marple, and I really enjoyed it.
I also really enjoyed the relationship between Cormoran and Robin - it starts out with both assessing each other and slowly moves into a solid friendship based on mutual respect. There is a hint of attraction there (more from Cormoran towards Robin than vice versa) but this is very under the surface, and I like that Rowling doesn't dwell on it. Rather, Cormoran and Robin are more Harry and Hermione than Ron and Hermione (I couldn't have written this review without at least one Harry Potter comparison).
Despite never being able to forget in the back of my mind that I was reading the work of Rowling, I was swept away in The Cuckoo's Calling, and found it a grown-up read, which was both a great murder mystery and a fabulous novel about two compelling characters who are very, very different.
The Silkworm has proved that The Cuckoo's Calling is not a one-hit wonder, and with plans for plenty more Cormoran Strike novels, we could all soon stop identifying Rowling by Harry Potter. Okay, maybe not, but we'll identify her by more than just Harry Potter.
How I got this book: Bought
This time last year, hardly anyone knew who Robert Galbraith was. The Cuckoo's Calling was just another crime novel, and its sequel, The Silkworm, should have passed off in the same way.
But then it was leaked that Galbraith was in fact J.K. Rowling - yes, THAT J.K. Rowling - and the publication of The Silkworm became a huge event.
I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy of The Silkworm (while I was still two thirds of the way through reading The Cuckoo's Calling) and read the book in just under five hours. Luckily it's pacy with good characters and a compelling storyline, so my speed read (conducted at work, on a train, at midnight at home, then on another train early in the morning) was relatively painless (I'll admit to being a little bleary-eyed at work afterwards).
The Silkworm is the second book featuring war veteran and private detective Cormoran Strike. Having successfully discovered the murderer of a model in The Cuckoo's Calling, Strike's fortunes have changed - he's got plenty of well-paying clients and is no longer sleeping on a camp bed in his office. When a tearful woman turns up at his office, Strike finds himself delving into the case of an author who has gone missing after writing an unpublished book skewering everyone he knows. And when that author, Owen Quine, is found brutally murdered, the case takes a darker and more dangerous turn.
Rowling is on fine form here, starting the novel with Strike meeting a sleazy tabloid reporter - in just a few pages Rowling makes clear her already well publicised feelings on the hacking scandal. It seems as though The Silkworm will follow the path its first chapter sets out, but instead Rowling chooses to focus on an industry much closer to home: publishing.
As he finds out more about Quine's novel (titled Bombyx Mori - silkworm in Latin), Strike finds himself caught up in the world of publishing. As someone who's been working in the publishing industry for around eight months, I loved every bit of Strike's inauguration into a world so foreign from those he has previously encountered. He meets an agent, an editor, the head of a publishing company, and numerous people lower down the totem pole. While there are no easily identifiable figures from the world of UK publishing (at least, I can't see any), it's clear Rowling has taken stereotypes of publishing folk and used them to form her characters. So we have an eccentric battleaxe of an agent whose office is a mess of books, an editor who is all about books and not business and has turned to drink, writers whose egos are huge and who need mollycoddling, and a managing director who is cold and thinks about the bottom line first. For all her examination of publishing though, Rowling best sums it up when Strike says: "They love their bloody lunches, book people." Why yes, Strike, we bloody do!
The mystery at the centre of The Silkworm is one that kept me guessing right until the very end, when Strike arranged a showdown with the murderer(s). It's clever, because there are only a certain number of people who could have killed Quine, so you have a narrow pool to guess from, but at any one time one of them could have done it, or none of them could have done it, or a few of them could have done it.
However good the murder mystery is, The Silkworm is mostly as good as it is because Strike is such a complex and likeable character. He's stubborn, and can be stupid and a bit clueless emotionally at times, but you can't help but want to read more about what he's thinking, and you can't help but be awed at how clever his mind is at joining together the dots.
The Silkworm is better than good when Strike is interacting with his assistant Robin. The pair's relationship has deepened since The Cuckoo's Calling, and they're on a much more even footing than they were in the first book. Both understand each other a lot more, and have fewer secrets. But as their relationship develops for the better, Robin's relationship with her fiance gets worse, which gives an interesting dynamic to the story. I like that this is a love triangle without being anything like a love triangle - the mutual respect and friendship between Strike and Robin are better than any cliched encounters.
A year ago (yes, I'm back where I started), no one could have suspected that Rowling could write one good crime novel. The Silkworm proves that she can't - she can write at least two good crime novels, and if she carries on in this vein, the Cormoran Strike series will be talked about with the same enthusiasm that her Harry Potter novels are talked about. And we'll be doing that talking over lunch.
•The Silkworm is released in the UK on June 19.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Sphere. This did not affect my review.
