THE SILKWORM:ROBERT GALBRAITH

This is the second Cormoran Strike mystery, set like the first, in London.  This time a famous novelist, Owen Quine,  is found, ritualistically murdered, disemboweled, the intestines carried away.  Strike gets involved only because Leonora Quine, the writer's wife, tearfully comes to Strike's office and asks for help finding her husband.  At the time, he was only missing, something he occasionally did.

Strike, always a sucker for a distraught women, agrees to look around, finds that Quine owned another house, checks it out and  finds Quine murdered.  Thus begins the story as we move from one suspect to another, all part of the literary scene, either writers, agents, editors, or publishers, all with reasons for disliking the very unlikeable Quine.  And none of them ,to be honest, are very likable, so we have a novel with characters for the most part we don't like, except for the bumbling, one legged Afghanistan veteran, turned  PI, one Cormoran Strike.

Besides the search for the killer, the relationship between Strike and Robin, his secretary, a young would be detective, frames the narrative.  She painstakingly gains Strike's trust, takes on detective work when he cannot and towards the end, when it looks like she's getting nowhere with him, breaks down, tells Cormoran what she wants, and he agrees to train her.  He knows, however, that Matthew, Robin's fiancee, will be furious, which he is.

I won't go into all the questioning of various suspects, often in expensive restaurants which Strike cannot afford or at wealthy estates.  Like the previous novel, he slowly pieces together the parts of the puzzle from what each suspect says, where they were during the murder, and who had access to Quine's unpublished novel, which describes the murder.  Strike finally settles on Quine's agent, a harridan of a woman, powerful and smart.  The problem, like most of his cases, is that he has no evidence.  So he maneuvers to be at a gathering where all the suspects are attending, baits her by speaking with a famous writer and her ex beau in a garden. She cannot still her curiosity, steps out, where Strike gradually turns the questions on her, finally getting her to fess up, by insulting her, leading her on, and so on.  Not a particularly original ending but it works well enough.  Still, the main attraction of the novel is both Strike and Robin, well drawn, complicated, with a hint of attraction between them, whether as professionals or eventual lovers.  It is too early to say for now.