Having sampled the two free chapters of Silkworm, JK Rowling’s second mystery story written under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, I am now devouring the rest of the book, which seems just as good as, indeed even better than, its predecessor.
It’s a big read, twice as long as the traditional English detective stories by Agatha Christie and others which in some ways it resembles, but it is brilliantly sustained and thoroughly up to date in its procedures. Its crippled hero, the arrestingly named Cormoran Strike, is a match for Poirot and the rest, and the drive to Devon through foul weather, which forms the book’s centrepiece, is hair-raisingly evoked.
The murder around which the story is built takes a while to come to light, but is all the better for that. Be warned that it is gothically nasty, and how Rowling resolves it must have demanded all her ingenuity.
The result is a good read as well as a long one. It’s also a meticulous observation of modern London, where most of the action takes place, and of what Rowling presents as the distinctly creepy world of modern publishing. It has been receiving mostly good reviews, and a year - if that’s the likely amount of time - will seem very long to wait for the next.
10 August 2014
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