Considering how long it took me to finally read the first novel in the Cormoran Strike series, The Cuckoo’s Calling, I am attempting to make up for lost time by pretty much inhaling the next two books.
The action starts a few months after the events of The Cuckoo’s Calling, and, due to all the publicity received, Strike is working steadily. Between digging up scandals for a tabloid reporter, tailing suspected cheaters, and basically doing bitch work for rich people, Strike gets a visit from Mrs. Quine. Somehow her sob story about her missing husband, whom she suspects is at a writing retreat, hits Strike right in the feels and, even though he probably won’t be getting paid any time soon, he agrees to look for the absent author. However, the more people Strike talks to, the more it becomes apparent that Owen Quine is a giant douchebag – notorious philanderer, shit-stirrer, and D-list author with delusions of grandeur.
As Strike continues to talk to Owen’s friends people who worked with Owen, he learns about the writer’s unpublished manuscript Bombyx Mori, which has ticked off A LOT of bigwigs, including his agent, his editor, his publishers, and a rival author. Strike manages to get his hands on the somewhat top-secret manuscript, and realizes that a) Owen is a garbage writer, and b) people are right to be super pissed. So it comes as no surprise that when Owen is eventually found (by Strike), he’s not exactly in one piece. BUT WAIT! In a “shocking” twist, it turns out that Owen was actually murdered in the exact same way as his proxy book character in Bombyx Mori, a fact which narrows the suspect list to, well, a whole fucking bunch of people. One of whom is obviously super twisted, because dude. The descriptions of the corpse were damn unsettling.
Which brings us to my first complaint about The Silkworm : Too. Many. People. In The Cuckoo’s Calling, it was kind of neat when Strike called on an acquaintance for help, or reminisced about his past. HOWEVER, this book took that concept and turned it up to 11. All of a sudden Strike is calling in favours all over the place, from old army buddies to childhood friends, from journalists to their conveniently-employed relatives, from potential new flame to bitter ex. The myriad of characters was one of the highlights of the first entry of the series, so I was surprised by how much it bugged me in this installment. I just felt that between the dozens of suspects AND all the randos from Strike’s past, this book was a bit overstuffed, which took away from the engrossing mystery. Not to mention Robin, who is starting to get on my nerves by her continual irritation at Strike for a bunch of perceived slights, usually involving what she sees as Strike’s unwillingness to train her as a detective. Plus her fiancé continues to be a giant douchebag, and I resented how their drama kept taking me out of the overall mystery.
Lest the above give the impression that I didn’t enjoy The Silkworm, I actually really did! The mystery was really well done, and the one advantage of the amount of possible suspects was that my guesses for whodunit were all over the damn place. The ending was gripping, and the lead-up delightfully twisty. As always, these characters feel solid and real, even if I thought there were a few too many. Maybe they’ll be a few less side-characters in the next installment, which I picked up about an hour after finishing this one.
