Book review: The Silkworm

Title: The Silkworm
Author: Robert Galbraith
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary: This book is the second in a series about a detective named Cormoran Strike.  Owen Quine is an author of questionable skill who goes missing.  His wife approaches Cormoran because while he has disappeared in the past, he usually comes back.  This time he hasn't.  The wife asks Cormoran to find Quine.  Quine is found, but he's been murdered.  It turns out that Quine has just written a book that exposes secrets of players in the literary world.  To find a list of suspects, one just has to look to the book to see who was exposed the most.  It's a pretty long list but Cormoran, along with his assistant Robin, is on the hunt for Quine's killer.

Review: For those that don't know, Robert Galbraith is a pen name for JK Rowling.  Cuckoo's Calling was the first book in the Strike series and I had resisted it for a long time because of this.  I have never read the Harry Potter series and I have a tendency to avoid things that are so overexposed, like Harry Potter was in its heyday.  Yet every time I read about Cuckoo's Calling, I was drawn to it.

I finally gave in and I loved Cuckoo's Calling.  So I couldn't wait for this to come out and I wasn't disappointed.  I have a tendency to shy away from ongoing detective series because after awhile they become very formulaic.  This series is either still too young to be formulaic or Rowling is a good enough writer that they won't.  Plus, these books are fun.  I have immensely enjoyed these books for a few reasons:

1.  Rowling does a great job with the development of Strike and Robin's relationship.  Robin's engaged and her fiance isn't thrilled with her job.  This is causing a fair amount of tension in their relationship.  They end up having to postpone their wedding and you start to wonder if it will be postponed indefinitely.  I liked how Rowling resolved this (for now).
2. Maybe it's obvious to you, but I have yet to figure out who the killer is ahead of time.  This book kept me interested to read on and find out.
3. I couldn't help but wonder if Rowling modeled some of the characters about people she knows in the literary world, so that piqued my interest.

This is one of those books that is hard to put down and you can't wait to pick up again.  I can say for a fact that the book I'm reading now doesn't fit that description.  Stay tuned for the next review!