Cormoran Strike

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Cormoran Strike
1. The Cuckoo's Calling
2. The Silkworm
3. Career of Evil
4. Lethal White
5. Troubled Blood
6. The Ink Black Heart
7. The Running Grave
Author J. K. Rowling (under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith)
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre Crime fiction, mystery
Publisher Sphere Books
Published2013–present
Media typePrint (hardback and paperback)
Audiobook
E-book
No. of books7

Cormoran Strike is a series of crime fiction novels written by British author J. K. Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The story chronicles the cases of the fictional British private detective Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott. Seven novels in the series have so far been published. Rowling said after the third novel that she had plans for at least another ten. [1] The seventh novel, titled The Running Grave , was released on 26 September 2023. [2] As of February 2024, the series has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and been published in more than 50 countries across the globe, being translated into 43 languages. [3]

Contents

The novels are adapted into the television programme Strike , which began airing on BBC One in the United Kingdom on August 2017. [4] [5] [6]

Novels

No.TitlePagesDate PublishedISBN
1 The Cuckoo's Calling 4644 April 2013 978-1-4087-0399-1
2 The Silkworm 45419 June 2014 978-1-4087-0402-8
3 Career of Evil 51220 October 2015 978-0-7515-6227-9
4 Lethal White 65618 September 2018 978-0-7515-7285-8
5 Troubled Blood 94415 September 2020 978-0-3164-9893-7
6 The Ink Black Heart 102430 August 2022 978-0-3164-1303-9
7 The Running Grave 96026 September 2023 978-0-3165-7210-1

On 15 March 2024, Rowling revealed the title of the eighth book as The Hallmarked Man. [7]

Plot

In 2010, Cormoran Blue Strike (b. 23 Nov. 1974)—private detective, ex–Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch investigator and the illegitimate son of famous rock star Jonny Rokeby (the result of an affair with a notorious groupie, Leda Strike)—is broke, and his birth father's business agent is calling in the loan that he gave to Strike to open his agency. Strike lost the lower half of his right leg in an attack in Afghanistan. He had previously studied at Oxford, but left in his second year to join the Army following the death of his mother.

The first novel, The Cuckoo's Calling, begins with Strike being hired by John Bristow, the brother of adopted supermodel Lula Landry, who had fallen from her balcony three months previously. Bristow wants Strike to investigate his sister's supposed suicide. Strike also meets Robin Ellacott (b. 9 Oct. 1984), who has been sent to act as his temporary secretary despite the fact he can barely afford her. Robin has just become engaged to her longtime boyfriend, Matthew, with their wedding set to happen later that year. Although Strike only hires her for one week, she turns out to be much more competent (and useful) than he first expects, and they end up extending her stay.

Strike's personal life is complicated. He has just split from his long-term partner and fiancée, Charlotte Campbell, who became engaged to her ex-boyfriend, Jago Ross, shortly after the split. Strike is closest to his half-sister Lucy (his mother's second child), with whom he grew up, though he has seven other half-siblings (the other children of Rokeby) and one half-brother who is the son of his mother and her last husband Jeff Whittaker. Even his relationship with Lucy is somewhat fraught, and Strike finds himself becoming closer to Robin, who has always wanted to be a detective, than he at first feels entirely comfortable with.

Near the first book's end, after solving the Landry case and before Robin is ready to leave for a permanent position elsewhere, Strike gives her the gift of a green silk dress she had previously tried on at the Vashti boutique as part of their investigation. This dress is significant to both of them, though its importance is unspoken by each. Finally, the two decide that Robin will stay on.

The second book, The Silkworm, begins around eight months after the conclusion of book one. Strike is approached by Leonora Quine with a plea to locate her husband, notorious writer Owen Quine, who has seemingly disappeared without trace. Owen, once hailed as a literary rebel, has struggled for years to recreate the success of his original novel and has fallen out of public favour. Strike discovers that his disappearance coincides with the leak of a manuscript for his latest novel, Bombyx Mori. The London literary community considers Bombyx Mori to be unpublishable: an unpleasant mix of rape, sadomasochism, torture, necrophilia and cannibalism, the hero is eventually tricked and eaten alive by various characters who are thinly veiled caricatures of people in Owen's life whom he considers responsible for the destruction of his career. The investigation soon takes a different and altogether more gruesome turn when Owen is found dead. During the investigation, Robin faces personal difficulties as her fiancé's mother dies, and she must make some difficult decisions about the balance between her career and her personal life.

The third novel, Career of Evil, begins with Robin receiving a package from a courier, which she discovers contains the severed right leg of a woman. The package is accompanied by a note quoting from the Blue Öyster Cult song Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl), a lyric Strike's mother Leda had tattooed above her pubis. Because of that link, Strike told the police that he believed that the package had been sent by someone from his own past with a grudge against him.

Strike and Robin work out that the sender of the leg is also responsible for a number of other brutal attacks and reaches public infamy as the Shacklewell Ripper. Strike identifies four potential suspects from his past whom he believes would be capable of such crimes but, as the police want to concentrate on the one Strike believes to be least likely, they set out to investigate the other three. Robin informs Strike that she dropped out of university due to trauma from being raped, and the Shacklewell Ripper then stalks and seriously injures Robin in an attack. Later, Robin makes a decision while investigating one of their suspects that has profound and shocking consequences for their relationship, as Strike fires her and she then heads off to marry her fiancé Matthew. Strike sets a successful trap to catch the Shacklewell Ripper and is driven by a friend early the next morning, arriving at the conclusion of Robin's wedding ceremony at the end of the novel.

The fourth novel, Lethal White, begins right at that point, as Robin learns about Strike's capture of the Ripper and that Matthew had deleted Strike's messages to her, which immediately strains their marriage. Robin accepts Strike's offer of a salaried partnership in the agency, which becomes very busy due to Strike's new-found fame, but she continues to struggle with PTSD from the rape and the attack by the Ripper. A year later, the agency is hired by a government minister to investigate and stop an attempted blackmail against him, although he will not tell Strike or Robin the details of his actions. They find evidence of embezzlement against one of the blackmailers, but then their client dies in an apparent suicide. One of his children then hires Strike to investigate the death, because she believes her stepmother was behind it. Robin finds Matthew cheating on her and leaves him, temporarily going to live with her friend detective Vanessa Ekwensi. When Strike figures out the motive for the murder, he and Robin take their evidence to the police. While reviewing the state of the case at Scotland Yard, the murderer lures Robin into a trap by posing as the now-estranged Matthew. Robin successfully stalls the murderer long enough for Strike and the police to realize the situation and intervene. Robin moves in with Strike's friends Nick and Ilsa before moving in permanently with a friend of Ilsa's.

The fifth novel, Troubled Blood, begins in August 2013 and ends on 9 October 2014. While visiting his dying aunt Joan, Strike is approached by Anna Phipps, who wants to hire his firm to investigate the disappearance of her mother, Margot Bamborough, a general practitioner in London, almost 40 years previously. As a result of their previous successes, Strike and Robin (still a salaried partner) now employ three contract investigators and an office manager. Both are dealing with their own irritations: Strike over his aunt's illness, suicide threats from his ex-fiancée Campbell (now a married mother of two) and the attempts of his half-siblings to get him to attend a party honouring his rock star biological father Johnny Rokeby; Robin over Matthew's intransigence in their divorce, her continuing PTSD and her unsettled personal life, brought into clearer focus by her brother and his wife having their first child. The police's principal suspect in the disappearance was a then unidentified serial killer named Dennis Creed, now incarcerated in Broadmoor.

Phipps gives the agency a one-year contract to go over the case. However, thanks to the large workload at the small firm, it takes several months for them to run down the surviving witnesses and investigators (or their children). During the year, Strike's aunt dies, Matthew grants Robin the divorce because his mistress/girlfriend becomes pregnant, and the heavy work schedule combined with a lack of communication about their issues contributes to several personal misunderstandings and disagreements, including the termination of one of the contractors for repeated inappropriate behaviour toward Robin. In August 2014, although the firm still has leads to pursue, Phipps and her wife end the contract, but Strike and Robin continue to investigate. They abruptly achieve several minor breakthroughs whilst also securing an interview with Creed. Strike induces him to confess to one of the last unsolved murders he was long suspected of, before revealing he has already deduced the identity of Bamborough's real killer. Having tipped off the police about Creed's victim, Robin locates and uncovers Bamborough's remains, whilst Strike apprehends her killer. The agency's investigation thus solves two cold cases, and after the partners shelter from the ensuing media storm, they celebrate Robin's 30th birthday together.

The sixth novel, The Ink Black Heart, picks up in the immediate aftermath of the previous. Following Robin's birthday festivities, Strike attempts to kiss her. Robin pulls away, an instinctual reaction due to past trauma, but Strike mistakes the reaction as possible disgust. The potential budding romance between them is stopped cold and Strike later begins dating another woman. Robin is approached by Edie Ledwell, the co-creator of a popular animated web series titled The Ink Black Heart. Edie wishes the Strike agency to investigate the continued online harassment directed at her by an individual known only as "Anomie", whose online handle originates from a term referring to a lack of usual social or ethical standards. Robin declines the case, citing, among other reasons, the fact that the Strike agency does not specialize in cybercrimes. Ledwell is later found murdered by stabbing, her co-creator Josh Blay badly injured but alive. Robin and Strike then receive a request to investigate the case made by those at the production company who are planning to turn the franchise into a feature film. They explain that they have already explored all possible normal cyber-investigation avenues and Strike and Robin accept the case.

Anomie is the co-creator of Drek's Game, a free fan-created online game based around one of the main characters of The Ink Black Heart. Anomie seals new registrations to the game, but Robin manages to gain access via a previously created account. She and Strike then dive deep into the world of the game and those associated with the production of The Ink Black Heart. In the course of their investigation, they discover that the game has been infiltrated by members of The Halvening, a far-right terrorist group which mainly harasses left-leaning women online, often with the goal of trying to drive them to suicide. Although their office is bombed by members of The Halvening, their investigation leads them to believe that it is not, in fact, The Halvening that is responsible for Ledwell's murder. They eventually discover Anomie to be the teenage son of one of those associated with the production and capture him in a violent confrontation in which he threatens to rape and kill Robin and seriously injures Strike. Anomie turns out to be a disgruntled fan who was attempting to exert control on the production and was aggravated by the decision to move The Ink Black Heart from YouTube to Netflix and to make a film. As Robin visits Strike in the hospital, he reveals that when he had the office remodelled in the aftermath of the bombing, he replaced the logo on the glass of the door so that it now reads "Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency." Having recently broken up with his girlfriend, he is troubled when he learns that Robin is now dating a police detective, as he still harbours latent romantic feelings for her.

The seventh book, The Running Grave, begins at the christening of Nick and Ilsa's child where Robin and Strike have been made godparents. Here Strike meets lawyer Bijou with whom he begins a short-lived, ill-advised affair. Robin continues her relationship with policeman Ryan Murphy. Robin and Strike are hired to investigate a cult: the Universal Humanitarian Church. Their client's autistic son, Will, has lived in the UHC grounds for four years, emptying his trust fund into their accounts and not even leaving for his mother's funeral. Robin goes undercover at the UHC and finds much unlawful activity and speaks to Will. She learns that he was not informed of his mother's death and that he has fathered a daughter inside the church. Strike's uncle Ted becomes increasingly unwell with dementia. Strike ends his affair with Bijou after she falls pregnant by a wealthy QC. His ex, Charlotte, after calling him several times to no response, kills herself. Will succeeds in leaving the church with his daughter, whereupon Pat the office manager, who is revealed to be 67 and a great-grandmother, lets them stay with her. Strike and Robin report wrongdoing to the police and the church respond by accusing Robin of child sex offences. Eventually they dismantle the church's central myth of the 'drowned prophet' and with the police's help find evidence of several bodies and child trafficking and the charges against Robin are dropped. The book ends as Robin, about to leave with Ryan Murphy, asks Strike about Charlotte and he tells Robin that Charlotte knew he was in love with Robin.

Characters

Protagonists

Cormoran Strike
First appearance The Cuckoo's Calling
Created by Robert Galbraith
Portrayed by Tom Burke
In-universe information
GenderMale
OccupationPrivate detective
FamilyJonathan 'Jonny' Rokeby (father)
Leda Strike (mother)
Maimie (half-sister)
Gabriella Rokeby (half-sister)
Daniella Rokeby (half-sister)
Alexander 'Al' Rokeby (half-brother)
Edward Rokeby (half-brother)
Prudence Donleavey (half-sister)
Lucy (half-sister)
Switch Whittaker (half-brother)
Jeff Whittaker (stepfather)
Jack (nephew)
Luke (nephew)
Adam (nephew)
Sylvie Donleavey (niece)
Ted Nancarrow (uncle)
Joan Nancarrow (aunt by marriage)
NationalityBritish
Robin Ellacott
First appearance The Cuckoo's Calling
Created by Robert Galbraith
Portrayed by Holliday Grainger
In-universe information
GenderFemale
OccupationPrivate detective
FamilyLinda Ellacott (Mother)
Michael Ellacott (Father)
Stephen (Brother)
Martin Ellacott (Brother)
Jonathan (Brother)
Matthew Cunliffe (Ex-Husband)
NationalityBritish

Secondary characters

Television adaptation

In December 2014, it was announced that the novel series would be adapted for television by the BBC. In September 2016, Tom Burke was confirmed as having been cast as Cormoran Strike. [8] Holliday Grainger was cast as Robin Ellacott later in November. [9] Filming of seven hour-long episodes of the Cormoran Strike television series began in November 2016. [10] The series was picked up by HBO for distribution in the United States and Canada, [11] It premiered on 27 August 2017 on BBC. [12]

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References

  1. Allen, Ben (30 August 2017). "JK Rowling could write 'at least another 10' Strike books as Robert Galbraith". Radio Times . Archived from the original on 24 May 2018. Retrieved 23 May 2018.
  2. @jk_rowling (26 September 2023). "Publication day! 🎉 #TheRunningGrave, the 7th Strike novel, is out now!" (Tweet) via Twitter.
  3. "Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger return in BBC's Strike - The Ink Black Heart". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  4. Sullivan, Kevin P. (24 September 2015). "New details about J.K. Rowling's BBC series revealed". Entertainment Weekly . Retrieved 9 December 2015.
  5. Szalai, Georg (17 September 2017). "BBC Orders Adaptation of J.K. Rowling's Third Cormoran Strike novel". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved 29 September 2017.
  6. "BBC One – Strike, Lethal White, Episode 1".
  7. @jk_rowling (15 March 2024). "Thank you, Sark🩶 You and your people are wonderful, and I'm leaving with a very appropriate souvenir, given the title of #Strike8: #TheHallmarkedMan" (Tweet) via Twitter.
  8. "Tom Burke to play JK Rowling's Cormoran Strike on BBC One". BBC . 7 September 2016.
  9. Barraclough, Leo (1 November 2016). "Holliday Grainger to Star in J.K. Rowling's 'Cormoran Strike'". Variety .
  10. Paget, Antonia (14 November 2016). "Filming begins on J.K. Rowling's crime novel". Daily Mirror .
  11. Andreeva, Nellie (26 October 2016). "HBO Picks Up 'Cormoran Strike' Drama Based On J.K. Rowling's Crime Novels". Deadline Hollywood .
  12. Harp, Justin (10 August 2017). "J.K. Rowling's Strike TV series debuts this month". Digital Spy. Retrieved 11 August 2017.