A review by borneagainbooks
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

dark mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

🪱 THE SILKWORM by Robert Galbraith 🪱
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

Rob don’t miss. Detective novels aren’t really my jam. But Galbraith and The Cosmic Lord himself are out to prove that wrong. This was somehow even better than the first, which only had points deducted for a minor confusion. 

Owen Quine is a writer, a missing writer and it falls onto Strikes lap, in the form of a hysterical wife, to find him. Only, he left behind a manuscript that burns everyone he’s ever known. 

The interspersion of the dubious literary high life with the shadowed and depraved lives the individuals who exist there lead, created here an atmosphere of wealth and disgusting displays of it. The characters, whilst for the most part DEPLORABLE, are written superbly and believably. 

Everybody here has a motive, and that makes picking your suspect nigh on impossible. Although some sleuthing of my own led me to guess correctly again who was to blame (TWO FOR TWO BABY), Galbraith gives you a hard time sticking to it. 

The personal lives of Strike and Robin are here on display in a way that the last novel was hesitant to, but we want that. We want them. They’re the reason we read these, right? Absolutely the most loveable duo. They use every resource available to them, characters you meet along the way in the personal lives are interwoven seamlessly with the main story, creating a “lived in” feel to the world. 

And the crime. Man THE CRIME. Vile, artistic, ambitious, daring and brilliant. I won’t spoil exactly what this looks like as this is mostly a missing persons case, but HOLY that 50% reveal was insane, and haunting. The imagery present, reminiscent of some of the more historically charged thrillers, draws inspiration from literary and artistic history to create a twisted tale of infidelity, carnage, betrayal and degeneracy. 

Read this series.