The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

  Book: The Running Grave  Author: Robert Galbraith  Pages: 966 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~7-8 hours  Plot Summary:  Private Detective Cormoran Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside. The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organisation that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths. In order to try to rescue Will, Strike's business partner Robin Ellacott decides to infiltrate the cult and she travels to Norfolk to live incognito amongst them. But in doing so, she is unprepared for the dangers that await her there or for the toll it will take on her. General Thoughts: This is the seventh  book in the Cormoran Strike series and we have read and reviewed all six of the previous books on this blog. Click HERE to go find them. This is a good ser...

  Book: The Ink Black Heart  Author: Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)  Pages: 1024 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~9 hours over 2 days  Plot Summary:  When frantic, dishevelled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn't know quite what to make of the situation. The co-creator of a popular cartoon,  The Ink Black Heart , Edie is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. Edie is desperate to uncover Anomie's true identity. Robin decides that the agency can't help with this - and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of  The Ink Black Heart . Robin and her business partner Cormoran Strike become drawn into the quest to uncover Anomie's true identity. But with a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts to nav...

  Book: Troubled Blood (Cormoran Strike Book 5) Author: Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) Pages: 888 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~8-9 hours over two days  Plot Summary:  Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough - who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974. Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike. As Strike and Robin investigate Margot's disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be truste...

Book: Lethal White (Cormoran Strike Book 4) Author: Robert Galbraith / JK Rowling  Pages: 656  Read on: Kindle  Read in: Over 2 days  Plot Summary:  'I seen a kid killed . . . He strangled it, up by the horse.' When Billy, a troubled young man, comes to private eye Cormoran Strike's office to ask for his help investigating a crime he thinks he witnessed as a child, Strike is left deeply unsettled. While Billy is obviously mentally distressed, and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic. Trying to get to the bottom of Billy's story, Strike and Robin Ellacott - once his assistant, now a partner in the agency - set off on a twisting trail that leads them through the backstreets of London, into a secretive inner sanctum within Parliament, and to a beautiful but sinister manor house deep in the countrysi...

Book: Career of Evil Author: Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) Pages: 497 Read on: Kindle Read in: 3-4 days Plot Summary:  When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman's severed leg. Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible--and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality. With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them... Career of Evil  is the third in the highly acclaimed series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott. A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists aroun...

Book: The Silkworm Author: Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling) Pages: 455 Read it on: My iPad Read it in: 6 hours Plot Summary:  When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days--as he has done before--and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.  But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives--meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.  When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before. What I Liked: Even though I had guessed who t...

Book: The Cuckoo's Calling Author: J.K. Rowling written under the pen name of Robert Galbraith Pages: 509 How Long It Took Me to Read: 2 days. Plot Summary:  On a cold, snowy London winter night, beautiful and successful supermodel, Lula Landry, dives off her penthouse balcony to a sticky end. Her closest friends cannot believe that Lula, who sounded excited and happy earlier that evening, could ever take her own life even though she had battled drug abuse in the past and was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. More than anyone else, Lula's brother- John Bristow- simply cannot believe that his sister would take her own life just when she had signed a multi-million dollar modelling contract with a top designer that could jettison her career to even greater heights. It is armed with this conviction that John reaches out to a down-on-his luck private detective- Cormoran Strike. Cormoran Strike is an ex-military man, who had served with the Royal Military Police and ...