Due to the ongoing tussle between Amazon and Hachette, I got my copy of The Silkworm by JK Rowling a little late. Anyways it is better late than never. Romance of Harry Potter’s author with crime novels continue under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. And The Silkworm is way much better than The Cuckoo’s Calling.
The Silkworm is a mild thriller and there is nothing like nail biting suspense. In fact sub plots which includes the story of both Cormoran and his assistant Robin act as a bumper and kept reducing the gravity of suspense. They were very distracting and kept killing the tempo of thrill.
Both her novels in the series are written in the same format. There is a brutal murder, usual and unusual suspects, crime scene, clues leading to the murderer and a detective along with his side kick running against time to catch the real killer and in between the personal life of the detective. Anyways the plot of the book was good this time.
A novelist Own Quine has a habit to disappear without informing anyone as a publicity stunt but this time his wife realizes that there is something unuasal in his disappearance and hires Cormoran Strike to help her to find him. Till here the story was a bit drag and and there was just no trace of thrill in the book.
But the story picks up when Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances. And by brutally I mean it was the most inhuman way to kill even an animal. Just like Cormoran, even I felt like vomiting when I was reading how barbarically he was murdered. Naturally it gave a sense of disgust and also raise the curiosity to know who is the murderer.
What I didn’t like was the balance between narrative and dialogues. There are just too many long interrogative conversation of Cormoran with other characters which were a bit drag and at times boring to read. But still till the end I was not able to guess who will be the murderer and when the murderer was exposed it was truly shocking.
Why exactly it was named The Silkworm was not clear.
The Verdict:
It is a good one time read if you can survive a bit boring patches here and there in the book. I’m sure the upcoming books in the series will have scintillating thrillers.
Buy A Kindle Version
But there are many other sites like Walmart and Books a Million who are gearing up to sale the hard copy of The Silkworm.
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