The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

The Silkworm is the second book in the Cormoran Strike series that JK Rowling writes under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. I mentioned that I had read the first book, The Cuckoo's Calling, to my father-in-law, who, oddly enough, had just finished this book and he gave it to me. It sat on my bookshelf for an inexcusable period of time while I read other novels.  I keep thinking about how much I enjoyed the first book in the series and that this book just couldn't possibly live up to my expectations.

But it did.

I just think Rowling and I are on the same wavelength.

This is not a book of world-changing literature. It's a book about a private detective with a complicated history and an even more complicated family and his relationship with his assistant as they go about solving crimes.  That is not even a unique premise for series I'm currently reading (consider the Adler-Olsen Department Q books), but I just love it. I love Strike and Robin's back and forth. I love the cheesiness of the mysteries. I love the look at casual sex and how it never really is casual. I just love it.

It's dark and rainy in most of this book. So many scenes in which Strike is shaking rain off his coat or trying to cart an umbrella around.  And it's been a gloomy, gloomy November, my friends. It's rained here so much and the time change sort of messed with my head and I was in a gloomy, gloomy sort of mood, so this really worked for me.  It's not the sort of book I'd read in the summer, but it certainly works for a cold November* evening.

*If you're not humming "November Rain" by the great American rock 'n' roll band Guns 'n' Roses after reading this, you and I cannot share a radio dial.