This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Mark your calendars, book nerds; it seems the follow-up to J. K. Rowling’s crime novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, is set to be published – under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith – by Little, Brown on June 19th.
The Silkworm will be the second outing for Rowling's private detective Cormoran Strike. He will investigate the death of novelist Owen Quine, who is brutally murdered after writing poison pen-portraits of practically everyone he knows.
Here’s the publisher’s blurb:
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 realizes. 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…
Rowling’s first novel as Galbraith famously shot straight to the top of the bestseller lists after she was outed as its author by a national newspaper. Though, it had received complimentary reviews from critics before her identity was revealed.What do you think of the premise? Will you be reading J. K. Rowling’s next thriller?