The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith

The Ink Black Heart is the sixth part in the Cormoran Strike detective series by Robert Galbraith, which was published on 30th August. For anyone who doesn’t know, Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym J K Rowling uses for this series. I absolutely love the Strike series and started reading the book on the day it was published.

The detective agency is already overwhelmed with work when Strike’s business partner, Robin, is visited by a distressed young woman. Edie Ledwell is the creator of a successful cult cartoon, The Ink Black Heart. She has been harassed online for many years by someone calling themselves ‘Anomie’ and she can’t take any more.

Anomie gets personal information about Edie very quickly, before using it to attack her or spread rumours about her. It is clear they must be someone well known to her. Edie asks Robin to find out who Anomie is. But Robin turns the case down, as they are already too busy.

Anomie created a very popular game to run alongside The Ink Black Heart. When Edie refused to endorse it, they started to abuse her online.

Not long after Edie’s visit to the detective agency, Edie is stabbed to death in Highgate Cemetery. The cartoon’s co-creator is badly wounded in the attack. Some suspect a far-right attack, while others think she was just unlucky and in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As Anomie continues to cause trouble for Edie’s family and the cartoon, they enlist Strike and Robin to track him or her down.

The story follows Strike and Robin’s investigation into Anomie and the game and it also follows the people behind the game. There are a lot of friends, acquaintances and former friends who know a lot about Edie and The Ink Black Heart – and plenty of them have a grudge.

Anomie is one of seven moderators of the game, who talk to each other online. None of them is supposed to know who the others are.

While Strike and Robin try to speak to Edie’s many acquaintances in real life, they also try to work out which of them are which moderator of the game. They trawl through years of social media posts trying to piece together real lives and online lives.

As they get closer to the truth, Strike and Robin find themselves in danger. Will they work out who Anomie is before anyone else is hurt?

The book comes in at 1012 pages. But it never gets boring. I literally couldn’t stop reading. For me, Strike and Robin novels are next level detective stories. The level of detail in them is absolutely incredible. I can’t fault this book.

For fan’s of Strike and Robin’s ‘will they, won’t they?’, that continues throughout The Ink Black Heart. For detectives, they are incredibly bad at reading each other!

Could you read The Ink Black Heart as a standalone book? You could, but I don’t know why you would want to. It is good to get a real understanding of the characters and how the detective agency and their relationship have developed over time by reading the entire series.

If you love Strike and Robin, you won’t be disappointed by The Ink Black Heart. And if you haven’t come across them before, I recommend you go right back to the start with The Cuckoo’s Calling.