The Ink Black Heart

May 1, 2022

Last-minute news: Galbraith (the pseudonymous J.K. Rowling) returns on August 30 with the sixth book in the "Cormoran Strike" series. With a 500,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2022
An overblown whodunit by Galbraith, nom de plume of one J.K. Rowling, pitting Robin Ellacott and Cormoran Strike against a murderous online troll. On the internet, everyone can hear you scream. To boot, as a very bad actor named Anomie puts it, "nobody's who they say they are." Robin and Cormoran have quite the task on their hands when Edie Ledwell, a cartoonist whose show, The Ink Black Heart, is a hit on YouTube and has just been bought by Netflix, turns up to ask for help in chasing down an online group, Anomie at its helm, that has built an online game around her show. Grumbles Anomie, "She's shitting all over the fans, saying they're thick for liking our game." Edie doesn't last long; conveniently, she winds up in London's Highgate Cemetery, ready for planting. All suspicion in what's now a murder case points to Anomie, a slippery character. Is he (or she) a criminal mastermind or just some creepy kid living in mom's basement? It takes Robin and Cormoran reams of online chat-thick prose to discover the truth, sussing out the identities of characters with noms de net like Paperwhite and Fiendly1. Online identities are fluid, of course, which doesn't help when the problem is how to lay down a coherent storyline, but it soon becomes apparent that, indeed, no one is quite who they say they are. One more thing is sure: Rowling, the subject of recent controversy, plays out her current preoccupations against an up-to-the-minute backdrop: Edie is accused of "multiple alleged transgressions, particularly against the disabled," while a contemporary comes under the gun for having " 'misgendered' a prominent trans woman," minor plot points in a belabored narrative dotted with appearances by pedophiles, neo-Nazi cultists, "beta males," incels, an obnoxious pickup artist, and a young woman who ends her sentences on a "rising inflection." Who did the dastardly deed? After a thousand pages of this, the reader is likely to no longer care. Long, loose, and lax.

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Starred review from January 23, 2023
In Galbraith’s stellar sixth whodunit featuring London PIs Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott (after 2020’s Troubled Blood), Ellacott is consulted by a distraught Edie Ledwell, the cocreator of the hit animated series The Ink Black Heart. The bizarre program features a disembodied heart, a ghost, and other residents of a graveyard, and proved so successful on YouTube that it was purchased by Netflix. That switch, and rumors of a movie adaptation, infuriated some members of the passionate fandom. Edie has been persecuted online by someone called Anomie, who has shockingly accurate information about her personal life. Robin declines to help, citing a full workload and lengthy waiting list, only to feel guilty when two people affiliated with the program are stabbed, one fatally, in the cemetery that inspired the show’s setting. She gets a chance at partial redemption when her firm’s retained to identify Anomie. Galbraith (the pseudonym of J.K. Rowling) captures perfectly the venom unleashed when people can hide behind virtual personas and egg each other on, and plausibly sustains suspense, despite the book’s length, about the murderer’s identity until the end. This impressive series shows no sign of losing steam. Agent: Neil Blair, Blair Partnership (U.K.).