The silkworm

Review by New York Times Review

DURING A COCKTAIL PARTY in Robert Galbraith's (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling's) endlessly entertaining detective novel "The Silkworm," the publisher Daniel Chard gives a toast in which he observes that "publishing is currently undergoing a period of rapid changes and fresh challenges, but one thing remains as true today as it was a century ago: Content is king." Coming from an obscure, midlist, mystery author named Robert Galbraith such a statement might go unnoticed. But when the same passage is written by J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series and one of the most successful authors of all time, the words cannot help having a far greater impact. Therein lies the problem and the great joy of this book. You want to judge "The Silkworm" on its own merit, author be damned. It is, in fact, this critic's job to do so. But writing that type of blind review in this case, while a noble goal, is inauthentic if not downright disingenuous. If an author's biography always casts some shadow on the work, here, the author is comparatively a total solar eclipse coupled with a supermassive black hole. This is especially true because Rowling (let's stop pretending) makes matters worse (or better) by taking on the world of publishing. Leonora Quine, the dowdy wife of the novelist Owen Quine, hires our hero, the British private detective Cormoran Strike (first seen last year in Rowling's "The Cuckoo's Calling"), to investigate the disappearance of her husband. Owen Quine has just written a nasty novel that reveals dark, life-ruining secrets of almost everyone he knows. Owen, his wife tells Strike, is probably at a writer's retreat. Finding him should be a routine matter. But, of course, nothing here is what it seems. When Owen Quine ends up gruesomely slaughtered - in a murder scene ripped from his new novel - Strike and his comely sidekick, Robin Ellacott (think Sherlock and Watson, Nick and Nora, Batman and, well, Robin), enter the surprisingly seedy world of book publishing. They investigate those who were thinly disguised in Quine's final manuscript, all of whom offer insights into the world of the writer. The suspect pool includes his editor, Jerry Waldegrave ("Writers are different. ... I've never met one who was any good who wasn't screwy"); his agent, Elizabeth Tassel ("Have you any idea ... how many people think they can write? You cannot imagine the crap I am sent"); his publisher, Daniel Chard ("We need readers. ... More readers. Fewer writers"); and the pompous literary novelist Michael Fancourt ("Like most writers, I tend to find out what I feel on a subject by writing about it. It is how we interpret the world, how we make sense of it"). AS WRITTEN BY Rowling, "The Silkworm" takes "write what you know" and raises it to the 10th power. Is this crime fiction, a celebrity tell-all, juicy satire or all of the above? The blessing/curse here is that you turn the pages for the whodunit, but you never lose sight that these observations on the publishing world come from the very top. This makes complete escape, something mandatory for a crime novel, almost impossible - but then again, who cares? If you want a more complete escape, pick up another book. Reading Rowling on writing is delicious fun. Even the title of the novel (and the English translation of the poisoned-pen manuscript) is "The Silkworm" because a silkworm's life is "a metaphor for the writer, who has to go through agonies to get at the good stuff." On envy: "If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels." On Internet trolls: "With the invention of the Internet, any subliterate cretin can be Michiko Kakutani." On a literary male writer's inability to create realistic female characters: "His women are all temper ... and tampons." On a writer named Dorcus Pengelly (some of these names are straight out of Hogwarts): "She writes pornography dressed up as historical romance," but our murder victim still would "have killed for her sales." There is even a debate on the merits of self-publishing when Quine's mistress whines that she's going the "indie" route because "traditional publishers wouldn't know good books if they were hit over the head with them." Are these opinions shared by Rowling? Don't know, don't care. In the end, despite the window dressing, Rowling's goal is to entertain and entertain she does. If we can't forget that she is a celebrity, we're also constantly reminded that she is a master storyteller. Push aside J. K. Rowling (a gender-neutral pseudonym Joanne Rowling took so that boys would read Harry Potter) and judge the book on the merits of Robert Galbraith (a full-fledged male pseudonym with no such neutrality), and "The Silkworm" is still a suspenseful, well-written and assured British detective novel. Strike, who lost his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, is described as a "limping prize fighter," a man who looms so large, "the room seemed much smaller with his arrival." Potter fans will want to make a connection between Cormoran Strike and Rubeus Hagrid, the beloved giant in the Harry Potter novels, but such comparisons feel forced. If J. K. Rowling never leaves our minds while reading "The Silkworm," the world of Harry Potter, to Rowling/Galbraith's credit, never enters it. We are squarely in the gritty, gloomy and glitzy real world of the Muggles, except maybe when she describes a noisy piece of furniture in Strike's office as the "farting leather sofa." For a moment, the reader can almost see the sofa coming to life in the halls of Slytherin House. "the silkworm" most often feels like a traditional British crime novel albeit set in the present day, complete with eccentric suspects, a girl Friday (Oh, when will they see that they are meant for each other?) and a close friend in the police department whose life Strike saved in the war. But Rowling gives some of the old saws a new spin. Robin, for example, isn't a longtime friend or ex-lover - she starts out as a young temp Strike first meets in "The Cuckoo's Calling." Strike himself may at first appear to be something we have seen too often - a brooding, damaged detective, with a life-altering war injury, financially on the brink, who's recently lost his longtime girlfriend - but there is an optimism to him that is refreshing and endearing. Even though he's hobbling down the street, often in great pain, "Strike was unique among the men not merely for his size but for the fact that he did not look as though life had pummeled him into a quiescent stupor." Strike also shares a trait with many great fictional detectives : He is darn good company. There are musings on fame (Strike is the illegitimate son of the rock star Jonny Rokeby), the media (the book opens with a passing shot at the British phone hacking scandal that engulfed many celebrities, including Rowling), book marketing (Quine's wife on her husband's sluggish sales: "It's up to the publishers to give 'em a push. They wouldn't never get him on TV or anything like he needed"), not to mention e-books and the digital age of publishing. But Rowling saves her most poignant observations for the disappointments of marriage and relationships. The likable Robin is engaged to a pill named Matthew and cannot see, as Strike and the reader can, that "the condition of being with Matthew was not to be herself." When he thinks about his own sister's marriage and those like it, Strike wonders about the "endless parade of suburban conformity." His private-eye job of catching straying spouses makes him lament "the tedious variations on betrayal and disillusionment that brought a never-ending stream of clients to his door." He sees the "willfully blind allegiance" of long-suffering wives and the false "hero worship" of male writers by the women who supposedly love them. When his sister asks Strike if he puts up with his destructive ex-girlfriend "because she's beautiful," Strike's honest answer is devastating: "It helps." Do these observations take on more weight when we know that the writer is a superstar female author rather than a semi-obscure male one? I think they do. The book isn't perfect. It's a tad too long, and the suspect interrogations grow repetitive. Sometimes the reader feels Rowling may be trying too hard to move away from Hogwarts. The fair amount of swearing reminds one of a rebellious teenager set free. Some will also argue that while Harry Potter altered the landscape in a way no children's novel ever has, here Rowling does the opposite: She plays to form. "The Silkworm" is a very well-written, wonderfully entertaining take on the traditional British crime novel, but it breaks no new ground, and Rowling seems to know that. Robert Galbraith may proudly join the ranks of English, Scottish and Irish crime writers such as Tana French, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, John Connolly, Kate Atkinson and Peter Robinson, but she wouldn't overshadow them. Still, to put any author on that list is very high praise. The upside of being as well known as Rowling is obvious - sales, money, attention. That's not what she's after here. The downside - and her reason for using the pseudonym - is that telling a story needs a little bit of anonymity. Rowling deserves that chance, even if she can't entirely have it. We can't unring that bell, but in a larger sense, we readers get more. We get the wry observations when we can't ignore the author's identity and we get the escapist mystery when we can. In the end, the fictional publisher Daniel Chard got it right: "Content is king," and on that score, both J.K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith triumph. 'Writers are different. ... I've never met one who was any good who wasn't screwy.' HARLAN COBEN is the author, most recently, of "Missing You." His new young adult novel, "Found," will be published this fall.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 22, 2014]

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Once again writing under the pseudonym Galbraith, J.K. Rowling begins her new fair-play whodunit a few months after the conclusion of The Cuckoo's Calling (2013). Here, London private eye Comoran Strike and his almost aggressively efficient assistant, Robin Ellacott, are searching for the murderer of novelist Owen Quine, the author of a scurrilous roman a clef certain to damage the careers of an assortment of publishing power players if printed. Popular British actor Glenister (MI-5, Hustle) takes on a highly-charged crime puzzle, peopled by a panoply of mainly vile suspects as well as a totally engaging pair of detectives. Matching Rowling's praiseworthy ear for dialogue, he catches the subtleties-a touch of snark in cocktail party chatter, the arrogance in the voice of the overprivileged, the fear almost hidden in the raspy croak of a chain-smoking literary agent. His Strike shifts from a weary attitude when dealing with his personal life to an air of vitality and confidence when on the job. Robin, too, is at her best when working, sounding bright and on top of things; while at home, her conversation is dulled by her increasing uncertainty about marriage to fiance. This developing doubt seems justified, since the husband-to-be, as Glenister's interpretation perfectly captures, is a demanding and humorless bore. A Little, Brown/Mulholland hardcover. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Cormoran Strike's second appearance (after The Cuckoo's Calling) involves the curmudgeonly detective in the publishing world when a distraught Loretta Quine elicits his help in locating her missing husband. At the root of the investigation is Owen Quine's missing novel, a poisonous allegory defaming nearly everyone in his life. Then Owen is found dead, leaving behind too many motives and too many suspects. Intricately plotted, focused from beginning to end, and narrated by Robert Glenister, this work is a perfect marriage of novel and performance. Listeners who are familiar with the first work in this series will enjoy it more, but others won't have any trouble following the plot. VERDICT Highly recommended. ["In her Galbraith persona, author J.K. Rowling has created memorable characters who develop and grow throughout the course of the novel. The mystery itself is clever, and the frequent darts aimed at the publishing world are entertaining," read the review of the Mulholland: Little, Brown hc, Xpress Reviews, 7/10/14.]-Janet Martin, Southern Pines P.L., NC (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

In her second pseudonymous outing as Galbraith, J.K. Rowling continues her examination of famethose who want it, those who avoid it, those who profit from it.Cormoran Strike, Rowlings hard-living private eye, isnt as close to the edge as he was in his first appearance, The Cuckoos Calling (2013). His success at proving supermodel Lula Landry was murdered has brought him more clients than he can handlemostly businessmen who think their lovers are straying and divorcing wives looking for their husbands assetsand hes even rented a small apartment above his office near Charing Cross Road. His accidental tempturned-assistant, Robin Ellacott, is dying to stretch her investigative muscles, but she has to deal with her fiance, Matthew, who still wishes shed taken that better-paying job in human resources. Then odd sad-sack Leonora Quine comes in asking Strike to find her missing husband, Owen, a fading enfant terrible novelist. Strike soon discovers that Owen had written a baroque fantasy novel in which he exposed the secrets of everyone he knowsincluding his editor, publisher and a famous writer with whom he had a falling out years earlierand his agent had just sent it out for consideration. Rowling has great fun with the book industry: Editors, agents and publishers all want to meet the detective, but only over lunches at fancy restaurants where hes expected to foot the bill. Its no big surprise when Strike finds the writers dead bodythough its certainly gruesome, as someone killed him in the same extravagantly macabre way he disposed of the villain of his unpublished book. As Strike tries to figure out who murdered Owen, the writer is splashed across the front pages of the tabloids in a way he would have loved when he was alive, while the detective tries to play down his own growing fame.Rowling proves once again that shes a master of plotting over the course of a series; you can see her planting seeds, especially when it comes to Robin, which can be expected to bear narrative fruit down the line. It will be a pleasure to watch what happens. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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...blood and vengeance the scene, death the story, a sword imbrued with blood, the pen that writes, and the poet a terrible buskined tragical fellow, with a wreath about his head of burning match instead of bays. The Noble Spanish Soldier Thomas Dekker 1 QUESTION What dost thou feed on? ANSWER Broken sleep. Thomas Dekker, The Noble Spanish Soldier "Someone bloody famous," said the hoarse voice on the end of the line, "better've died, Strike." The large unshaven man tramping through the darkness of pre-dawn, with his telephone clamped to his ear, grinned. "It's in that ballpark." "It's six o'clock in the fucking morning!" "It's half past, but if you want what I've got, you'll need to come and get it," said Cormoran Strike. "I'm not far away from your place. There's a--" "How d'you know where I live?" demanded the voice. "You told me," said Strike, stifling a yawn. "You're selling your flat." "Oh," said the other, mollified. "Good memory." "There's a twenty-four-hour caff--" "Fuck that. Come into the office later--" "Culpepper, I've got another client this morning, he pays better than you do and I've been up all night. You need this now if you're going to use it." A groan. Strike could hear the rustling of sheets. "It had better be shit-hot." "Smithfield Café on Long Lane," said Strike and rang off. The slight unevenness in his gait became more pronounced as he walked down the slope towards Smithfield Market, monolithic in the winter darkness, a vast rectangular Victorian temple to meat, where from four every weekday morning animal flesh was unloaded, as it had been for centuries past, cut, parceled and sold to butchers and restaurants across London. Strike could hear voices through the gloom, shouted instructions and the growl and beep of reversing lorries unloading the carcasses. As he entered Long Lane, he became merely one among many heavily muffled men moving purposefully about their Monday-morning business. A huddle of couriers in fluorescent jackets cupped mugs of tea in their gloved hands beneath a stone griffin standing sentinel on the corner of the market building. Across the road, glowing like an open fireplace against the surrounding darkness, was the Smithfield Café, open twenty-four hours a day, a cupboard-sized cache of warmth and greasy food. The café had no bathroom, but an arrangement with the bookies a few doors along. Ladbrokes would not open for another three hours, so Strike made a detour down a side alley and in a dark doorway relieved himself of a bladder bulging with weak coffee drunk in the course of a night's work. Exhausted and hungry, he turned at last, with the pleasure that only a man who has pushed himself past his physical limits can ever experience, into the fat-laden atmosphere of frying eggs and bacon. Two men in fleeces and waterproofs had just vacated a table. Strike maneuvered his bulk into the small space and sank, with a grunt of satisfaction, onto the hard wood and steel chair. Almost before he asked, the Italian owner placed tea in front of him in a tall white mug, which came with triangles of white buttered bread. Within five minutes a full English breakfast lay before him on a large oval plate. Strike blended well with the strong men banging their way in and out of the café. He was large and dark, with dense, short, curly hair that had receded a little from the high, domed forehead that topped a boxer's broad nose and thick, surly brows. His jaw was grimy with stubble and bruise-colored shadows enlarged his dark eyes. He ate gazing dreamily at the market building opposite. The nearest arched entrance, numbered two, was taking substance as the darkness thinned: a stern stone face, ancient and bearded, stared back at him from over the doorway. Had there ever been a god of carcasses? He had just started on his sausages when Dominic Culpepper arrived. The journalist was almost as tall as Strike but thin, with a choirboy's complexion. A strange asymmetry, as though somebody had given his face a counterclockwise twist, stopped him being girlishly handsome. "This better be good," Culpepper said as he sat down, pulled off his gloves and glanced almost suspiciously around the café. "Want some food?" asked Strike through a mouthful of sausage. "No," said Culpepper. "Rather wait till you can get a croissant?" asked Strike, grinning. "Fuck off, Strike." It was almost pathetically easy to wind up the ex--public schoolboy, who ordered tea with an air of defiance, calling the indifferent waiter (as Strike noted with amusement) "mate." "Well?" demanded Culpepper, with the hot mug in his long pale hands. Strike fished in his overcoat pocket, brought out an envelope and slid it across the table. Culpepper pulled out the contents and began to read. "Fucking hell," he said quietly, after a while. He shuffled feverishly through the bits of paper, some of which were covered in Strike's own writing. "Where the hell did you get this?" Strike, whose mouth was full of sausage, jabbed a finger at one of the bits of paper, on which an office address was scribbled. "His very fucked-off PA," he said, when he had finally swallowed. "He's been shagging her, as well as the two you know about. She's only just realized she's not going to be the next Lady Parker." "How the hell did you find that out?" asked Culpepper, staring up at Strike over the papers trembling in his excited hands. "Detective work," said Strike thickly, through another bit of sausage. "Didn't your lot used to do this, before you started outsourcing to the likes of me? But she's got to think about her future employment prospects, Culpepper, so she doesn't want to appear in the story, all right?" Culpepper snorted. "She should've thought about that before she nicked--" With a deft movement, Strike tweaked the papers out of the journalist's fingers. "She didn't nick them. He got her to print this lot off for him this afternoon. The only thing she's done wrong is show it to me. But if you're going to splash her private life all over the papers, Culpepper, I'll take 'em back." "Piss off," said Culpepper, making a grab for the evidence of wholesale tax evasion clutched in Strike's hairy hand. "All right, we'll leave her out of it. But he'll know where we got it. He's not a complete tit." "What's he going to do, drag her into court where she can spill the beans about every other dodgy thing she's witnessed over the last five years?" "Yeah, all right," sighed Culpepper after a moment's reflection. "Give 'em back. I'll leave her out of the story, but I'll need to speak to her, won't I? Check she's kosher." "Those are kosher. You don't need to speak to her," said Strike firmly. The shaking, besotted, bitterly betrayed woman whom he had just left would not be safe left alone with Culpepper. In her savage desire for retribution against a man who had promised her marriage and children she would damage herself and her prospects beyond repair. It had not taken Strike long to gain her trust. She was nearly forty-two; she had thought that she was going to have Lord Parker's children; now a kind of bloodlust had her in its grip. Strike had sat with her for several hours, listening to the story of her infatuation, watching her pace her sitting room in tears, rock backwards and forwards on her sofa, knuckles to her forehead. Finally she had agreed to this: a betrayal that represented the funeral of all her hopes. "You're going to leave her out of it," said Strike, holding the papers firmly in a fist that was nearly twice the size of Culpepper's. "Right? This is still a fucking massive story without her." After a moment's hesitation and with a grimace, Culpepper caved in. "Yeah, all right. Give me them." The journalist shoved the statements into an inside pocket and gulped his tea, and his momentary disgruntlement at Strike seemed to fade in the glorious prospect of dismantling the reputation of a British peer. "Lord Parker of Pennywell," he said happily under his breath, "you are well and truly screwed, mate." "I take it your proprietor'll get this?" Strike asked, as the bill landed between them. "Yeah, yeah?…" Culpepper threw a ten-pound note down onto the table and the two men left the café together. Strike lit up a cigarette as soon as the door had swung closed behind them. "How did you get her to talk?" Culpepper asked as they set off together through the cold, past the motorbikes and lorries still arriving at and departing the market. "I listened," said Strike. Culpepper shot him a sideways glance. "All the other private dicks I use spend their time hacking phone messages." "Illegal," said Strike, blowing smoke into the thinning darkness. "So how--?" "You protect your sources and I'll protect mine." They walked fifty yards in silence, Strike's limp more marked with every step. "This is going to be massive. Massive," said Culpepper gleefully. "That hypocritical old shit's been bleating on about corporate greed and he's had twenty mill stashed in the Cayman Islands?…?" "Glad to give satisfaction," said Strike. "I'll email you my invoice." Culpepper threw him another sideways look. "See Tom Jones's son in the paper last week?" he asked. "Tom Jones?" "Welsh singer," said Culpepper. "Oh, him," said Strike, without enthusiasm. "I knew a Tom Jones in the army." "Did you see the story?" "No." "Nice long interview he gave. He says he's never met his father, never had a word from him. I bet he got more than your bill is going to be." "You haven't seen my invoice yet," said Strike. "Just saying. One nice little interview and you could take a few nights off from interviewing secretaries." "You're going to have to stop suggesting this," said Strike, "or I'm going to have to stop working for you, Culpepper." "Course," said Culpepper, "I could run the story anyway. Rock star's estranged son is a war hero, never knew his father, working as a private--" "Instructing people to hack phones is illegal as well, I've heard." At the top of Long Lane they slowed and turned to face each other. Culpepper's laugh was uneasy. "I'll wait for your invoice, then." "Suits me." They set off in different directions, Strike heading towards the Tube station. "Strike!" Culpepper's voice echoed through the darkness behind him. "Did you fuck her?" "Looking forward to reading it, Culpepper," Strike shouted wearily, without turning his head. He limped into the shadowy entrance of the station and was lost to Culpepper's sight. 2 How long must we fight? for I cannot stay, Nor will not stay! I have business. Francis Beaumont and Philip Massinger, The Little French Lawyer The Tube was filling up already. Monday-morning faces: sagging, gaunt, braced, resigned. Strike found a seat opposite a puffy-eyed young blonde whose head kept sinking sideways into sleep. Again and again she jerked herself back upright, scanning the blurred signs of the stations frantically in case she had missed her stop. The train rattled and clattered, speeding Strike back towards the meager two and a half rooms under a poorly insulated roof that he called home. In the depths of his tiredness, surrounded by these blank, sheep-like visages, he found himself pondering the accidents that had brought all of them into being. Every birth was, viewed properly, mere chance. With a hundred million sperm swimming blindly through the darkness, the odds against a person becoming themselves were staggering. How many of this Tube-full had been planned, he wondered, light-headed with tiredness. And how many, like him, were accidents? There had been a little girl in his primary school class who had a port-wine stain across her face and Strike had always felt a secret kinship with her, because both of them had carried something indelibly different with them since birth, something that was not their fault. They couldn't see it, but everybody else could, and had the bad manners to keep mentioning it. The occasional fascination of total strangers, which at five years old he had thought had something to do with his own uniqueness, he eventually realized was because they saw him as no more than a famous singer's zygote, the incidental evidence of a celebrity's unfaithful fumble. Strike had only met his biological father twice. It had taken a DNA test to make Jonny Rokeby accept paternity. Dominic Culpepper was a walking distillation of the prurience and presumptions that Strike met on the very rare occasions these days that anybody connected the surly-looking ex-soldier with the aging rock star. Their thoughts leapt at once to trust funds and handsome handouts, to private flights and VIP lounges, to a multimillionaire's largesse on tap. Agog at the modesty of Strike's existence and the punishing hours he worked, they asked themselves: what must Strike have done to alienate his father? Was he faking penury to wheedle more money out of Rokeby? What had he done with the millions his mother had surely squeezed out of her rich paramour? And at such times, Strike would think nostalgically of the army, of the anonymity of a career in which your background and your parentage counted for almost nothing beside your ability to do the job. Back in the Special Investigation Branch, the most personal question he had faced on introduction was a request to repeat the odd pair of names with which his extravagantly unconventional mother had saddled him. Traffic was already rolling busily along Charing Cross Road by the time Strike emerged from the Tube. The November dawn was breaking now, gray and halfhearted, full of lingering shadows. He turned into Denmark Street feeling drained and sore, looking forward to the short sleep he might be able to squeeze in before his next client arrived at nine thirty. With a wave at the girl in the guitar shop, with whom he often took cigarette breaks on the street, Strike let himself in through the black outer door beside the 12 Bar Café and began to climb the metal staircase that curled around the broken birdcage lift inside. Up past the graphic designer on the first floor, past his own office with its engraved glass door on the second; up to the third and smallest landing where his home now lay. The previous occupant, manager of the bar downstairs, had moved on to more salubrious quarters and Strike, who had been sleeping in his office for a few months, had leapt at the chance to rent the place, grateful for such an easy solution to the problem of his homelessness. The space under the eaves was small by any standards, and especially for a man of six foot three. He scarcely had room to turn around in the shower; kitchen and living room were uneasily combined and the bedroom was almost entirely filled by the double bed. Some of Strike's possessions remained boxed up on the landing, in spite of the landlord's injunction against this. His small windows looked out across rooftops, with Denmark Street far below. The constant throb of the bass from the bar below was muffled to the point that Strike's own music often obliterated it. Strike's innate orderliness was manifest throughout: the bed was made, the crockery clean, everything in its place. He needed a shave and shower, but that could wait; after hanging up his overcoat, he set his alarm for nine twenty and stretched out on the bed fully clothed. He fell asleep within seconds and within a few more--or so it seemed--he was awake again. Somebody was knocking on his door. "I'm sorry, Cormoran, I'm really sorry--" His assistant, a tall young woman with long strawberry-blond hair, looked apologetic as he opened the door, but at the sight of him her expression became appalled. "Are you all right?" "Wuzassleep. Been 'wake all night--two nights." "I'm really sorry," Robin repeated, "but it's nine forty and William Baker's here and getting--" "Shit," mumbled Strike. "Can't've set the alarm right--gimme five min--" "That's not all," said Robin. "There's a woman here. She hasn't got an appointment. I've told her you haven't got room for another client, but she's refusing to leave." Strike yawned, rubbing his eyes. "Five minutes. Make them tea or something." Six minutes later, in a clean shirt, smelling of toothpaste and deodorant but still unshaven, Strike entered the outer office where Robin was sitting at her computer. "Well, better late than never," said William Baker with a rigid smile. "Lucky you've got such a good-looking secretary, or I might have got bored and left." Strike saw Robin flush angrily as she turned away, ostensibly organizing the post. There had been something inherently offensive in the way that Baker had said "secretary." Immaculate in his pinstriped suit, the company director was employing Strike to investigate two of his fellow board members. "Morning, William," said Strike. "No apology?" murmured Baker, his eyes on the ceiling. "Hello, who are you?" Strike asked, ignoring him and addressing instead the slight, middle-aged woman in an old brown overcoat who was perched on the sofa. "Leonora Quine," she replied, in what sounded, to Strike's practiced ear, like a West Country accent. "I've got a very busy morning ahead, Strike," said Baker. He walked without invitation into the inner office. When Strike did not follow, he lost a little of his suavity. "I doubt you got away with shoddy time-keeping in the army, Mr. Strike. Come along, please." Strike did not seem to hear him. "What exactly is it you were wanting me to do for you, Mrs. Quine?" he asked the shabby woman on the sofa. "Well, it's my husband--" "Mr. Strike, I've got an appointment in just over an hour," said William Baker, more loudly. "--your secretary said you didn't have no appointments but I said I'd wait." "Strike!" barked William Baker, calling his dog to heel. "Robin," snarled the exhausted Strike, losing his temper at last. "Make up Mr. Baker's bill and give him the file; it's up to date." "What?" said William Baker, thrown. He reemerged into the outer office. "He's sacking you," said Leonora Quine with satisfaction. "You haven't finished the job," Baker told Strike. "You said there was more--" "Someone else can finish the job for you. Someone who doesn't mind tossers as clients." The atmosphere in the office seemed to become petrified. Wooden-faced, Robin retrieved Baker's file from the outer cabinet and handed it to Strike. "How dare--" "There's a lot of good stuff in that file that'll stand up in court," said Strike, handing it to the director. "Well worth the money." "You haven't finished--" "He's finished with you," interjected Leonora Quine. "Will you shut up, you stupid wom--" William Baker began, then took a sudden step backwards as Strike took a half-step forwards. Nobody said anything. The ex-serviceman seemed suddenly to be filling twice as much space as he had just seconds before. "Take a seat in my office, Mrs. Quine," said Strike quietly. She did as she was told. "You think she'll be able to afford you?" sneered a retreating William Baker, his hand now on the door handle. "My fees are negotiable," said Strike, "if I like the client." He followed Leonora Quine into his office and closed the door behind him with a snap.

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