Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) has a policy of no advance publicity (including no advance reviews) prior to one of her books going on sale. I’m not sure it is an effective marketing technique, but it certainly worked with me. I’d marked today’s date down in my calendar and downloaded the audio version of the book this morning. I’ve already listened to over 1 hour of it.
THE INK BLACK HEART is the 6th in the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott series and a must-read for a fan like me. But it is a daunting book coming in at 1024 pages. The audio version is 32 hours and 42 minutes. Pity the poor editor who suggests to J. K. Rowling that she has to trim down her latest manuscript. Her last book in the series was 944 pages and I loved every page. I expect the same will be true for THE INK BLACK HEART. Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott are two of my favorite characters in mystery fiction.

Plot:
When frantic, disheveled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn’t know quite what to make of the situation. The co-creator of a popular cartoon, The Ink Black Heart, Edie is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. Edie is desperate to uncover Anomie’s true identity.

Robin decides that the agency can’t help with this—and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart.

Robin and her business partner, Cormoran Strike, become drawn into the quest to uncover Anomie’s true identity. But with a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts to navigate, Strike and Robin find themselves embroiled in a case that stretches their powers of deduction to the limits – and which threatens them in new and horrifying ways .