The Ink Black Heart: The Number One international bestseller (Strike 6)
£5.20
***The 7th novel in the Strike series, THE RUNNING GRAVE, is coming in September 2023. Pre-order now and be the first to read it***
THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, JULY 2023
‘A superlative piece of crime fiction’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘There can be no denying [Galbraith’s] considerable talents as a crime writer’ GUARDIAN
‘Fans will be as entranced as ever’ DAILY MAIL
When frantic, dishevelled 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 . . .
A gripping, fiendishly clever mystery, The Ink Black Heart is a true tour-de-force.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Sphere (30 Aug. 2022) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| File size | 37697 KB |
| Text-to-Speech | Enabled |
| Screen Reader | Supported |
| Enhanced typesetting | Enabled |
| X-Ray | Not Enabled |
| Word Wise | Enabled |
| Sticky notes | On Kindle Scribe |
| Print length | 1460 pages |
by Lewes
I have read a number of other reviews re this book and must state, in fairness, that I am a tiny minority of people who do not have twitter, tweet, Facebook or any other form of digital communication aside from emails so I had some difficulty negotiating the initials, abbreviations and swearing in those sections of the book that form that part, but did read them. Due to this perhaps I found the book tedious, the resolution with the Jago/Charlotte divorce contrived and the others largely ignored. Strike is a horrible man, ruthless, self absorbed and selfish. Robin seems to have turned into a nun, with a death wish and I think she should start to get a life of her own. A relationship with Strike would change the dynamics of their partnership for the worse and I think she knows this – if she’s such a good detective she must know about his behaviour with women. I didn’t guess who Anomie was but was sorry they didn’t get round to the rest before discovery. Bought paperback as was advised against using ereader and the length made the book unwieldy to hold much like the novel in my view.
by Geraldine Croft
I bought the Ink Black Heart the minute it came out in paperback and got stuck in without reacquainting myself with Books 1 – 5.
When the creators of The Ink Black Heart, a cult on-line cartoon, are attacked in Highgrove cemetery leaving Edie dead and Josh paralysed, Strike and Robin are hired to unmask the true identity of anomie – a menacing cyber character and co-creator of the IBH spinoff, Drek’s game, who patrols the web like a winged Nazgul singling out Edie for persistent persecution in an attempt to turn the fandom against her.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and reddit; trolling, ghosting and catfishing; ableism, the dark web and online gaming; the alt right, grooming and misogyny – The Ink Black Heart is not for the faint-hearted!
I managed to keep track of who’s who despite multiple online identities but didn’t come close to guessing whodunnit – there were more red herrings than you could shake a stick at!
The alternating chapter format – Strike’s POV, Robin’s POV, three channel chats – kept my attention and the pages turning. I loved the introduction of new characters: at the agency, as new love interests for Robin and Corm whose will they/won’t they remains as frustrating as ever and everybody connected to the pivotal North Grove Art Collective.
My only bugbears were the distracting quotes at the start of each chapter and the unnecessarily prolific use of the c-word (I’m not a tweeter but accept this might be a fair representation of twitter trolling)!
by Geraldine Croft
Usually I read far too quickly & am often disappointed to get to the end of a book. But this big beast of a story has kept me engrossed for days! Love the “chemistry” between Strike & Robin but hope they never really get together as it would spoil the “will they won’t they” bits! The only thing that marred my enjoyment of this was the need to flick through the loads of chat room stuff- It’s necessary to the plot but the print was very small so was difficult to read on a kindle. However fortunately it has been repeated in a slightly more legible format. Seems unecessary to do it twice???
by Christopher Rudd
I have always been a fan of Cormoran Strike. The first of JK Rowling’s (by now I presume we can dispense with the usual disclaimer) novels, “A Cuckoo’s Calling” was dark, mysterious and beautifully captured the binary worlds of opulence and deprivation with it’s true main character – London.
This said, I felt the most recent novels – Lethal White and Troubled Blood – were overlong and complex. I found it difficult to keep up with the lengthy list of characters and would quickly, therefore, lose attention to the plot. What kept me reading were the interpersonal relationships between the protagonists – the ever-brewing will-they-won’t-they between Strike and Robin, and the dysfunctional marriage of Robin and Matthew.
It is curious that some have levelled the same criticism against the 6th book in the series – “The Ink Black Heart” – where I felt it was a welcome resurgence. The plot and list of dramatis personae remain – true – complex; however, I was immediately absorbed in the subject matter and found the world in which Rowling sought to explore fascinating.
The Ink Black Heart is based on a fictional adult cartoon of the same name, initially published on YouTube by boyfriend-and-girlfriend creators Josh Blay and Edie Ledwell. The series garners a large, insular fandom, resulting in the unofficial creation of an online game based on a plotline within the cartoon. The cartoon grows ever more popular and is signed by Netflix. During an interview of Ledwell and Blay, Ledwell makes an off-the-cuff comment about the online game which is perceived as being critical of it, and many in the fandom – led by game-creator ‘Anomie’ – start a campaign of abuse against her. Ledwell attends the agency and asks Robin to investigate who Anomie is, but Robin turns her down as their client list is full. Days later, Ledwell is murdered and Blay serious injured in Highgate Cemetery, the location in which The Ink Black Heart is set, so Robin and Strike take on the case.
Ink Black Heart is a whodunnit. And it is a long one at that – over 1,100 pages. Stripped-down, the plot is ‘who is Anomie’? It is, in fact, this basic story that require the most dramatic licence – as the police, who work away on the same case in the background (but tend toward diversion to another sub-plot) would most likely find the identification of this antagonist-in-chief relatively straight-forward. Yet, Strike and Robin seek to do things the old fashioned way and interview reems of both willing and unwilling possibles in order to eliminate who they think could be behind the pseudonym. The aforementioned sub-plot is the infiltration of the fandom by far-right activists, all bitter misogynists who spend much of their time online somewhere between attempting pick-up-artistry and trolling – indeed, being extremely crude and hostile toward anyone who does not share their political views. This toxic online community, therefore, is a collection of misfits: those who seek refuge from the troubles of the real world and those who seek to advance a malicious political cause.
In terms of style, the book often moves away from simply prose and reproduces Twitter threads as well as private messages between moderators in the online game. In many cases, the private messages are formatted alongside each other; thus, the reader must digest three or four separate conversations running at once. These ‘chats’, though, capture well the kind of vitriolic conversation that too-often occurs online, especially when people are able to hide behind anonymity. Of interest, it charts how individuals are able to create online personas – shadows of their own true self – and garner huge followings, providing a platform to amplify their personal views. The inevitable criticism of Rowling – that this is a representation of her own victimhood following the online backlash to her own political views – rings hollow to my mind. There is little comparison in terms of content, and these kinds of communities are only too easy to find.
Again, I must admit there were times when it was difficult to keep up with who-was-who. Notwithstanding its length, Ink Black Heart is a book better read quickly for risk of leaving it a few days and forgetting exactly who fits in where; however, I didn’t find that inhibitive. A quick refresher and was back with it, absorbed. Interspersed, of course, was the slow-burn relationship between the two fictional detectives, and it may be that the failure of either to simply have a straight conversation will be of frustration to some (but teasing to many!). Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Ink Black Heart and am now looking forward to the next instalment. The problems I have referred to, as well as the rather rushed ending (sadly there is no suspects sat around the fire place finale) means I cannot give it 5/5; but I certainly closed the final chapter wanting more.
by Amazon Customer
It is long 1000+ pages.
Am about one-third into the back on 3rd day.
So far, not the best of the novels. Not as enjoyable as Career of Evil, my personal fave.
Finding the emails and texts hard to read, and there are a lot of them, inevitable considering the novel concerns a computer game.
That said, Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling is about the best detective/thriller writer around and if you like long books, he/she/they have the goods for you. Good pace, memorable characters and lots of detail, places one can visualise as the characters move through the space.
Strike No seven is in the shops, probably buy as a Christmas gift to myself.