Robert Galbraith’s impossibly named private detective Cormoran Strike makes his second appearance in the sequel to The Cuckoo’s Calling in THE SILKWORM (Sphere).

Set in the world of publishing, a suitable maelstrom of jealousy, insecurity, and creative accounting, Strike is summoned by an author’s wife to investigate his disappearance.

The author, a swine called Quine, has written an explicit, thinly disguised expose of the industry called Bombyx Mori, which may or may not be a motive for murder.

Galbraith shows a gutsy entertainment in entrails, an intense interest in intestines, as a gruesome homicide is uncovered and Strike sets about disemboweling alibis and vivisecting villainous intent.

Aided by his able assistant, Robin, the disabled detective – an amputee from action in Afghanistan- plods through the pantheon of publishing from editors, publicists, agents and authors, each of them entangled in a web weaved with intrigue.

Indeed, the title comes from a line in John Webster’s play, The White Devil “Ha, ha, ha, thou entanglest thyself in thine own work like a silkworm.”

Galbraith commences each chapter with a literary quote, mostly from Elizabethan, Jacobean or Restoration playwrights, and the author, now known to be a pseudonym of J.K. Rowling, mirrors some of the embroidery of these past scribes in her style. Certainly the gruesome and grotesque Grand Guignol permeates the plot.

The creation of Cormoran Strike – the name conjures some sleek king fishing bird – is a good one, with a solid back story of illegitimate progeny of a rock star who becomes a solid soldier and a celebrated sleuth.

The evolution of his relationship with his secretary cum partner, Robin, who acts more like an officer’s batman, is as interesting as the case investigated.

As a thriller, it is not a cracking pace affair, and probably could have shed fifty pages from its “airport novel” proportions. After all, Agatha Christie and a host of other crime queens told their stories in a galloping two hundred page paperback, tops.