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 reflection of twitter trolling)! ( )

In this sixth book about private detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacot, the pair investigate online harassment, cyber stalking, and it's hard not to imagine that the plot has been informed by J K Rowling's own tweets or whatever they are called now it's no longer Twitter but X, and the subsequent storm they caused.

To make it clear, this review is based on this book only and is no reflection on my opinion of J K Rowling; I'm assuming by the way that everyone reading this knows that Robert Galbraith IS J K Rowling...if not - surprise!!

Like all of the Strike books, this one is a whopper coming in at over 1200 pages in paperback. I'm not sure it needed to be anything like that long, and a fair amount of it could possibly have been cut without any effect on the main story, but nonetheless I did find it entertaining from start to finish.

The story starts with the detective agency at capacity with their workload, so when Edie Ledwell, co-creator of the YouTube and Netflix hit series The Ink Black Heart, asks them to track down the person known only as Anomie, who is harassing her on social media, they initially turn her down. However, shortly afterwards, Edie and her business (and former romantic) partner Josh Blay are stabbed. Edie is killed and Josh is left paralyzed from the attack and this time, when Edie's agent and her uncle ask the agency to track down the mysterious Anomie, who they think either committed the crime or inspired someone else to do so, they take the job on.

There is no shortage of suspects for the culprit. Anomie invented a game based on The Ink Black Heart and turned on Edie when she very faintly criticized said game. The anger has grown into a full blown campaign of hatred, with Anomie seeming to know extremely private and personal things about Edie's life, as well as being prepared to make things up to stir up hatred amongst other followers of the cartoon.

There are several Twitter conversations and online conversations between various characters, and this can get confusing at times. None of the possible suspects uses their real name online, and sometimes have two or three different usernames across different social media platforms. At times I felt it might have been useful to have made notes of who was who. Also worth noting that during the in-game conversations between members of the game, the way these are laid out could be very confusing, especially as there were usually multiple conversations taking place at the same time.

As the death toll rises, more and more layers are added to the story. There is the far-right terrorist group, who turn their sights on the detective agency, and so many red herrings that it was hard to keep up. As readers of this series will know, there is also a slow burn between Robin and Strike, who clearly have feelings for each other but are not quite sure what, and are also both reluctant to admit it to themselves or each other. I like this particular aspect of the books; it's the characters, not so much the mysteries, which keep me coming back to this series.

The mystery itself was compelling enough, but I stand by my belief that certain parts of this book, and indeed certain characters, didn't need to be here. A bit more ruthless editing would have made it an even better read but overall I have no complaints. Fans of the series should enjoy it, but if you didn't like the previous books, then this is one to miss. ( )

Cormoran and Robin are back in book #6. Edie Ledwell, co-creator of a popular comic series called The Ink Black Heart, arrives one day in the detective agency, disheveled and somewhat frantic. She tells Robin that she is being harassed by an online persona known as Anomie. Robin graciously explains that the agency is unable to help due to their backlogged caseload and the nature of Edie's complaint, which Robin feels can be better addressed by another detective agency. Shortly afterward, Edie is found murdered in Highgate Cemetery, and Cormoran and Robin are eventually pulled in to solve the identity of Anomie, who is the suspected murderer.

These Cormoran Strike novels really do just continue to get better and better. It's becoming one of my favorite crime series. True, each book keeps getting longer and longer (which also seemed to be the case in the Harry Potter series) and some reviewers have expressed that some editing is in order, but I have to be honest: every time I put the book down, I was anxious to pick it back up again. I did have trouble keeping track of all the characters, and had I known beforehand how confusing that was going to be, I would've taken notes along the way. (And re-reading my review of the last book, #5, I seemed to have had the same complaint.) These stories do tend to get complicated, but they are so good that I can't really legitimately complain. ( )

A 1000 page book with no ending ( )

I was in the Harry Potter fandom way back in the day.

(Not a spoiler)

THE NANNY DID IT. ( )