The popular BBC murder mystery show Strike is set to film its sixth season, The Ink Black Heart, very soon - but in the meantime, JK Rowlings' seventh instalment in her bestselling series, titled The Running Grave has just been released. Following the gruff but loveable detective Cormoran Strike and his work partner, Robin Ellacott, here’s everything to know about book number seven...
What is The Running Grave about?
The official synopsis for the upcoming novel reads: "Private Detective Cormoran Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside. The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organisation that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones and unexplained deaths.
"In order to try to rescue Will, Strike's business partner Robin Ellacott decides to infiltrate the cult and she travels to Norfolk to live incognito amongst them. But in doing so, she is unprepared for the dangers that await her there or for the toll it will take on her."
When is The Running Grave being released?
The title - which JK Rowling wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith - was released on 26 September. The atmospheric cover image shows Cormoran and Robin standing at the seaside, facing away to look at the ocean - and also giving very little away about what to expect from the plot!
© Photo: BBCWhat will Strike season six be about?
The sixth season will be back on JK Rowling’s sixth novel, The Ink Black Heart, which centres on the murder of a YouTune cartoonist, Edie Ledwell, who is killed after becoming a hated figure online. Speaking about the novel’s themes, which centre on backlash on social media, JK Rowling denied that she wrote it in reference to her own online controversies, explaining: "I wasn’t clairvoyant, I just – yeah, it was just one of those weird twists. Sometimes life imitates art more than one would like."
In an interview with Graham Norton, she continued: "I had written the book before certain things happened to me online. I said to my husband, ‘I think everyone is going to see this as a response to what happened to me,’ but it genuinely wasn’t. The first draft of the book was finished at the point certain things happened."
How many Cormoran Strike novels will there be?
Joanne hasn’t gone into details about how many novels based on the detective she plans to write under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith but has joked that it might be as many as ten. Speaking to the BBC, she said: "The first time I met Tom, I said, ‘Well I hope to God you do enjoy playing this character because I think I’ve got at least another 10 books in me, so you could be locked in for quite a few years her.’"
© Photo: BBC
