The Silkworm
[2] Several months after solving the Lula Landry case, Cormoran Strike is asked by Leonora Quine to locate her novelist husband Owen, a controversial figure whose attempts to recreate the success of his first novel have failed.The book has been deemed unpublishable due to its mixture of sexual assault, torture, and cannibalism as well as its slanderous depiction of the people in Owen's life.The animosity is tempered when Strike finds Owen's body, which has been mutilated, doused in acid and posed to resemble the killing of the protagonist at the end of Bombyx Mori.Several years earlier, after Fancourt's wife Elspeth wrote a novel that was panned by critics, an anonymous parody's release prompted her to kill herself.The following week, Leonora is released from prison, Fancourt acknowledges the original Bombyx Mori manuscript's literary value and plans to write an introduction for its publication, and Strike tells Robin that he has enrolled her in investigative training courses as a Christmas gift.