The Running Grave (Cormoran Strike Series #7)

by Robert Galbraith

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott return in this series that started in 2013 (The Cuckoo's Calling) when no one knew who Robert Galbraith was! It delivers on all the hallmarks the series initially introduced — real-world stakes, murder mystery and compelling lead characters.

In this New York Times bestselling installment of the "outrageously entertaining" Strike series (Financial Times), detective duo Cormoran and Robin must rescue a man ensnared in the trap of a dangerous cult.​

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 organization 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 among its members. But in doing so, she is unprepared for the dangers that await her there or for the toll it will take on her. . .

Utterly page-turning, The Running Grave moves Strike's and Robin's story forward in this epic, unforgettable seventh installment of the series. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316572118
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	06/18/2024
Series:	Cormoran Strike Series , #7
Pages:	960
Sales rank:	9,728
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, bestselling author of the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy. All six Strike novels, The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm, Career of Evil, Lethal White, Troubled Blood and The Ink Black Heart topped the national and international bestseller lists and the series has been adapted for television, produced by Brontë Film and Television.

Editorial Reviews

12/15/2023

Private detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott's seventh outing strays from Galbraith's (The Ink Black Heart) winning gritty mystery formula by separating the team for nearly 40 percent of the book as Robin goes undercover at the cult-like Universal Humanitarian Church's isolated and sprawling farm to rescue a client's son who has been under the church's spell for years. Once inside, Robin discovers that several mysterious deaths on the farm could be murders and struggles against the brainwashing techniques, starvation, and physical and sexual abuse that the church members now accept because they think they are preparing themselves to become "pure spirits" who possess supernatural powers. On the outside, Cormoran and his detective agency's staff realize that the few people who have escaped the church are being killed, staged in ways to look like suicides. Both detectives are fascinating and clever characters. Galbraith (J.K. Rowling using a pseudonym) also endears them to readers by giving them plenty of emotional baggage to deal with beyond their current cases. At 960 pages, the mystery is overlong but it's a surprisingly agile and nimble elephant. VERDICT Galbraith/Rowling is a master storyteller, and these detective mysteries continue to enthrall with compelling puzzlers.—Kevin Howell

Library Journal

Series narrator Robert Glenister is spot-on delivering Book 7 in this popular series. PI Cormoran Strike is thinner and almost alcohol-free, while his work partner, Robin, is romantically involved with a hunky cop. They're hired to search for a man being held against his will within the Universal Humanitarian Church, a religious cult whose members keep disappearing. Robin goes undercover in the UHC and discovers horrific conditions: torture, rape, starvation, and murder. Glenister knows the characters well and slips easily in and out of immediately identifiable voices. He teases listeners as Cormoran and Robin remain paralyzed over their feelings for each other, but he's straightforward and terrifying as the danger Robin faces increases and tension mounts. This is definitely one of the best in the series. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile

2023-10-21
J.K. Rowling’s detective, Cormoran Strike, makes his seventh series appearance in an overlong but reasonably entertaining whodunit.

“We were hippies…We never knew what it was all going to turn into.” So speaks a veteran of a pseudo-religious cult that, when its leaders aren’t busy extracting money from their followers, worships the ascended spirits of members who just happen to be dead. Ah, but why dead? As the pseudonymous Galbraith’s latest opens, emails and letters are flying among the cult’s lawyers, a wealthy chap whose on-the-spectrum son has gone kiting off to join the cult, and a disgruntled former member who’s been writing damaging blog posts about the bunch. Naturally, the last fellow soon exits the stage, the victim of—well, who knows. Enter Strike and sidekick Robin Ellacott, whose friends have been hoping that “she and Strike would become more to each other than detective partners and best friends.” Strike has been nursing just such thoughts, but there’s no time for hanky-panky, since they’ve got an evil cabal of cult masters to take down. Their investigation leads them into tangled situations aplenty, with intimations of pedophilia and indiscreet behavior on the part of cult boss Papa J, “a handsome, tall and fit-looking man in his mid-sixties” who talks a very good game. Robin, natch, goes undercover to try to dislodge the aforementioned neurodivergent cultling from the group’s heavily fortified rural farm—where, she discovers, there are skeletons in every closet, to say nothing of every pigsty. Brexit, Charles Manson, and David Bowie all make appearances in this overstuffed yarn, much in need of streamlining though with plenty of neat plot twists and archly pointed dialogue, as when one interlocutor says of a baddie, “She must have had a dreadful childhood.” Answers Strike, “A lot of people have dreadful childhoods and don’t take to strangling small children.”

More of the same, but Rowling’s fans will be neither dissuaded nor disappointed.

Kirkus Reviews