What is the name of the detective at the center of J.K. Rowling’s Strike novels?

Cormoran Strike is the detective at the center of J.K. Rowling’s Strike novels.

Strike is a private investigator and a former military police investigator. He operates in London and often works with Robin Ellacott, whose professional relationship with him develops throughout the series. The novels combine murder investigations with longer character-driven storylines.

The character first appeared in The Cuckoo’s Calling, published in 2013 under Rowling’s pseudonym, Robert Galbraith. Later books expanded Strike’s personal history, his physical injuries, and his connections to the British military and detective work.

Cormoran Strike is sometimes mistaken for a character from another crime series because the books belong to the broad detective-fiction tradition. He is not a police inspector or a consulting detective: his defining occupation is private investigator.