The Silkworm follows The Cuckoo’s Calling in J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike series.
The Silkworm is the second novel in the detective series Rowling writes under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. It was published in 2014 and again follows private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott. The investigation begins when novelist Owen Quine disappears after completing a controversial manuscript.
The manuscript, titled Bombyx Mori, satirizes people in Quine’s literary circle and becomes central to the mystery. The book’s title refers to the silkworm, the larval stage of the silk moth, and echoes the imagery used in the fictional manuscript.
The Cuckoo’s Calling introduced Strike and Robin in 2013. Career of Evil is the third novel, followed by Lethal White and Troubled Blood. Readers can therefore identify The Silkworm by its position as the immediate sequel, not by confusing it with Rowling’s later adult novels such as The Casual Vacancy.