This is J. K. Rowling’s second book (following “The Cuckoo’s Calling”) featuring the wounded military veteran-turned detective Cormoran Strike and his trusted young assistant Robin Ellacot. The crime fighting duo* get caught up with the murder of a known novelist.

    When Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days — as he has done before — and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

    But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realizes.

    The novelist has just completed a manuscript* featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives — meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.

    When Quine is found brutally* murdered under bizarre* circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has met before.

    A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, the book is available at online bookstores like jd.com, amazon.cn and dangdang.com, both in English and Chinese.(SD-Agencies)