The Ink Black Heart is a 2022 novel by J. K. Rowling written under her Moustache de Plume, Robert Galbraith. It is the sixth novel in her series about the one-legged detective, Cormoran Strike.
The action takes place from the fall of 2014 to the spring of 2015. Cormoran Strike's partner, Robin Ellacott is in the office one day and receives a prospective client, one Edie Ledwell. Edie is the co-creator of a YouTube cartoon called The Ink Black Heart, a macabre little Black Comedy cartoon about a human heart that leaps out of a grave and makes all kinds of friends among the undead in a graveyard. The cartoon has caught on in a big way, to the extent that Netflix is going to adapt it into a film, but Edie is not enjoying fame.
It seems that she is being stalked and harassed by an anonymous online personality called "Anomie", the co-creator of "Drek's Game", a fan-made online game based on the cartoon. Anomie has whipped up a campaign of online harassment against Edie, accusing her of once being a prostitute, of being a plagiarist, of having faked a suicide attempt. Anomie has posted Edie's address on the internet and also harassed her friends and family. A desperate Edie asks Robin and Cormoran to find out who Anomie is, but the Strike detective agency already has a full case load and also doesn't really do online investigations. Robin declines and refers Edie to other agencies.
Soon afterwards, Edie Ledwell is found murdered, in the very graveyard that inspired her cartoon. Her former boyfriend and Ink Black Heart co-creator, Josh Blay, is found with her, grievously wounded but still alive. Robin and Cormoran take the case, and find themselves drawn into the world of toxic online fandom, as they try to discover who is Anomie.
Meanwhile, hanging above all as usual, is the Will They or Won't They? relationship of Robin Ellacott and Cormoran Strike.
Tropes:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Hugh Jacks for Robin.
- Almost Kiss: Cormoran almost kisses Robin after they leave dinner at the Ritz, but "Robin's expression moved from happiness to fear"—she hadn't seen the kiss coming—and a mortified Cormoran hails a taxi and leaves. The nascent Strike-Ellacott romance is torpedoed, as Cormoran incorrectly thinks Robin isn't attracted to him.
- Amicable Exes:
- Madeline is on good terms with the father of her son, whom she never married. Her ex-husband, on the other hand, she is less nostalgic about.
- The girl whose picture was used to create the phony Paperwhite identity insists that her ex-boyfriend (whom she sent the photo to) wouldn't have done anything unsavory with the picture and is reluctant to give Strike information about her ex. Strike concedes that the two do look very calm and friendly in pictures showing them together after their breakup.
- Ascended Fanboy: A man dressed as Superman at a ComicCon ends up helping Robin save a suspect from being run over by a train.
- Asshole Victim: While Edie and Morehouse are portrayed fairly sympathetically before and after their murders, the same can't be said of Inigo, the final victim. He is a self-absorbed bully who makes his wife and children miserable, cheats on his wife, and is hostile and unhelpful to the detectives. Strike himself seems to think this. In the final scene, he laments about how Morehouse might still be alive if For Want Of A Nail hadn’t kept the killer from being exposed earlier, but he doesn't say the same thing about Inigo.
- Axe Before Entering: The climax finds Robin hiding in a bathroom as a crazed Gus Upcott starts chopping away at the door with a machete, then sticking his face in the hole and screaming that he's going to rape and murder her.
- Badass Bystander: In the climax, two unnamed neighbors of the Upcotts respond to the noises of the struggle during Gus Upcott's Villainous Breakdown rampage and help Robin overpower the villain.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Robin goes undercover, taking a class at the art commune. A guy named Preston poses for a nude study and Robin can't stop herself from looking at and thinking about his penis, "which was quite a bit larger than her ex-husband's." It's actually a sign of Robin, who has a complicated sexual history—raped in college, and only one sexual partner for her entire life, that being her ex-husband—having gotten to a place where she's ready to pursue romantic relationships again.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Despite himself, Cormoran can't avoid sometimes noticing Robin's generous bust, like when she leans over during dinner at the Ritz and he notices her "deep cavern of cleavage."
- Catfishing: Morehouse, the co-creator of "Drek's Game", falls in love over the internet with Paperwhite, another moderator. One of the twists near the end reveals that not only is Paperwhite not a woman, she is a sock puppet of Anomie, who created the game along with Morehouse. Anomie found a sexy photo of an attractive woman and sent it to Morehouse, claiming it to be a picture of "her".
- Continuity Nod: As usual, there are many references to prior novels in the series.
- There's a random reference to Evan Duffield, a character from Strike #1 The Cuckoo's Calling; since the events of that novel Duffield has been both married and divorced.
- A news report of a stabbing reminds Robin of the scar on her arm, from when she was stabbed in Career of Evil. (The news report is of the murder of Edie Ledwell and maiming of Josh Blay.)
- Shanker, Cormoran's childhood friend and a major character in some of the earlier novels, is only mentioned when he sends a text after Cormoran's office is bombed. ("Who the fuck did you piss off this time you silly cunt")
- Covert Distress Code: When Edie Ledwell visits the Strike detective agency to try to get them to help her with Anomie's trolling her online, Pat calls Robin in the partners' office, telling her "Message from Mr Strike. Would you be free to visit Gateshead this Saturday?" As is then explained, in the wake of the agency's successful resolution of a cold case and the ensuing press coverage, they've had two would-be clients of pronounced eccentricity off the street, one wanting them to prove that the government was watching her through her air vent and another wanting them to investigate a neighbor he was convinced was part of an ISIS terrorist cell. After this, they agreed upon a code "which meant, in essence, 'I've got a nutter here.'"
- Crushing Handshake: Cormoran shakes Phillip Ormond's hand and discovers that Ormond is one of those people who feels they have to inflict "physical pain" with their handshake as a sign of manliness. Cormoran isn't impressed and, when they take their leave, Cormoran enjoys crushing Phillip's fingers in a goodbye handshake.
- Cut Himself Shaving: After Robin notices a bruise on Edie Ledwell's neck, Edie claims that she's "clumsy". She was actually choked by her boyfriend, Phillip Ormond.
- Dartboard of Hate: There's a dartboard with the face of Inigo Upcott, Katya's thoroughly obnoxious husband, in Josh and Edie's room at the North Grove art commune.
- Doorstopper: The longest in the Strike series to date, 1,044 pages in hardback.
- Downer Ending: From a romantic perspective anyway, as Cormoran finds out that Robin is going out on a date and, as the book ends, realizes that he may have missed his chance at love.
- Executive Meddling: In-Universe. Maverick, the production company that has bought the rights to The Ink Black Heart, is considering changing protagonist "Harty" from an actual human heart to a person. Anomie leaks this, outraging the Ink Black Heart fandom, and again making Cormoran and Robin wonder where he gets insider info.
- Foreshadowing:
- A very subtle example with the chat logs, and specifically the way they are presented on the page, in separate columns with time stamps. At no point do comments by Paperwhite and Anomie appear on the same line. Also, "Paperwhite" blatantly violates the rule that nobody's online handle can be just the name of a cartoon character; apparently Anomie has exempted himself.
- A more overt example with Anomie the pseudo-intellectual's habit of using the Latin motto "oderint dum metuant"—"let them hate so long as they fear." One of the other moderators of "Drek's Game" notes that Anomie misspelled the motto. That's because it wasn't Anomie, it was Yasmin aka "Hartella" who was impersonating Anomie in the chat.
- The Ghost: Prudence, Cormoran's half-sister and Jonny Rokeby's other illegitimate child, who has been texting him and trying to get in touch since the previous novel. They're still texting and at one point postpone a meeting, but Prudence still doesn't appear on the page.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: When trying to get Grant Ledwell to cough up some important evidence, Strike says they'll need "a bit of good cop, bad cop." Robin says "How bad d'you want me to be?" In the exchange that follows, it is of course Strike who is the bad cop in the interrogation that follows.
- Gray Rain of Depression: "Rain continued to pour down onto Denmark Street" as Robin waits to meet with police after the murder of Edie Ledwell. She's feeling terrible guilt over having passed on Edie's case.
- Happy Ending Override: Troubled Blood ended with Strike taking Robin to the Ritz to celebrate her 30th birthday and with a heavy implication that the two were headed directly for a Relationship Upgrade. The first chapter of this book depicts the ending of that dinner: Strike makes his move, Robin hesitates, and the whole relationship is back to square one.
- He Knows Too Much: Anomie kills Morehouse, the co-creator of "Drek's Game", to stop him from going to the police and revealing Anomie's identity.
- Head-Turning Beauty: Despite being married, subcontractors Shah and Barclay both comment that they have no objection to watch Chloe Cardew (the voluptuous sister of a prominent suspect) every day on their surveillance gigs and would happily do so on their own time.
- Hero of Another Story: Jago's oldest daughter from his first marriage, Christabel, is The Ghost, but is repeatedly described as standing up to Jago when he abuses her sisters (only to get hit herself) and seeking online information to help her family get out from under Jago's thumb online.
- His Name Is...: Morehouse, in a chat room with Paperwhite, promises to reveal Anomie's real identity—only to be immediately murdered by the person who comes to his door.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: Strike observes that hidden microphones that Anomie planted to spy on conversations in his mother's house also recorded copious evidence that will help convict Anomie of killing his father and trying to kill his mother, sister, and Robin, all of whom he attacked in that house while ranting sadistically.
- Hypocrite: Edie's uncle Grant is quick to insult other people for being unsavorily interested in the profits of her cartoon, but he is profiting off of the project himself solely because Edie (who he rarely reached out to after her mother's death) died without a will. Strike describes Grant's characterization of Blay as a "money-grubber" as "the worst bit of projection I've seen in a while."
- Immediate Sequel: This book starts with Robin and Cormoran at her 30th birthday dinner at the Ritz, the scene that ended previous Strike novel Troubled Blood.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Cormoran is so disturbed after his ugly confrontation with Charlotte and Jago that he makes a special trip to a liquor store to get some whiskey.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Phillip Ormond incriminates himself when Cormoran mentions "some bruising" on Edie, and Phillip assumes that Robin told the police that Edie said he choked her."No one said anything about choking," said Strike.
- Log Fic: Several chapters depart from the usual POV characters of Cormoran and Robin, and instead consist entirely of chat logs from "Drek's Game". Sometimes there are as many as three separate chat logs on the page, consisting of three vertical columns, as players and moderators of "Drek's Game" talk to each other.
- Loony Fan: The ultimate motive behind the attack that killed Edie Ledwell and left Josh Blay a cripple. The killer was a deranged fan who wanted control of The Ink Black Heart and wanted to stop Ledwell and Blay from selling the cartoon to Netflix.
- Love Epiphany: Both of the main characters have them. Robin has hers after finding out about Cormoran's new girlfriend, and what her reaction means. She finally admits to herself what she's spent at least three books trying to deny: I'm in love with him. Cormoran has his on the last page of the novel, in the same way, after finding out that Robin is going out on a date with Ryan the Met detective.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Preston Pierce poses nude for the art class at the North Grove commune that Robin joins. Robin can't stop herself from staring at his penis.
- My Sister Is Off-Limits: Racist youtuber Wally Cardew's one Bigotry Exception friendship comes to an end after he finds out that his Middle-Eastern friend is in a relationship with his sister, leading to a fight between the two of them.
- Never One Murder: Strike and Robin, hoping to discover Anomie's identity, track down Vikas Bhardwaj, who is better known in Ink Black Heart fandom as "Morehouse", one of the creators of "Drek's Game". They find him dead, with his throat cut.
- New Year Has Come: Cormoran meets Madeline at a New Year's party and kisses her as they count down the last ten seconds of 2014. She becomes his Girl of the Week.
- Noodle Incident: Pat, the sixty-ish, chain-smoking secretary at the agency, describes an incident from her past where another woman sent her her first husband's underwear in the mail. Pat mailed the other woman back—something. Robin and Midge ask what she sent."Never you mind", said Pat. "But let's just say it wouldn't spread easy on toast."
- The Other Darrin: In-Universe a few of the original voice actors for the cartoon have been replaced.
- Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: "Grant's forehead was glistening in the ruddy sunlight" as Cormoran grills him, finally getting Grant Ledwell to confess that he held back one of the two letters that were supposed to go into Edie's coffin.
- Parental Abuse: Fear of getting named in Charlotte's divorce suit forces Cormoran to investigate her husband, Jago Ross. He discovers that the future Viscount Ross is an evil monster who regularly hits his daughters, beating them badly enough to give them black eyes.
- The Peeping Tom: Bram de Jong, Nils's thoroughly creepy son, once bored a hole through the wall to spy on Edie and Josh in bed.
- Perfumigation: A female client who was making extremely obvious sexual overtures to Cormoran leaves, after the resolution of her case, "in a cloud of Chanel No. 5."
- The Pete Best: In-Universe. Robin finds an old tweet where Anomie called Seb Montgomery, an artist who helped with animating the first couple episodes of the cartoon, "the Pete Best of The Ink Black Heart." This is actually plot relevant, as Anomie's habit of making arcane Beatles references helps Cormoran and Robin figure out his identity.
- Phantom Limb Pain: Cormoran has a lot of problems with his stump in this book. At one point he reflexively scratches his stump, despite knowing that "the itch originated in the nerve endings that refused to believe his lower leg was absent."
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: When the Pete Best reference is made to Robin, she has no idea what it means to Strike's surprise.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Anomie calls Robin and says "I...am...going...to...kill...you."
- Punny Name: The sad-sack divorced man who keeps making unwelcome advances on Robin is named Hugh Jacks, or, as Midge points out with glee, "huge axe."
- Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: In the opening, Robin and Strike discuss events from the very first novel, The Cuckoo's Calling. She tells him that she could tell immediately that he was good at what he did, just from watching him, despite his poverty and the shabby state of his office. Meanwhile, he recalls how she brought in a tray of coffee and biscuits on her first day and he couldn't figure out how she got it all, that it was like a conjuring trick.
- Reset Button: Troubled Blood ends with the strong implication that, after five books of denying his feelings, Cormoran is going to finally go for it with Robin. In the opening scene of this book, he leans down to kiss her, and she flinches away—and the Will They or Won't They? story goes right back to where it was before, with Cormoran deciding that Robin isn't interested, each one of them denying their old feelings, and more romantic frustration.
- Rewatch Bonus: Throughout the novel, the identities of many of the key players are hidden behind online aliases. Having finished the book, a lot can be picked up on a re-read, knowing who is who, including the Two Aliases, One Character nature of Anomie and Paperwhite.
- Separated by a Common Language: Strike picks up on the author of the pick-up book Digital Game being American, when the writer uses the past participle "gotten," not used in British English.
- Sequel Hook: The possibility of Cormoran meeting his half-sister Prudence for the first time continues to dangle, with Cormoran ruefully commenting that he can't keep ducking Prudence now that he's laid up in the hospital. And then there's Robin going out on a date, which Cormoran doesn't like at all.
- Show Within a Show: The Ink Black Heart is an animated series within the novel that starts out on YouTube and later gets popular enough to go to Netflix and get a movie. Drek's Game is a fan-made game based on the cartoon.
- Significant Anagram: "Vilepechora" is the online handle of one of the moderators of "Drek's Game", who also happens to be a neo-Nazi. It turns out to be an anagram for his real name, Oliver Peach.
- Slouch of Villainy: The big showdown meeting between Jago and Cormoran finds Jago the monstrous asshole sitting on a sofa, "his arm stretched along its back, ostentatiously at ease."
- Sock Puppet: Towards the end, Cormoran and Robin figure out that a lot of the Twitter users responding to Anomie online are actually Anomie sock puppets. And the big twist is that Paperwhite, one of the "Drek's Game" moderators who has been carrying on an internet romance with Morehouse, is also an Anomie sockpuppet, used by him to keep tabs on Morehouse.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Nutley, a subcontractor Strike is forced to bring on when the team is short staffed, is incompetent, just shy of being The Load. He barely helps out during the investigation, expects praise for basic observations, and makes it clear he thinks he's just as good, if not better, as Strike or Robin. After the bomb goes off, he immediately quits and come crawling back once the case is solved and the danger is over.
- Spit Take: Strike "choked on his cocktail" after Robin finally revealed what her father does for a living: Mr. Ellacott is "a professor of sheep medicine, production, and reproduction.""So, when did he first become interested in sheep? Was this a lifelong thing or did a particular sheep catch his eye when he was—"
"He doesn’t shag them, Strike." - Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Coromoran Strike smokes like a chimney, enjoys regular use of alcohol and eats a terrible diet often consisting of takeaways and chips. Unlike so many other similar protagonists in detective fiction, here it actually catches up with him. His stump where his missing leg is fails him to the point that he begins experiencing a recurrence of an uncontrollable twitching that only previously troubled him after his leg first got blown off. He is forced to admit that he is not the young boxer he once was and start doing things like vaping and taking nicotine patches to try to kick the smoking habit, eating veggie burgers, and substituting low-calorie wine for beer, after formerly having described calories to Robin as being "bollocks."
- Survivor's Guilt: Josh Blay suffers from this, blaming himself for not blocking Anomie on Twitter, not standing up for Edie against the fandom, and believing the gossip that she was Anomie, believing that he should be dead too. Strike, who "understood survivor's guilt," thinks about how he still dreams about Sgt. Gary Topley, the soldier who was killed by the same IED that took Strike's leg.
- Two Aliases, One Character: Two of the moderators of "Drek's Game," Anomie the belligerent misogynist gamemaster, and Paperwhite the superfan who's in love with Morehouse, are actually the same person.
- Wig, Dress, Accent: Robin has "three wigs and many sets of colored contact lenses" to use when going out undercover. Robin the strawberry blonde puts on a brunette wig and adopts a London accent when infiltrating the North Grove art commune, where Josh and Edie lived and which was a hangout for most of the people involved in The Ink Black Heart.
- Wondrous Ladies Room: Even Robin is bowled over by the ladies' room at the Ritz, with its "marble sinks, velvet sofa, and walls covered in murals."
- You Got Murder: A bomb is sent to the agency via mail. After opening it, Pat just barely manages to realise what it is and get out of the room before it goes off. Luckily, no one was hurt, though the office is out of commission for the latter part of the book.
