Sphere/ Little, Brown Group, London 2022

This is the sixth “Strike Novel”, though it is just as much, if not more about the detective´s partner Robin Ellacott. I wonder, if Rowling intends to finish this series with the seventh book, just like her Harry Potter saga.

And it is about time. Although Rowling never would run out of fascinating narrative ideas, she certainly needs an editor, who tells her to limit her narrative meandering and concentrate on a convincingly logical plot. But I assume, she does not care so much about potential readers, as long as she herself likes her numerous hidden agendas and what she writes.

In this brick of a book the reader has to go through pages and pages of online accounts, mostly three of the discussions running parallel, and you wonder what it is all about.

Edie Ledwell, the young, very successful designer of the popular cartoon “The Ink Black Heart” is found stabbed to death in the cemetry, where the comic is staged. Her partner is severely wounded.

Robin and Strike are engaged to find out the true identity of the online figure Anomie, who has persecuted Edie online and is thought to be her murderer in real life.

Quite obviously Rowling has experienced hate messages online, too, when she stated the fact, that biologically there are two human sexes. So she takes diobolical delight in demasking online abuse.

The real pleasure, though, are her witty, sarcastic dialogues and descriptions of her various characters.