Cormoran Strike

On the March day in 2010 when Cormoran Strike meets Robin Ellacott, and almost knocks her down the stairs, he is thirty-five, and has been running his struggling detective agency from an office in Denmark Street, London, for eighteen months.

…his height, his general hairiness, coupled with a gently expanding belly, suggested a grizzly bear.

The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith

Strike is veteran of the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police, but after losing the lower part of his right leg to an IED in Afghanistan, he set up on his own rather than take a desk job. On the day Robin arrives, the result of a mix-up at the temping agency, he’s just had a final ugly argument with his fiancée, Charlotte Campbell, and though he has friends across London who would offer him a bed, rather than face their solicitude about his relationship, he opts to sleep in his office.

Strike’s strange, nomadic childhood, with its constant uprootings and graftings on to motley groups of children and teenagers, had forged in him an advanced set of social skills; he knew how to fit in, to make people laugh, to render himself acceptable to almost anyone.

The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith

Strike, born on November 23, 1974, is the son of rock legend Jonny Rokeby and supergroupie Leda Strike. Rejected by his father, he and his half-sister Lucy, Leda’s daughter by musician Rick Fantoni, led a chaotic peripatetic early life, moving between various houses and squats depending on their mother’s love life and her latest enthusiasms, including a stay on a commune in Norfolk which later becomes the base of the Universal Humanitarian Church. Strike ends up investigating the church on behalf of a client in 2016 (The Running Grave).

Periods of stability were provided by Leda’s brother, Ted Nancarrow and his wife Joan in the town of St Mawes on the Cornish coast, where Ted, Joan and Leda were raised. Strike’s strange nomadic childhood has left him with a wide range of friends including Dave Polworth, from Cornwall, Nick Herbert, a Londoner whose dad was a cab driver, his wife Ilsa who was also a friend of Strike’s from Cornwall, and Shanker, a professional criminal semi-adopted by Strike’s mother Leda when he and Strike were both in their teens. He’s also acquired a wide range of nicknames in the process.

When Strike and Lucy were teenagers, Leda married for a second time to a sadistic failed musician, Jeff Whittaker. Lucy left to live permanently with Joan and Ted in St Mawes, but Strike remained with his mother until he finished his A-Levels and left, after his mother had given birth her second son Switch, to read History at Oxford where he met the beautiful, volatile, damaged, Charlotte Campbell.

While he was studying Leda died from a heroin overdose in the squat where she was still living with Whittaker and their baby son. Strike was sure her death was suspicious – Leda never took heroin – and gave evidence at trial but Whittaker was acquitted of her murder. Strike dropped out of university and joined the military. It was there he discovered his fascination with, and talent for, investigation, and the habits he learned there have stood him in good stead as he sets up on his own.

Only one subject had ever matched Charlotte for the fascination it exercised over him: unnatural death.

The Silkworm, Robert Galbraith

Strike is a diligent investigator and sees his work as a vocation rather than a job. He and Robin regularly take on work investigating unfaithful partners, business counterespionage and fraud, but they are both most fascinated by what is revealed in cases of unnatural death.

Since solving the mystery of supermodel Lula Landry’s killing (The Cuckoo’s Calling), Strike’s agency has grown more successful and better known. Through working on high profile cases such as the disappearance of writer Owen Quine, (The Silkworm), the capture of the Shacklewell Ripper (Career of Evil), and the mysteries around the Chiswell family, (Lethal White), Strike has taken on Robin as a partner in the business and recruited various subcontractors. As the reputation of the agency has grown still further, solving the cold case of the missing doctor Margot Bamborough (Troubled Blood) and the murder of artist Edie Ledwell (The Ink Black Heart), they have taken on a permanent office secretary, Pat, and have an extensive waiting list of well-paying clients vying for their services.

‘We should have a beer every lunchtime,’ he added, leaning heavily on his stick as they headed off towards the Tube, their heads bowed against the white blur. ‘Breaks up the working day.’ Robin, who had adjusted her stride to his, smiled.

The Silkworm, Robert Galbraith

Obsessive about his work, Strike often neglects his health and personal life. After years of heavy smoking, beer, and fast food, he has recently taken steps to lose weight and switch to vaping. His love life is a more complicated problem.

Strike lit a cigarette and thought back over all the women there had been since he’d left Charlotte.

Lethal White, Robert Galbraith

After breaking up with Charlotte, or m’lady Bezerka, as Dave Polworth calls her, Strike has a number of relationships, some brief such as with publisher Nina Lascelles, others lasting several months, such as with broadcaster Elin Toft (Career of Evil), or jewellery designer Madeleine (The Ink Black Heart). In each case, though the women are talented, successful and independent, they come to resent Strike’s lack of emotional investment and the priority he places on his work. As Lorelei Bevan puts it during the investigations into the Chiswell family (Lethal White) if he wants a hot meal and a shag with no human emotions involved, there are restaurants and brothels.

Strike is fond of his sister, Lucy, and develops a new respect for her during the investigations into the Universal Humanitarian Church (The Running Grave), and he was able to tell his aunt that he loved her before she died (Troubled Blood), but Strike is slowly having to face the fact that there is another woman he loves and with whom he is happier and more himself than he ever is with any of his girlfriends, his partner Robin. As Strike recovers in hospital from the wounds received in the final confrontation with Edie Ledwell’s killer, he learns about her upcoming date with the handsome C.I.D. officer Ryan Murphy and realises how big a mistake he has made in assuming she will always be there for him.