Nick Herbert is a gastroenterologist, Spurs fan, son of a taxi driver and a friend of Strike’s since they went to the same rough comprehensive in Hackney. He met his wife Ilsa at his and Strike’s joint 18th birthday party at the Bell in Whitechapel, and their attraction was immediate and profound. Ilsa, bespectacled and blonde, has been a friend of Strike’s since primary school in St Mawes, Cornwall. Ilsa and Nick dated for a year after they first met, then split up when they went to university. After meeting again though in their mid-twenties they quickly, and permanently became a couple once more.
‘Christ almighty,’ said Strike, advancing to shake the outstretched hand with genuine pleasure. Nick and Ilsa were two of his oldest friends and they were the only place where the two halves of his early life intersected: London and Cornwall, happily married.
The Silkworm, Robert Galbraith
After years of trying, Nick and Ilsa now have a son, Benjamin, and both Strike and Robin are godparents (The Running Grave). Nick calls Strike Oggy, and according to his wife, never closes cupboards.
Ilsa was a witness to Strike’s volatile relationship with Charlotte but is now close to Robin and is keen to see her and Strike together. A lawyer, she represented their client, Leonora Quine when she was accused of the murder of her husband (The Silkworm).
Nik and Ilsa provide a refuge for Strike when the press besieges the office in Denmark Street and gives Robin their spare room when she first leaves her marriage (Lethal White). The couple offer more than friendship and support, Ilsa’s friend Max becomes Robin’s housemate as she finalises her divorce (Troubled Blood). Strike also meets one of his girlfriends, Elin, at their house, when she comes to a party with her brother, one of Nick’s colleagues, and Nick’s Dad even lends them his taxi. Though Strike resents their attempts to intervene in his personal life, he enjoys their company and has to acknowledge they are often right.
