Book summary by chapter of The Hallmarked Man. Includes spoilers from the appearance of the ring to the end of the book.  A hallmark can certify metal—but also scars. Cormoran Strike inherits a ring from his mother that drags him back into the wreckage of his childhood. Through murders laced with poetry and warped pasts, he and Robin chase a killer who carves his mark into living flesh. Truth gleams like cursed silver: revealing old horrors and new choices. As the case closes

Book summary by chapter of The Running Grave. Includes spoilers from the first infiltration into Chapman Farm to the end of the book. Not all graves are carved in stone—some entomb the living beneath dogma masked as salvation. Robin infiltrates the Universal Humanitarian Church to save Will but ends up confronting her own scars, the violence of her past, and the unspoken bond with Strike. As the cult crumbles and justice is served, the case may be over—but what cracks open b

Book summary by chapter of The Ink Black Heart. Includes spoilers from the first Drek’s Game messages to the end of the book.  It wasn’t a heart that stopped, but an avatar poisoned by digital hate. Robin and Strike dive into the dark code of a fandom turned battleground, where death is signed with a pseudonym. Gus Upcott, the ghost behind the screens, kills Edie Ledwell and orchestrates chaos with chilling precision. When truth crashes down, Robin survives everything except

Book summary by chapter of Troubled Blood. Includes spoilers from Margot’s disappearance to the end of the book.  Time doesn’t erase a crime—it buries it deeper: forty years on, the blood still pulses beneath layers of silence and complicity. Cormoran and Robin dig into Margot Bamborough’s case and unearth a poisoned truth—Janice Beattie, the perfect nurse, was the killer all along. When Strike drinks her venom, the truth nearly kills him. The case closes, and in the ashes of

Book summary by chapter of Lethal White. Includes spoilers from the memory of the chained boy to the end of the book.  Not all shackles are visible: some are forged from family secrets, others from vows that suffocate. At the heart of the British Parliament, corruption and murder intertwine as Cormoran and Robin uncover that Raphael killed his father Jasper Chiswell for greed and revenge. As they unmask the killer, personal truths collide—Robin ends her marriage, yet the word

Book summary by chapter of Career of Evil. Includes spoilers from the delivery of the severed leg to the end of the book. Violence didn’t roar—it arrived in a box, mislabeled: Robin. In the slow spiral of predator and prey, every clue drags old wounds back into the light and resurrects enemies Strike had buried. Donald Laing, the killer, orchestrates revenge with surgical cruelty until the face of horror is unmasked. Robin survives, but the price is a joyless wedding, as Cor

Book summary by chapter of The Silkworm. Includes spoilers from the lost manuscript to the end of the book.  Words can kill when laced with resentment: in Bombyx Mori , each line dissects buried grudges until fiction becomes autopsy. Cormoran Strike finds Owen Quine’s body staged as a grotesque feast, but it’s the ink of betrayal that sketches the real killer. Through a web of literary lies, the detective unmasks Elizabeth Tassel—the architect of silence and the book’s true e

Book summary by chapter of The Cuckoo’s Calling. Includes spoilers from the initial fall to the end of the book.  Truth didn’t leap from the balcony—it seeped through the cracks of memory: as snow blanketed Mayfair, a family’s empire rotted from within. Cormoran Strike unravels the lies buried in grief, only to find the killer was never a stranger—it was the brother crying for justice. The Landry case closes, but the echo of her fall still haunts every corner of London. Cormo

Book summary by chapter of The Lords of Time. Includes spoilers from the Villa Suso murder to the end of the book.  In a Vitoria split between medieval echoes and modern traumas, Unai tracks crimes foretold centuries ago, only to find the pen that wrote the novel also wielded the poison. Ramiro Alvar is not just the author: he’s a battlefield of two souls. As the past gets walled up in chronicles and stone, the present bleeds through fractured identities and family ties time