One of the 14 books given to me as Christmas presents this year was the latest in the Cormoran Strike crime fiction series – The Ink Black Heart (see my previous blogs on the rest of the series so far: Lethal White, Career of Evil, The Silkworm, The Cuckoo’s Calling and Troubled Blood). I chose this as the first book to start, on Boxing Day. It took me three and a half weeks to read all 1012 pages and it was a great fictional start to the year.

It is set around an online game, that is a spin-off from a famous cartoon set in Highgate Cemetery in London, which is about to spawn a Netflix series. The two creators of the cartoon, Josh and Edie are attacked and Strike and Robin go on the hunt to find out who the online moderator ‘Anomie’ is and whether they are connected to the killer.

I have to admit to getting a bit annoyed with the in-game moderator chats. It’s a very clever device and is new and different from anything I’ve read before, but trying to read three columns of different conversations down a page simultaneously was too taxing for my brain just before falling asleep at night.

I have also realised, as with Elly Griffith’s Ruth Galloway series, I couldn’t really care less about the murder being solved in this series, for me the murder and mystery is simply a vehicle to spend time in the will-they-won’t-they romance of Robin and Strike. On that note, this book picks up where Troubled Blood ended, with a near kiss outside the Ritz between the two of them. But misunderstandings lead to Strike infuriatingly lurching into an entirely unsuitable relationship, whilst Robin tries to put all thoughts of romance with him or anyone else out of her mind. I shall be tearing my hair out when it’s her turn in the next book to date Ryan the policeman, whilst Strike watches on from the sidelines.