Murder She Wrote

JK Rowling’s best-selling detective novels come to the small screen with Tom Burke in the title role

- Caren Clark

In April 2013, dishevelled London private eye Cormoran Strike made his first appearance in the pages of The Cuckoo’s Calling, the debut novel of a former soldier named Robert Galbraith.

However, three months later, in one of the biggest shocks to rock the publishing world, the author’s true identity was revealed to be Harry Potter writer JK Rowling.

Now the sleuth is being brought to life in a BBC1 three-part drama starring The Musketeers actor Tom Burke in the title role.

Permanently clad in a tweed overcoat and frequently seen with a cigarette or stodgy food in his mouth, cash-strapped Strike has a tatty office in London’s Denmark Street. The physically and psychologically damaged war veteran, who wears a prosthetic leg after being injured in Afghanistan when he was a Royal Military Policeman, also has a complex private life to deal with, and he is sleeping in the office after breaking up with his socialite fiancée.

TIME FOR ORDER