Share and Follow
In flashbacks, we learn that Charlotte was pregnant at one point, and that Cormoran doubted he was the father. She self-harmed, possibly a suicide attempt, and he comforted her. Later, she announced her engagement to fellow socialite Jago Ross, and posted Cormoran her wedding photos.
Cormoran Strike’s Parents
Rock star Jonny Rokeby, whom we’ve never met in the series, and model/ ‘groupie’ Leda Strike. Rokeby is a famed womaniser who fathered several children and is largely absent in their lives (‘As far as Johnny Rokeby was concerned, I was just a shuddering of loins’), giving Cormoran multiple half-siblings. Leda was a supermodel who died of a heroin overdose that Strike has always suspected was administered deliberately by her second husband, musician Jeff Whittaker (Matt King).
Strike’s Brothers and Sisters
There are seven in total in the books, but we’ve only met two on screen – Lucy on his mother’s side and Al on his father’s, but the ‘Rokeby diaspora’ as Al wryly describes them, are scattered all over.
Read Related Also: Harrison Ford Explains Why He Made The Jump To TV For Yellowstone Prequel 1923
How Strike Lost His Leg
Serving in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. His convoy drove into an ambush in which an IED explosion killed several of his colleagues and lost Strike the lower half of one leg. He wears a prosthetic, but the injury means he’s unable to drive and generally less able to pursue suspects on foot than Robin.
Past Cases
Who Killed Teenager Kelsey Platt in Career of Evil?
Donald Laing (Neil Maskell), who bore a deadly grudge against Strike after he put him away years ago for the murder of his wife. After serving his sentence, Laing stole from and killed a neighbour, then stole the identity of Ray Williams, an ex-firefighter who’d emigrated, and ingratiated himself into the family of teenager Kelsey Platt, who harboured a crush on Cormoran Strike. To get revenge on Strike, Laing lured Kelsey to a London location where he killed and dismembered her, posing as a new client to make Strike visit the same location and frame him for the murder. Laing posted one of Kelsey’s legs to Robin at Strike’s office, along with lyrics from Strike’s mother’s favourite song by Blue Oyster Cult, in order to goad him. Strike realised that Ray Williams and Donald Laing – who pretended to suffer from debilitating arthritis, and was therefore ruled out as a suspect in Kelsey’s murder – were one and the same, under a wig, false beard and coloured contact lenses.
Who Killed Novelist Owen Quine in The Silkworm?
His agent Liz Tassel (Lia Williams). Decades earlier, Liz was in love with fellow writer Andrew Fancourt (Peter Sullivan) and wrote a hurtful parody, which was published anonymously, of his wife’s novel. She spread rumours that Fancourt had written the parody himself, and his wife killed herself over it. Liz’s client Owen learned that she was behind the parody, and blackmailed her about it for years, forcing her to keep him on as a client over the much more successful and celebrated Andrew Fancourt. When Owen submitted a manuscript to Liz that was intended to spill the dirty secrets of the publishing world under a fantasy allegory (including her humiliating attempt to seduce Fancourt), she edited the manuscript to keep her secrets and sent it out to everybody it was based on. She told Owen to stage a public fight with her about it, then hide out in an old house to generate publicity for the sale of the book. In hiding, she murdered him in the same manner that the hero dies in his manuscript, stopping the blackmail once and for all.
