Writing as Robert Galbraith, JK Rowling has spun out an epic mystery

The Galbraith novels were, J.K. Rowling has said, an attempt to return to writing. Photo: AFP

There are loads of legitimate reasons a reader might dislike The Ink Black Heart, the sixth book in the Cormoran Strike series. Writing as Robert Galbraith, J.K. Rowling has spun out a 1,024-page-long mystery, which is long even by, say, standards and at least 500 pages longer than the story warrants.

Far too many of those pages are filled with tweets; characters discussing those tweets; transcripts of website interviews; and gamer group chats complete with all the concurrent private chats they spawn.