The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (2014) Mulholland Books

After solving the Lula Landry case, Cormorant Strike has gotten more clients in his detective business.  His assistant, Robin, wants to become a partner, but her fiancé is against it, thinking only of the higher paying job in Human Resources that she turned-down. 

A woman, looking obviously unable to pay, is waiting in the office as a wealthy and pushy client is demanding Cormorant’s time.   The wealthy client is told where to get off, and the evidently pro-bono client is asked to state her case – she wants her husband to be found and returned home to take care of his disabled daughter.  The husband is a writer of minor celebrity who writes in a scathing and demeaning style.

Cormorant visits the writer’s agent, a chain-smoking, hacking woman whom everyone is afraid to approach.  Then he continues to find all the people who have been in contact with the writer over his career.   Finds out that the writer and agent had a very public row in a pub where she told him his latest manuscript was unpublishable.  Cormorant gets a copy of the manuscript, starts reading it and then finds people mentioned, but not named, in the story.  One of these turns out to be the writer’s mistress, who thinks the writer’s wife has set him on her, but hates the writer, calling him bastard.

Finding out that there a house is jointly owned by the writer and a former friend, that has never been able to be sold, Cormorant insists on going there and discovers the writer has been murdered in a scene from the ending of the manuscript.

The police immediately think it is the wife and gather evidence to arrest her.  But Cormorant thinks she’s been set-up and has to prove she’s innocent and can be returned to her daughter.

With a case of everybody has a motive and an alibi, Cormorant must come-up with actual evidence to find the real killer.