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Lethal White

Lethal White AuthorRobert GalbraithCountryUnited KingdomLanguageEnglishGenreCrime fictionPublisherSphere Books(Little, Brown and Company)18 September 2018 (United Kingdom)Pages656ISBN0751572853Preceded byCareer of Evil Followed byTroubled Blood
Lethal White is the fourth novel in the Cormoran Strike series, written by J. K. Rowling and published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The novel was released on 18 September 2018.

Plot
At Robin Ellacott's marriage to Matthew Cunliffe, Cormoran Strike's capture of the Shacklewell Ripper the night before is already widely known, except by Robin. When Strike tells her that he had been trying to contact her during the week, she realizes that Matthew had deleted Strike's messages, which results in a serious row between the new spouses. Before Strike leaves, Robin accepts his offer of working as a salaried partner in the detective agency.

One year later, Strike has grown his detective agency to the point where he needs to hire more investigators. He receives an unsolicited visit from Billy Knight, a young man with a history of mental illness who claims to have witnessed a child's murder and the burial of the body in woodland some years before, but is unable to provide any details before he runs out of Strike's office. While trying to establish Billy's identity, Strike meets Billy's older brother Jimmy and Jimmy's girlfriend Flick, radical left-wing activists who claim that Billy is unstable and unreliable.

Strike's meeting with Jimmy draws the attention of Jasper Chiswell, the Minister for Culture, whom Strike knew from investigating the combat death of his son Freddie. Chiswell has been blackmailed by Jimmy and hires Strike to investigate; he identifies Geraint Winn, the husband of a political enemy, as Jimmy's likely partner. Chiswell does not reveal what he is accused of, but claims that what he did was legal "at the time". Robin Ellacott then goes undercover in Chiswell's office to carry out surveillance on Winn, whose wife Della Winn has a neighboring office, although the undercover assignment places more strain on her marriage. She meets Chiswell's family who works for him: daughter Izzy, illegitimate son Raphael, and second wife Kinvara. By bugging Winn's office, Robin discovers that Winn has been embezzling money from his wife's charities, and Chiswell uses this knowledge to stop Winn's blackmail.

Chiswell summons Strike and Robin to a house that he keeps in the city for business, perhaps intending to fire them, but on arrival, they find Chiswell's body, apparently dead from suffocation and an overdose of anti-depressants. The Metropolitan Police rule his death a suicide, but Izzy is convinced that Kinvara is responsible, again hiring Strike to investigate. Strike believes that the mysterious blackmail is connected to Chiswell's death and eventually learns that Chiswell and Jack Knight, Jimmy and Billy's late father, built gallows for export before the European Union banned the export of torture and execution equipment from member states. Two sets of these gallows were sold to Zimbabwe, where one set was stolen by rebels and used in the murder of a British student. The gallows could be traced to Chiswell because Billy had carved the nearby White Horse of Uffington into it.

Meanwhile, Robin continues to struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder a year after her encounter with the Shacklewell Ripper, while Matthew continues to interfere with her work. But Robin separates from Matthew and moves out when she finds proof that he has been having a long-term affair throughout most of their relationship. She intends to seek a divorce when she can afford it and moves in first with her friend Vanessa Ekwensi, then with Strike's friends Nick and Ilsa Herbert. Strike counsels her, drawing on his own experience of losing a leg. Strike's ex-girlfriend Charlotte Ross, now married and pregnant, reappears and unsuccessfully pursues Strike.

Strike learns that Chiswell wrote Kinvara out of his will and bequeathed everything to his 10-year-old grandson, while allowing Kinvara only to live on the family estate for the rest of her life. However, Chiswell carelessly omitted certain items from the will, including a diamond necklace that is the family's last item of real value, meaning that legally such items may be Kinvara's. Strike suspects there are other items of value Chiswell overlooked. He is drawn to a supposedly-worthless painting titled Mare Mourning and discovers that it may be a lost George Stubbs artwork depicting a mare mourning a foal that died of lethal white syndrome. If its provenance were to be established, it would probably be worth over �20 million. Strike can then identify Chiswell's killer: Raphael, who had never been accepted by the family but had worked for an art dealer. Raphael had tipped off Flick about a cleaning job at Chiswell's, expecting that she would find out about the gallows sales and tell Jimmy, who then demanded 50% of the profits. Raphael also seduced and conspired with Kinvara to kill Chiswell; when Flick learned that Chiswell had inadvertently found out about the affair and also had begun to investigate Mare Mourning, Raphael killed Chiswell at once with Kinvara's help.

Kinvara confesses on being interrogated by police, but Raphael sends Robin texts purporting to be from Matthew, luring her into a trap. He keeps her alive to interrogate her about the investigation; Robin stalls for time by outlining everything in detail, even describing his un-executed plan to kill Kinvara. Strike realizes Raphael's duplicity when he notices that the text messages to Robin came from a disposable mobile phone used in the blackmail case. The police trace the phone and raid the houseboat on which Raphael has Robin, arresting him just as he has decided to kill her and flee or kill himself. In the aftermath, Strike, Robin and Izzy meet Billy to discuss the "murder" he witnessed. Izzy and Strike reveal that Billy had been drugged by Freddie and Jimmy. Billy then saw Freddie choke a young Raphael until he passed out, followed by the burial of a small horse that Freddie had killed in a separate act of cruelty, which Strike's crew has dug up. Strike and Robin then leave together.

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