By Jill Norgren
Title Card for the BBC One television series based on Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries
Why do mystery writers create a series? Obviously, the pleasure of developing characters over time has appeal as well as the opportunity to explore varying issues within an established framework. Doting fans and good money also speak to the attractiveness of the genre.
On the other side of the table sit the readers. What is the pull of a series for them, and does a series ever lose its allure? The recent publication of new works by Andrea Camilleri, Linda Fairstein, Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling), Donna Leon, and Louise Penny raises that question.
Italian author and stage director Andrea Camilleri is a prolific writer. Seventeen of his novels have been translated into English, many of them volumes in the Inspector Montalbano series. The Sicilian police officer made his debut in 1994 in The Shape of Water (available in 2002 in English). 
Thin and tired epitomizes many mystery series that do not stop after six or eight episodes. Readers know the characters and their locales too well, and the quality of the writing often slips. Sadly, Donna Leon's latest, By Its Cover, also fails to be much more than a pleasant short story. Like Camilleri, the formula has worn to a veneer despite Leon's admirable interest in putting social issues at the center of her plots.
J. K. Rowling (writing as Robert Galbraith) has just published The Silkworm, the second of her Comoran Strike crime novels. Rowling launched the series in 2013 with the appealing Cuckoo's Calling. In that debut effort she introduced her central characters Cormoran Strike, a twenty-first century detective hero who brings the genre’s typical love life problems to the less than typical persona of a veteran of the Afghan war who has lost his lower right leg, and is the barely acknowledged son of one of rock music's most famous swingers. Rowling pairs Strike with Robin, his about-to-be-married assistant who agonizes whether her inner Nancy Drew will be compatible with house and hearth. 
The Cuckoo's Calling succeeded because it was well paced and set in the glitzy world of pop culture. In The Silkworm Rowling turns to a world she knows well, authors and publishing houses. Unfortunately, the book has a gray and bloated quality. Strike's wounded heart pulls the book down and despite Rowling's knowledge of literary professionals, she is not particularly successful in giving them compelling voice. The introduction of Al, Strike's half-brother, offers the promise of new plot directions and colorful characters. Perhaps, Rowling will regain her footing in the third Strike novel.
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