The Running Grave

A father hires private detective Cormoran Strike with a single aim: to get his adult son, Will, out of the Universal Humanitarian Church. From its base in the Norfolk countryside, the church presents itself as a friendly campaigning group. Strike begins to look closer.

What he finds does not match the public image. There are sinister undertones in how the organisation runs, and members have died without explanation. Strike cannot get inside himself, so his business partner, Robin Ellacott, goes undercover.

Robin lives within the cult for months under a false identity, cut off from Strike. The group uses methods of psychological control, and she has to withstand them while keeping her cover. The dangers she meets, and the personal toll they take, are greater than she is ready for.

This is the seventh novel in the Cormoran Strike series, a crime investigation that follows the long partnership between Strike and Robin. The slow-building tension in their own relationship continues alongside the case. The investigation turns on coercion and deception, and on what it costs to get too close to the truth, with the two leads apart for much of it.