当小说家欧文•奎因（Owen Quine）失踪后, 他的妻子打电话向私人侦探莫兰•斯特莱克 (Cormoran Strike)求助. 起初她以为丈夫就像往常一样, 出去溜达几天就回来了. 所以她想请斯特莱克侦探把丈夫找回家.

经过调查, 侦探斯特莱克发现奎因的失踪没有他妻子想得那么简单. 这位小说家刚刚完成一部手稿, 小说里他几乎对他认识的所有人进行了恶毒的描述，如果小说得以出版将会毁掉很多人的生活, 因而很多人都想让小说家奎因永远闭嘴.

当奎因被发现在奇特的情形下被残酷地杀害, 侦探斯特莱克意识到他必须跟时间赛跑, 找到凶手和杀人的动机, 而这个凶手比他过去遇到的任何杀手都奇特.

《蚕》是一部情节曲折生动, 令读者欲罢不能的犯罪侦探小说，小说的主人公是伍军人出身的私家侦探科莫兰•斯特莱克和他的不屈不饶的年轻助手罗宾 艾勒考特（Robin Ellacott）. 斯特莱克探案集自去年出版以来备受好评，《蚕》是这个系列的第二部。

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published it would ruin lives - so there are a lot of people who might want to silence him.

And when Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any he has encountered before . . .

A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, The Silkworm is the second in the highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike and his determined young assistant Robin Ellacott.