The Ink Black Heart: Part 3 – The episode begins with Philip Ormand (Luke Norris) going back to check on Sam Barclay (Jack Greenlees) after running him off the road on his motorcycle. Much to Philip’s surprise, Sam already appears to be long gone. This is until Philip returns to his vehicle and is nearly choked to death by Sam in the back seat. Despite being surprised, Philip is quick enough to get an emergency call to the police.

Cormoran Strike (Tom Burke) and Robin Ellacott (Holliday Grainger) watch as DCI Richard Murphy (Stephen Hagan) interrogates Philip about everything from having Edie Ledwell’s (Mirren Mack) phone to the attempted murder of Sam Barclay. When Philip claims that he wants to cooperate but everything has gotten spun so far out of proportion, Murphy jumps on the opportunity and asks him about Yasmin Weatherhead (Kitty Reed). Philip admits to knowing Yasmin and passing information to her for the book she was writing on Ink Black Heart. After owning up to this, Philip claims he has nothing to hide and proceeds to explain how he got Edie’s phone. This not only makes him look worse but leads to him admitting that he kept it so that he could steal her ideas.

When Murphy briefly pauses the interview, Robin receives a private message from Anomie, asking if she has a ticket for the Comic-Con Live. Her response is that it’s expensive to which he replies that they need everyone there if they are going to send a message to the film producers. He also encourages her to wear a costume and a mask, which leads to her asking who he is going as. He says he’ll be going as Drek and exits the game.

Nearly as soon as Drek exits, Murphy enters the room to get Strike and Robin’s opinions on the interrogation. Strike thinks that Philips is a bad bull crapper for an ex-cop but does not share Murphy’s belief about the Halvening having Edie’s phone before Philip got it. Strike also raises another interesting point when he asks why the Halvening would claim responsibility for Edie’s murder and not the pipe bombs. In addition to that, the pipe bomb and Edie’s stabbing are two completely different MOs.

Strike and Robin are outside discussing the case further over a cigarette when an excited Sam shows up to celebrate their capture of Anomie. Sam suddenly isn’t so excited when he learns that Philip isn’t Anomie. In light of this and Sam’s broken rib, Robin offers him the day off, which he initially turns down due to being tasked with monitoring Jago Ross (Pip Carter). She tells him that they can cover that.

Upon returning to the office, Strike and Robin find Grant Ledwell (David Westhead), awaiting their arrival. As Robin leads Grant to Strike’s office, where there is a bottle of booze, Strike tasks Pat Chauncey (Ruth Sheen) with finding him a fancy dress costume with a mask. In Strike’s office, the discussion is about a new Tweet Anomie posted several hours ago about Grant’s decision to replace the Ink Black Heart with a human for the film. Being that this change isn’t public knowledge or can’t even be authorized until Josh Blay (Jacob Abraham) gives the okay, it limits the suspect pool. Grant seems to think that it was Josh himself who leaked the information.

Strike narrows the suspect pool even further when he mentions the call he got, pointing him towards the letters in Edie’s coffin. According to Grant, only the Undertaker, Josh, Philip, and Katya Upcott (Emma Fielding) knew about the letters. The conversation becomes even more interesting when Grant confesses that Edie spoke to him last year about Josh wanting her off the cartoon.

Midge Greenstreet (Tupele Dorgu) easily rules out Katya and Gus Upcott (Jack Donoghue) as Anomie suspects in a single afternoon. After relaying this information to Robin, she is tasked with ruling out Inigo Upcott (Christian McKay), although he never leaves the house.

Pat delivers Strike’s costume that night, but Robin is the first to see it in full action the following morning when she arrives at the office early. She can barely control her laughter as she tells him about scoring an interview with Yasmin. The interview does just happen to be scheduled on the same day as the Comic-Con event but it’s scheduled at the event. While Strike and Robin take the bus to the event, she tells him that she might have found Jago Ross’ daughter, using a Reddit thread.

It doesn’t take Strike long to locate that Black Heart Stand or a Drek costume. While he investigates that, Robin sits down to interview Yasmin. Although it doesn’t take Robin long to steer the conversation towards Anomie, Yasmin is unable to provide much about him. Yasmin, however, knows that Morehouse isn’t playing the game much right now because he’s got close to another mod known as Paperwhite. While Strike sheds his Darth Vader costume and dons a Drek mask, Robin questions Yasmin about the game being a hub for the alt-right. Yasmin immediately denies the claim and goes a bit too far when she says that the guy who sent her the file was black. After Robin promises to keep it off the record, Yasmin tells her that it was Michael Davide who sent the file. Not long after confessing this, Yasmin realizes her mistake and rushes off.

Robin tracks down Strike who has by now found another Drek employing the ask tactic as him (Going up to every Drek and asking if they’ve seen Anomie.). As Strike and Robin follow this Drek throughout the comic con, they also discuss her conversation with Yasmin. After learning about the Fiendy lead, Strike suggests they begin talking to Leeds in the game because Leeds is a big peacock supporter. While monitoring Drek, Robin receives a call from Midge telling her that Inigo has left the house without his wheelchair. Robin tells her to keep following him.

Strike and Robin eventually follow Drek to a train platform where he speaks to someone on a cell phone. While he is conversing a guy in a skeleton costume comes up and pushes him onto the tracks. Not realizing that he has been knocked out, Robin goes in after him immediately. Lucky for her, there are a few other pedestrians kind enough to jump down and help her raise him to the platform before the s train arrives. It isn’t long after the authorities get involved that Drek is identified as Oliver Peach (Jack Trueman).

At the office, Strike and Robin tell Midge and Sam what they’ve learned about their trip to Comic-Con while Midge tells them about following Inigo to a café where she spoke over the phone to someone he referred to as ‘darling girl’ about Ink Black Heart. In addition to this, he tells this recipient to only contact him on Tribulationem, which is later revealed to be a message forum for autoimmune diseases owned by Inigo.

This new discovery leads Robin and Strike to realize that one of their suspects, Kea Niven (Ellise Campbell) has an autoimmune disease. Strike and Robin make plans to question both Kea and Inigo but separately. They also task Midge with following up on the antique job with Pat and tasking Sam with playing Drek’s game to track down Fiendy. Later that evening, Strike scours Kea’s social media and learns that she is rather vocal about Edie. She apparently not only believes that Edie stole her ideas to create Ink Black Heart but she believes Edie stole her boyfriend, Josh.

Robin doesn’t receive the most gracious welcome when she questions Inigo at his home the following morning. Inigo first asks if his wife has commissioned her to spy on him but before Robin can answer, he goes on a tangent about his disease and how the only good thing left in his life is helping others with similar conditions, such as Kea. The conversation continues like this for the most part until Robin asks if he ever thought Kea could have been using him. Inigo doesn’t directly answer right away but rather redirects by admitting that he offered to look at Kea’s case when she claimed that she was a victim of plagiarism.

As Robin logs into Drek’s Game, she continues to question Inigo about passing on details about deals that his wife was working on at the time. He claims that he did in only the broadest terms and avows that Kea isn’t Anomie or Morehouse. Right before Strike arrives to question Kea, he receives a call from Robin, informing him that she thinks Inigo was manipulated in the same way Yasmin was.

Strike’s meeting with Kea immediately begins on the wrong foot when he is greeted at the front door by Mrs. Niven (Lucy Montgomery). Although Kea will yell out asking who the visitor is at some point, Mrs. Niven claims she isn’t healthy enough to meet with Strike. When Strike manipulates himself inside, Mrs. Niven goes to check on Kea, giving Strike the perfect opportunity to check out the laptop in the living room. A quick view confirms that the computer has logged onto the Tribulationem Forum at some point. When Strike is nearly caught in the act, he surprises Mrs. Niven by claiming that he is there to help Kea.

Ilsa Herbert (Caitlin Innes Edwards) helps Robin move into her apartment while Strike meets with Kea, in hopes of learning more about Anomie. Kea appears to want to offer her help but claims that if she does people will only accuse her of having an agenda. In addition to this, she is hesitant about putting Josh in a hard place. Her fear about Josh is pretty much gone when Strike says that he wants her to tell everything she knows. This is when Kea claims that Josh shared her ideas with Edie when he and Edie got back together. She also goes on to claim that they were in the process of working out a way that she would get credit until Edie attempted suicide.

Strike appears to buy Kea’s claims about Edie but he knows the instant she lies about contacting Inigo. She doesn’t deny speaking to Inigo but pretends that she hasn’t talked to him recently. His recent discovery proves this to be inaccurate and he threatens to spill the truth to Josh, which scares her enough to admit that she was using Inigo to learn information about Black Heart and Josh. Even more shocking is the fact that using Inigo in this manner wasn’t Kea’s idea. She claims she got the idea from a girl on Twitter with the name RachLedBadly.

It isn’t much longer before Strike and Kea’s conversation turns about towards Edie. Kea admits that she is glad she is dead because she ruined her life. The only problem is that she is still continually harassed by Edie’s fans, including Anomie. When Strike asks about Anomie, Kea admits that Anomie is the worst. It was Anomie who showed Kea’s threats to stab Edie and Josh with the authorities. Not only that, but Anomie also handed out Kea’s address, home number, and her mother’s work information.

Strike returns to the office to learn that Robin is moving in with Ilsa. He not only shows up bearing a housewarming present but he shows up with a major break in the case thanks to Kea. Strike briefly tells her about his meeting with Kea before he reveals that cleverly worked out Rachel Led Badly is actually Rachel Ledwell (Ellie-May Sheridan). This new discovery leads to them deciding to question Rachel first thing in the morning. Robin also invites Strike to stick around for dinner and even later asks him to spend the night so they can leave directly from her new place first thing in the morning. Strike certainly doesn’t have a problem falling asleep in new places and is practically out before dinner is finished.

During breakfast the following morning, Robin receives more texts from Pierce (James Nelson-Joyce) about her going back to North Grove. Strike encourages her to play for more time, which to both of their surprises, he doesn’t appear to mind. Not only that, but he’s also apparently learned her first name through Wally Cardew (Kevin Bishop), who saw her on the train platform video.

With Robin’s identity out there to the public, Strike encourages her to get a reinforced steel door frame for her flat. Robin jokingly plays down his worry by saying that she’s only just moved in. It’s only minutes later when Robin convinces Rachel to share what she knows about Morehouse. As it turns out, Morehouse and Rachel were great friends until she discovered his true identity and asked him about it. This made him go ballistic and ignore her, which led to her making fun of him for being in a wheelchair. Although they are back on speaking terms, Morehouse is pursuing a romantic interest in Paperwhite. After a bit more back and forth, Rachel will reveal Morehouse as Vikas Bhardwaj (Rafi Solaiman), a doctor in astrophysics at Cambridge.

It doesn’t take Strike and Robin long to reach the Cambridge campus and find Vikas’s room. The only problem is there are a number of students waiting outside his room to meet with him as well. Someone has already gone to seek out the Porter but was unable to locate him as well. Strike eventually picks the lock and enters the room to find Vikas dead.

 

C.B. Strike Review

Whoever wrote this for TV certainly does not believe in effective storytelling. I mean, as far as details go, it’s hard to match these British detective series. From Father Brown to Vera, CB Strike, and Chelsea Detective, you will not find a more detailed-oriented show.  The story has been fairly intriguing, but get rid of Robin’s personal drama, several of the unneeded cast, and many of the unbelievable scenarios, and you might actually have a good watchable show. As far as things stand, I can only give this episode a 4.5 out of 10.

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