“Strike found himself looking directly into the large, anxious eyes of a woman standing at the bar with a friend. She had a long, pale face and her dark, shoulder-length hair was streaked with gray.” ¹

After a night out at the pub, Strike is approached by Anna Phipps, a woman who asks him to look into the 1974 disappearance of her mother, Dr. Margot Bamborough.² Having turned to more unconventional methods in the past, such as internet sleuths and psychic mediums, Anna is hoping for answers when she meets Cormoran Strike.³

Anna is a successful architect who designed the second home in Falmouth she shares with her wife, Kim Sullivan.⁴ Together, she and Kim have two cats named Cagney and Lacey.⁵ Anna has a somewhat strained relationship with her father, Roy Phipps, due to her desire to learn more about her mother and his desire to move on from painful memories.⁶

Anna was only a year old when her mother disappeared but now, at age 40, the thought of never knowing what happened to her mother weighs heavily on Anna’s heart.⁷ Running into Strike feels like fate and catapults Troubled Blood into the agency’s first-ever cold case. 

^{1: Troubled Blood, Chapter 1
2: Troubled Blood, Chapter 2
3-7: Troubled Blood, Chapter 6}