Strike and Robin’s first meeting with their prospective client, Sir Colin Edensor, takes place at his club, The Reform Club, which was founded in 1836.

The club is housed in ‘a large, grey nineteenth-century building that stood on Pall Mall’ (chapter 4).

Strike and Robin are met at the door by a tailcoated attendant who leads them across the vast atrium.

‘White marble busts stood sentinel on square plinths and large oil paintings of eminent Whigs looked benignly down from gold frames, while columns of fluted stone rose from the tiled floor to the first-floor balcony, then up to a vaulted glass ceiling’ (chapter 4).

Their meeting with Sir Colin and his two eldest sons takes place in the coffee room of the club. The coffee room is ‘equally grand dining room, with green, red and gold walls, long windows and gilt chandeliers with frosted glass globes’ (chapter 4).

Sir Colin talks them through his case and the history behind his son Will joining the UHC and the unsuccessful attempts at trying to get through to him. Colin tells them that Patterson Inc had previously worked on the case but messed it up by sending the same man who’d conducted surveillance on Chapman Farm to the Rupert Court Temple.

A waiter arrives to take their lunch order. Strike fancies the steak, but in deference to his healthy eating regime, he orders the seabass instead.

Robin agrees to take on the job before discussing it with Strike, who had a mouth full of potato.

You can find the Reform Club on the map below: