The Cuckoo’s Calling is not a novel that calls upon the wonderful gifts of inventiveness that Ms. Rowling used in Harry Potter to conjure a fully imagined world with its own rituals and rules ...concerned with decidedly more mundane matters, like midlife crises and class envy and the social anthropology of contemporary London ...seems to have similarly studied the detective story genre and turned its assorted conventions into something that, if not exactly original, nonetheless showcases her satiric eye...he’s part British-style Sherlock, using logic and deduction, not physical intimidation, to put together the puzzle pieces of his case ...is flawed by a Psycho-like explanatory ending — in which Strike explains how he put all the evidence together and identified Lula’s killer, but most of its narrative moves forward with propulsive suspense.
In April, a debut mystery called The Cuckoo's Calling was published ... The story takes place in a circumscribed setting, it's full of oddball suspects, and the killer is affably lurking in plain sight throughout much of the action. Rowling's private eye hero is named Cormoran Strike: He's an ex-military policeman who lost a leg in Afghanistan ... Rowling tries to bring a more contemporary edge to this novel by featuring a beautiful biracial victim and delving into the demimonde of high fashion and hip-hop royalty, but the world here still feels curiously dated ... The most intriguing unsolved mystery in The Cuckoo's Calling is why, in this post-Lisbeth Salander age, Rowling would choose to outfit her female lead with such meek and anachronistic feminine behavior.
It's terrific. This mystery novel featuring a quasi-disabled military veteran; his clever secretary; a rich, troubled beauty who may have been murdered but who just as likely may have plummeted to her death in a suicidal swoon; and an attendant swarm of hypocritical poseurs and annoying hangers-on, is a rich, involving chronicle of contemporary celebrity culture — and a nifty whodunit, to boot. If Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie had briefly shacked up, their love child might very well have been Robert Galbraith ...a masterful novel, the kind of big, noisy, busy, beautiful book in which it is so easy and so pleasurable to become enmeshed. The characters are fascinating and true, the London setting is rendered with such visceral sensory precision that you will find yourself reaching automatically for an umbrella, and the mystery at its heart.
...the cloak of invisibility has been slipped off J.K. Rowling, we know that she wrote The Cuckoo's Calling ...as an avid reader of crime fiction, is: pretty darn good ... The Cuckoo's Calling is clearly meant to begin another series, a sign that although the multimillionaire Rowling doesn't need to write another word, she can't help herself ... The plot takes a number of skillful turns, no surprise given that the Harry Potter books have strong mystery elements ...have to say that Strike, who's described as 'massive; his height, his general hairiness, coupled with a gently expanding belly, suggesting a grizzly bear,' reminded me not a little of Hagrid. And Robin's chipper resourcefulness has the ring of Hermione Granger.
This week, though, I was reminded to not judge a book by its cover. Or, its author ... Yes, the characters and themes are a little tired on the surface: a supermodel hounded by the paparazzi kills herself (or does she?); the burden of celebrity (especially in pop-star obsessed England) is expounded upon; a detective with more than a few issues of his own is asked to investigate ...as she has done throughout her career, Rowling fully fleshes out her cast – who are a lot more interesting than their superficial appearances ...a testament to Rowling's skillful way of imbuing humanity to her characters... The Cuckoo's Calling is masterfully plotted, which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Rowling's intricate Potter series.
In The Cuckoo's Calling, a detective novel that Rowling published under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, she returns to the strengths that made Harry Potter great — the beautiful sense of pacing, the deep but illusionless love for her characters... Rowling's hero is Cormoran Strike, a shaggy, oversized private detective with a brilliant mind and a disintegrating personal life ... His task is to investigate the death, seemingly a suicide, of a Kate Moss-like model, Lula Landry ... As the novel races to its finish, the truth materializes in a series of excellent twists ...presses too hard on the theme of fame in the tabloid era — not an unworthy subject, but stale by now and without fresh treatment here ...shows that all great fiction — even if it only concerns our workaday world — has its own kind of magic.
As a result, reading the book now is rather like watching a Derren Brown trick on freeze-frame replay, wondering if there are clues to how the wool was being pulled ...the book was written not just by a woman masquerading as a man but by Joanne Rowling specifically is its sharp concern with journalism and celebrity ...carries on the sympathy for the troubled or excluded that has been one of Rowling's most attractive qualities as a writer ...private eye Cormoran Strike, a former military policeman, is another very big chap, with the added distinction of a prosthetic leg ... Rowling is a formidable storyteller ... For the moment, we are left with an enjoyable, highly professional crime novel that has escaped from the aim its author had for it but taken on a massive new significance for readers ...JK Rowling has become even more intriguing with this brief but neat vanishing trick.
Meet Cormoran Strike. These days, you’ll find the private investigator in his central London office, which sounds much posher than it actually is ... Meanwhile, the case takes him into the dead supermodel’s world, where her friends are actors, designers, models and singers ... It would be dizzying for most people, but Strike seems immune to the glitz and glamour. His is an unconventional approach, but one that leads him to all the right conclusions. Of course, Robin helps get him there ... Cormoran Strike is as unique a character as his name and as intelligently analytical as Sherlock Holmes. Get to know Strike now, from the very beginning, or you’ll have a lot of catching up to do once he becomes a worldwide sensation.
What’s clear, and what matters, is that Galbraith/Rowling’s yarn is an expertly written exercise in both crime and social criticism of a piece with Rowling’s grown-up novel The Casual Vacancy, even if her hero, private detective Cormoran Strike, bears a name that wouldn’t be out of place in her Harry Potter series ... Strike is no Sherlock Holmes, but he’s a dogged pursuer of The Truth, in this instance the identity of the person who may or may not have relieved a supermodel of her existence most unpleasantly...Rowling dusts it off and makes it new even as she turns London into a setting for her tale of mayhem as memorable as what Dashiell Hammett did with San Francisco in The Maltese Falcon ...delivers a set of characters every bit as durable as her Potter people and a story that, though no more complex than an Inspector Lewis episode, works well on every level.
When office temp Robin Ellacott reports for work, she’s unprepared for the shabby office or the rude greeting she receives from London PI Cormoran Strike. Soon after, John Bristow arrives and asks Strike to look into the putative suicide of his adopted, mixed-race sister, supermodel Lula Landry ... A decorated Afghan vet with an artificial lower leg, Strike begins a meticulous reinvestigation that leads him into a world of celebrities and wannabes, as well as deep into Landry’s sad rollercoaster life ...methodical Strike and the curious Ellacott work their way through a host of vividly drawn suspects and witnesses toward an elegant solution. Readers will hope to see a lot more of this memorable sleuthing team.
