"The Cuckoo's Calling" Book Review

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide.

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: his sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

I'm gonna be honest and say that I only got this book because it was written by Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling. I can understand why she put it out there under a pseudonym, but her agent was probably pulling his or her hair out.

I found this book much more enjoyable than "The Casual Vacancy", Rowling's other adult book. The main characters, Cormoran Strike and Robin, were very interesting and likable. Strike reminded me of the main character on the original C. S. I. (television show): he was smart, he doesn't let his feelings get the best of him, he finds things other people don't see, and he's funny. I read other British detectives recently, and over the years, that were disappointing knock-offs of Sherlock Holmes. I never once while reading this book compared him to Holmes, and the only reason I would is because they're damn good detectives and entertaining. Also, in my mind, he was played by a slightly fatter version of Russell Crowe (I know he's Australian, but he's also hot).

The middle did drag quite a bit though. It seemed as if all I did was read about his eating and sleeping habits while mourning the end of his relationship to a hot, crazy person. I would rather have focused on the murder. I admit that I snuck a look at other reviews, hoping that I could figure out the ending so that I knew there was a point. But the beginning and ending were great. It really picked up some speed at the end.

I noticed in some reviews complaints about the use of 'big words' and I can understand both sides of that argument. I came across the word 'despoliation' which I have never seen before in my life. After looking it up (verb: steal or violently remove valuable or attractive possessions from; plunder) I also used the thesaurus and found 'plundering, pillaging, looting, ransacking, ravishing, sacking; ravaging, devastation, ruination, vandalism' and all of those could have worked in that particular sentence, so that was showing off a bit. Now, looking at it from the other side, the writer's side, when you're writing you don't want to repeat words because that can get annoying for both author and reader, so you substitute other words. Sometimes this leads into using words people don't usually read. So it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Oh well, nothing wrong with learning a new word.

Overall, I enjoyed it but I'm not sure if I will read more of Mr. Strike.

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Four out of five Strikes.