"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.

"The Casual Vacancy" Book Review

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.

"Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.

"Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils...Pagford is not what it first seems.

"And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

"The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults."

I'm just going to admit it: I got this just because J. K. Rowling wrote it and I loved the Harry Potter books. I'm also going to be completely honest and say I am not sure I would've picked this up otherwise.

Be that as it may....

I did read a few articles about this book beforehand and I remember Rowling stating that she thought it was a very British novel. But Pagford is a lot like any other small town that happens to be predominately white and full of itself whose inhabitants happen to speak with some British slang.

For some reason, the publishers never mentioned it was about a murder, just a death, but the way it sounded in the press made it seem like it was about a murder. But, no, Barry Fairbrother just dies. But for the first fifty pages or so, I did expect some evildoer to pull on his mustache and cackle with laughter about his having killed off the most interesting character I will never fully meet. Thanks, Rowling.

While the character development is very good, it does take up half of the book before the story really begins to move. And after that I couldn't get to the ending fast enough. Not because I disliked it, but because I was really interested in how these people were going to settle all of their problems. And also whether Rowling would let their problems be wrapped up all nice and tidy at the end. Maybe there wouldn't be an answer to all their problems. Because that's life, it just keeps going. And this book is very close to real life.

There were characters that I was supposed to hate: Simon and Obbo; there were characters I really disliked: Fats, Gavin, and Shirley; there were characters I either pitied or felt close to: Andrew, Gaia, Sukhvinder, Kay, Krystal, Terri, and Tessa. Ruth made me all sorts of frustrated (Goddamnit woman, just hit him first or at least hit him back, I know you have it in you!) I liked Howard and Miles, although I didn't like their view of things. I found it funny that Samantha thought the most romantic things about her shop closing ("It was strange how your brain could know what your heart refused to accept."), but detested her husband and his family.

It's a very good book, all 'round.

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