The Cuckoo’s Calling – Robert Galbraith
Someone at my book club selected this one. I must say I had a few doubts because I found The Casual Vacancy to be very grim. However, I was pleasantly surprised.
Here is the blurb …
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.
Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
I enjoyed this novel – like a lot of books I thought it needed a bit of editing (perhaps it is me). I did guess the murderer/villain early on, but there was a twist (which I shan’t reveal) that I didn’t see coming. The novel reminded me of old black and white detective films – I keep expecting a ‘fast talking dame’ to appear – Cormoran is down on his luck, living in his office when John Bristow hires him to investigate his sister’s death, which he (John) thinks is murder and everyone else thinks is suicide. Cormoran takes this job for the money (he is living in his office after all) and finds all is not as it seems.
I liked the relationship between Cormoran and his new ‘temporary’ secretary, Robin – I can see that they are going to be quite the crime-fighting duo and I was glad the relationship wasn’t romantic (at least in this novel).
This novel reminded me of Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series. I do plan to read the next one in the series.
More reviews …
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/18/cuckoos-calling-robert-galbraith-jk-rowling-review
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-cuckoos-calling-20130920-2u4cy.html