The Cuckoo's Calling Book Review

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

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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.

Review by Brittany:

I'm a little late to the party on this book, despite looking forward to reading it for a long time, and I loved it.

Strike is a bit unprofessional and disorganized, but his skill level for the job he is doing is made evident throughout the story. The prosthetic leg adds a bit of background and personality to Strike that aids in his character development. I also thought it was interesting how much focus was put on his relationship with Charlotte that ended at the beginning of the book. I liked this added bit of story and character development. Robin, Strike's temp, was also a great character. She added some humor to the story, and she was quick-witted and invested in her job working with Strike. She made a good addition to the story and I'm hoping that she gets an opportunity to be a major character in further books.

The story itself was intriguing to me. I enjoyed Strike's conversations with people and the little ways in which he would extract information from him. There were often times he would catch a detail that I missed, and I was impressed with the way the story was written and with how Strike managed to fill in those little pieces. I thought there was enough to information to infer what had happened, but I still didn't know the whole ending until the climax of the story. I had it narrowed down to two suspects, so I was on the right track but it wasn't immediately obvious.

I think this one is a good example of a subtle detective story that isn't too much in the reader's face but gives just enough information. I enjoy J.K. Rowling's writing and will most definitely be continuing with this series.

Notable quotes:

But the lies she told were woven into the fabric of her being, her life; so that to live with her and love her was to become slowly enmeshed by them, to wrestle her for the truth, to struggle to maintain a foothold on reality.

But they had already tried, again and again and again, and always, when the first crashing wave of mutual longing subsided, the ugly wreck of the past lay revealed again, its shadow lying darkly over everything they tried to rebuild.

There, in that first night, had been everything that had subsequently broken them apart and pulled them back together...

"He's not sane. Which isn't to say he's not a clever fucker."