The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike)

480 pages

Published April 29, 2014 by Mulholland Books.

ISBN:
978-0-316-20685-3
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4 stars (21 reviews)

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, thelegendary 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.

26 editions

Solid with some missteps

4 stars

Despite a few missteps, this was a solid opening book in the CB Strike series. I really enjoyed the set up, as a truly down in the dumps private detective hires a new temps secretary, who proves her worth several times over. Cormoran Strike is a fun character, with both good and bad habits. Robin is a clever character, as she has always wanted to be a private eye(!) and is a fun discovery as she works out her issues as well

The actual mystery of a big time model "committing suicide" wasn't all that interesting and there was far too much exposition. And Galbraith (Rowling) got away with too much hidden information, because it isn't a first person book. Strike would "know" things but wouldn't let the reader in on the secret. And his habit of looking at women as objects was a little overdone.

But like I said, …

reviewed The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (Cormoran Strike #1)

Review of "The Cuckoo's Calling" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Last year, the internet content aggregation machine spat out an interesting article about emotion words in foreign languages that have no parallel in English. Words like "duende", Spanish for the property of a work of art that powerfully moves a person. (The least obnoxious of these is from the OED.)

Also last year, I recommended [a:Connie Willis|14032|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1199238234p2/14032.jpg]'s [b:To Say Nothing of the Dog|77773|To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2)|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1436397341s/77773.jpg|696] to a friend. When she read it, she loved it: ranted and raved about how good it was via IM, e-mail, facebook messages, Goodreads, a phone conversation(!). She stayed up until some ungodly hour reading it 2-3 nights in a row, basically a textbook home run. And I felt really, really good about that. Pleased to have shared this book that I loved, and allowed one of my friends to love it too.

I bring …

Review of "The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike)" on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I don't like detective or mystery novels, and I read this only because JK Rowling is the author.

It was all right. It captured my interest and kept me reading, but at the end, everything seemed to fall into place too neatly without enough clues (for me, anyhow), about some of it. Maybe that's the way these novels usually work, though.

Review of "The Cuckoo's Calling" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is one of my favorite detective books. I have never read any of J.K. Rowling's books (yeah, I know, I know) since I really don't like Young Adult stuff. However, I was so blown away by her writing style (she's really good) that I am dying for more.

I hope that she continues the Cormoran Strike series, as I'd love to see what else he can get into. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that she will, since it was sort of her way to write without a spotlight. Hopefully, she had another book on the way when this one was outed as hers.

I was entertained by the poor reviews of this book which were written by people who just don't like the author. Some people just resent those who are successful. Having read this, I can see why Rowling is a success. She's a fantastic author. I will …

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