174. The Cuckoo’s Calling
Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Recommended by: Boulder Librarian
Author: Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Suspense
455 pages, published April 30, 2013
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
While The Cuckoo’s Calling, a murder mystery and book one of a series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike, lists the author as Robert Galbraith, that is a pseudonym. It is actually written by J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame. The book opens with Detective Strike hired to investigate the death of supermodel Lula Landry (known to her friends as the Cuckoo) which has been ruled a suicide by the police. After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. He is down to one client, has creditors on his back, has just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office. The Landry case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers.
Quotes
“Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his.”
“Other people his age had houses and washing machines, cars and television sets, furniture and gardens and mountain bikes and lawnmowers: he had four boxes of crap, and a set of matchless memories.”
“You’re like everyone else, Strike; you want your civil liberties when you’ve told the missus you’re at the office and you’re at a lap-dancing club, but you want twenty-four-hour surveillance on your house when someone’s trying to force your bathroom window open. Can’t have it both ways.”
“Humans often assumed symmetry and equality where none existed.”
“In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted.”
“The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.”
“When you are young, and beautiful, you can be very cruel.”
“There’s people who’d expect you to take a bullet for them and they don’t bother rememb’ring yuh name.”
“Couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself.”
“Strike was used to playing archaeologist among the ruins of people’s traumatised memories;”
“I am become a name.”
My Take
When my son Nick was in Elementary School (he is currently a college student), he and I read all of the Harry Potter books together and we both loved living in the wildly inventive and fantastic world created by J.K. Rowling. Based in modern day London, Rowling has created a different type of world in The Cuckoo’s Calling, one that I also enjoyed inhabiting during the almost 16 hours that I spent listening to the audio book version. The Cuckoo’s Calling has everything you could want from a mystery/suspense/thriller: compelling and real characters, a gritty plot that hums along at a rapid clip, an inside look at a world different from the one you inhabit, plenty of red herrings to keep you guessing and some surprise twists at the end. It’s no surprise that I’m looking forward to reading book 2 in this series.
