The Cuckoo's Calling

Hardcover, 455 pages

English language

Published April 5, 2013 by Mulholland Books.

ISBN:
978-0-316-20684-6
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
819383765

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (105 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, …

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

2 stars

JKR isn’t perfect and a lot of her faults are on display in this book. There’s some heavy-handed treatment of social issues, some over description, and a lot of casual misogyny. This last point is particularly felt in her obsessive need to describe every character in terms of their attractiveness and comparing the female characters against each other. She doesn’t just describe what they look like, but explicitly explains whether they’re attractive to men or not. Male characters are constantly ogling female characters. Con-stant-ly. And the main female character, while I like her quite a lot, is a stereotype of a 50’s attractive, efficient secretary who never speaks up for herself even when she’s being treated horribly.

HOWEVER, JKR’s strengths are also on full display. This is a well-plotted mystery with many reveals and interesting characters.

I think JKR has 3 main strengths: world building, characters, and whodunit plotting. Let’s …

Review of "The cuckoo's calling" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

What fun; my guess was entirely wrong, and although I maybe should have figured it out earlier, it was a great story! And my romantic ideas were wrong, also! There was enough spice and variety to really keep me entertained, and unimportant characters just added to the group of potential suspects. Very good.

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

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

4 stars

Hardly mindblowing, but perfectly enjoyable. It's a bit pulpy, but it hits the right notes to satisfy. Cormoran's a fun character, a nicely modernized noir figure. The plot was delivered mostly through characters expository conversations, but I didn't really mind (although I can see how that might be a ding).

The final reveal of the murderer wasn't a huge surprise (I'd guessed about 100 pages in), but it did leave some loose threads and general plot questions.

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

3 stars

Wasn't a fan of this book. Just sayin.

Much like the authors previous series, it's a great idea & well-written, but mired in awful narrative. It's just an entire book of exposition. A story of someone telling a story. There's a paragraph here & there with a flashback or the protagonist thinking of something unrelated to the immediate events... But for all the nonstop development the characters remain staunchly one-dimensional & the plot just plods along, zombiesque, at you. A little dull, but at least coherent. You could do worse.

Review of "The cuckoo's calling" on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This is a modern noir detective story about a young model who falls from her balcony window. Her adoptive brother hires private detective Cormoran Strike to investigate the circumstances around her death, which he believes to have been more than the suicide the police resolved it as. Cormoran is a former military investigator who lost part of a leg in Afghanistan, and is generally down on his luck. He takes the case which leads him to interview people from the very top and bottom of society as he starts to piece the real events of the night together.

It's not hard to believe this was written by the same author as Harry Potter as the writing is clear and entertaining, and there's a strong recurring theme of death and mortality. It also deals with clashes of social classes and cultures, including old money, newly minted celebrities, the homeless and plenty …

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

3 stars

I wish I hadn't known this was written by JK Rowling prior to reading it. It's impossible for me to know if it colored my opinion of the book. But it's out there, and was part of the reason it was moved to the top of my long "to read" list, so I guess it's of no consequence now.

The good: I liked Cormoran Strike. He met my expectation of a struggling, down-on-his-luck PI. I also enjoyed Robin, his accidental assistant. I am looking forward to seeing their partnership develop in future books and found I cared about both characters by the end. The plot, while a traditional mystery format, was tightly woven and took intricate turns. Well done.

The bad: I hated Cormoran's ex-girlfriend. I'm not sure the Rowling wanted or expected that response, but I would be happy if she never came up in another novel. This may …

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

4 stars

JK Rowling's post-Potter books have been interesting. It's not just that she is no longer writing fantasy stories, but that she approaches different books differently. The Potter books were about creating a magical world and about complex plotting and mysteries. The Casual Vacancy was about suburban intrigue and small mindedness.

The Cuckoo's Calling is about investigation. The story is not especially involved (certainly not compared to something like The Maltese Falcon or Farewell My Lovely), and it focuses on a fairly small number of people.

While the book does create a fully fleshed detective/receptionist combo, and a pretty good mystery, it is most interesting for it's portrayal of a very methodical detective. Unlike most fictional detectives, Cormoran Strike takes copious notes, reviews things in detail, collects evidence doggedly without constant intuitive leaps, and builds his case slowly. I really like that.

I still hope that someday Rowling will write another …

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

4 stars

Well I have already put the next one on my wishlist...

At times I must admit I was less than impressed with the 'celeb' aspect to this, but Strike and his new assistant are an interesting pair and that's what kept me going.

I hope the next one in the series is more grounded in normality though, I'm not one who bows in adulation of the super-rich and their foibles....

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

3 stars

"The Cuckoo's Calling" is filled with cliché's and genre staples, but despite that it was a surprisingly enjoyable read.

The central role of the 'flawed detective with a past and carrying much baggage' has been done to death, yet somehow Rowling managed to draw me in and make me interested in Cormoran Strike, his assistent Robin and his London.

I actually used to live around the corner from where Strike has his offices, and while I don't necessarily recognise his world as reality, it was real enough for me to care about it. The plot deals with race, adoption, wealth, poverty, greed, fame - its a good mix, particularly in view of the tensions in modern london and the western world in general, but unfortunately all of these areas are dealt with in a rather superficial way. This may be more to do with the target mass market readership, but …

reviewed The cuckoo's calling by J. K. Rowling (Cormoran Strike -- 1)

Review of "The cuckoo's calling" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This was a pretty solid detective story. Nothing too extraordinary or fancy about it, yet it still worked. The author has created a flawed, yet credible detective that helps drive the narrative along, both with his personal story and with his investigation. Cormoran Strike is no Sherlock Holmes, but he's a cool and interesting detective in his own right and really helps drive the story. I'm certain we'll see more Cormoran Strike novels in the future.
It's no Harry Potter, but Rowling has shown she has what it takes to tell compelling stories even without the childhood wonder of magic.

For my full review: strakul.blogspot.com/2013/10/book-review-cuckoos-calling-by-robert.html

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

3 stars

More like 3.5 stars.

1. Long for a crime novel, but I was never bored. It's a fun mystery with quirky, memorable characters, and I wanted to know what happened to them.
2. It's light on urgency, suspense, and danger. This is not a tense thriller, but it is a tightly plotted mystery.
3. It has a good solution - surprising, makes sense, satisfying - but it takes the detective so many pages to explain the solution that I think the known facts aren't sufficient to reach the given solution.
4. A subplot regarding the detective's assistant's personal life is never resolved. Are there going to be more of these books? (UPDATE: Apparently yes.)

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

4 stars

3-4 stars.

Honestly: If I didn't know that this is JK Rowlings book, I would have never made it until the end. Or even the middle part. The story is quite good, but all in all it was boring. Too many interviews and dialogues and way too less action. Strike has a cool name but his character is a little bit flat, in my opinion.
Nevertheless, the last quarter was better. It catched me - a little. The end was not surprising, I already had this suspicion ;)

It's an ok book but definitely not a 5-star-page-turner.

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