The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hey, listen, I am fully aware that I’m ~three years late on reviewing this book. I know that it’s been reviewed up, down, and sideways, ESPECIALLY after it was revealed that Robert Galbraith was, in fact, our beloved J.K. Rowling IN DISGUISE. I get it, okay? I know it’s been talked nearly to death, but I finally got the chance to read this book and I have feelings about it and god damn it, I’m going to share my feelings with the world!
In 2013, there was a lot of buzz about this book and I, being a sucker for a good detective novel (just take a look at my Goodreads account) (okay, maybe my Goodreads account doesn’t really give you a good picture of what I read because I tend to read anything and everything I can get my fingers on, except for romance novels. Lower-case R fully intended) AND THEN that buzz became positively thunderous when it turned out to have been written by Rowling herself. And I loved it. I loved that she took a pen name. I love that she released the book under this name so it could be taken for what it was, rather than as an extension of her Potter-brained fiction. Like everyone else in the known universe, I grew up with Harry Potter and man, do I LOVE it or WHAT, but I thought it was cool that she was moving in a completely different direction. The Cuckoo’s Calling is not Harry Potter, nor is it anything like The Casual Vacancy , which was another really lovely book. I finally bought this book last month and devoured it immediately. Why did I wait so long? We’ll never know. What matters is that I have read it and am never letting it go.
Cormoran Strike’s London is real. It’s both smooth and bumpy. It projects the lives of the rich and famous and the destitute. The way that Rowling/Galbraith juxtaposes the two is seamless-just like you see in any city, whether it is London or New York or San Francisco or Glasgow or Dublin-the ultra-rich and poor live alongside each other, barely interacting, but they’re both there, always.
We’ve all heard about the horrors of the paparazzi since Princess Di was killed all those years ago, and although the paps are quite bad here in the States, it seems like there is a real special place in hell for them in the UK. They seem to be much more intrusive and it seems like it can get scary for their marks. That’s what Lula Landry had to live with, day in and day out, as a successful supermodel. Maybe she could have dealt with them tapping her phone, standing in front of her home at all hours of the night waiting for their chance to pounce, sending her mail, knocking on her door, trying to force their way into her personal life so they could profit by selling it to the press-that is, if she had a strong family to support her.
Instead, she ended up dead, with the snow falling on her caved in head in the middle of the night. The police quickly ruled it a suicide, but her brother knew better, so he hired Cormoran Strike, private detective, to get to the root of it. I’m not going to go much further into the murder plot, even though chances are that most people have read it because I am ~so behind the times so, if you want to know whether it was a suicide or a homicide, and if it was a homicide, WHO DID IT???????????????? I urge you to READ IT AND FIND OUT.
The investigation was interesting and engaging. I figured out what had happened pretty early on, but I didn’t feel secure in my assessment. Rowling/Galbraith threw in twists and turns, and it got to the point where I wasn’t sure whodunnit. What was more engaging, however, was the unfolding story between Cormoran, son of a famous rockstar and ill-fated groupie, a former army police officer who suffered an amputation and went through quite a nasty breakup both before and during the novel’s timeline, and Robin, a newly-engaged temp who is ENTHRALLED with private investigator work and manages to carve out a place for herself in this world other than being just another human resources robot in London. I found myself caring about Strike’s well-being, and feeling thankful for the small things Robin did here and there to help him.
I also identified with Robin. She is a young woman in a new city. She has this new boss she supposes she won’t like very much, based on their first meeting, but then turns completely around. She throws herself into the investigation, pretending she’s whoever she has to be to get the answers she and Strike were seeking. Though clearly a secondary character to Strike, she is just as important. They balance each other out, and I, the reader, could feel the way Robin was feeling, new to this world of private investigation, thrilled when she got answers, let down when she had to stay in the office and tend to menial tasks. She pulls her own weight in this novel, and I didn’t expect anything less from Rowling. She’s always been able to write strong female characters. She’s always been able to make these female characters seem like actual people, rather than just a two-dimensional, well, character.
I’m excited for The Silkworm and Career of Evil . I’m excited to see how Robin grows into this new career as Strike’s partner (hopefully). I hope she has a bigger part in these next two books. I’m excited to see what Strike is going to deal with next, and I’m vaguely impressed that he doesn’t actually punch everyone who mentions his famous father right in the face. I mean, if I were a very large former wrestler (albeit one-legged) Cormoran Strike, I don’t know if I could deal with people always asking me about my deadbeat father JUST BECAUSE HE IS FAMOUS, COME ON LEAVE HIM ALONE!
I loved this book. It fits seamlessly into the genre and manages to find a new way of telling the story. (Because, let’s face it, a down-and-out private detective with a young and innocent assistant investigating the murder of a beautiful woman is hardly a new story.) I am experiencing extreme book withdrawal today. I keep wishing there was more to read, and lucky for me, there are two more books. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take me three more years to read them.
Marie Cummings Hendry 