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Book Description:

The Cuckoo’s Calling is a 2013 crime fiction novel by J. K. Rowling, published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

A brilliant mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel’s suicide.
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.

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Okay, I never heard of The Cuckoo’s Calling until it leaked out that this was really by JK Rowling writing under a pseudonym. When I found out, of course I had to get my own copy (together with a LOT of her other fans, sending the book up the bestseller lists!)

So, after practically devouring the book for the last three days – what can say? I liked it, really liked it – I forgot that this was written by JK Rowling even. I have no idea how some people are saying that they recognize JK Rowling’s style, since I couldn’t tell at all… Honestly, I’d had liked it even if  it really was written by a debut author named Robert Galbraith.

The Cuckoo’s Calling is a good old-fashioned whodunit in the vein of PD James and Agatha Christie, very English – London front and center –  with a complex-enough puzzle, plenty of interesting suspects, good characters who I cared about almost from the start, and good story-telling that just sucked me into the page … in short, I really look forward to the next installment!

More reasons why I’m recommending this!

• Very likable detective in  the PI Cormoran Strike – he reminded me a bit of Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody (from the Harry Potter books) but maybe only because I knew this was JK Rowling going in
• Very engaging (and smart!) sidekick in Strike’s temporary secretary Robin (she was my fave character  – and I’ve got high hopes that she’ll play a more prominent role in future books)
• Surprise (to me) ending – I had NO IDEA who the killer was (even with the plentiful clues). I like being surprised 🙂
• And, a nice break from the gory details, violence and sex that’s pretty typical of the Scandinavian crime novels I’d been reading recently!

The Cuckoo’s Calling (book 1 of the Cormoran Strike series) by JK Rowling (Writing as Robert Galbraith) (Mulholland Books) is available on the ff sites: Amazon, B&N, Kobo, iTunes iBooks, Diesel, Sony and The Book Depository.

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