The Cuckoo's Calling

So firstly before we begin I think that we can remove the belief, 12 months after the books publication, that people don't know that Robert Galbraith is in fact a pseudonym for perhaps the worlds most financially successful author J K Rowling. After some rather shaky reviews about her other foray into adult fiction, The Casual Vacancy, I wonder why anyone would be surprised that she decided to cloak herself in secrecy for the release of this book. She need not have been worried however.

The Cuckoo's Calling is a wonderful book, it is a thing of great beauty. It evokes those old fashioned Agatha Christie novels where the story is centralised around wonderful detective work based not on science and DNA but on observation of people, their relationships and secrets. Cormoran Strike, Rowling's central character is enigmatic and engaging whilst remaining mysterious. He may be described as being of physical ilk to manage himself in a difficult situation but we get the sense he'd never need to as he too darned clever.

This book has a very simple premise, which is that 3 months prior a supermodel fell to her death from her home balcony. The death was labelled suicide and her brother wishes the case investigated, refusing to believe the police. What follows was a wonderful series of long luxurious chapters where Strike introduces us to the key players in Lula Landry's life prior to her ‘suicide'. There is no great action, no blood and ogre and nobody dying every second chapter. Instead we get lots of beautiful dialogue between Strike and the people he meets as they recall their memories of the days leading up to Lula's death.

Through these memories the story builds, we learn of inconsistencies, family troubles, hidden agendas and secrets. We never meet many of the characters more than once but they are discussed by other characters as part of their recollections and they literally leap off the page. We don't need to spend chapters building their back stories to intrigue us, Rowling weaves her characters so well that the snippets of information we gather and the connections she makes between all her cast make it perhaps the most engaging book I've read all year.

I was literally hard presses to put this book down, I just wanted to keep reading more and more. I was literally raving about it the whole time I was reading, I just couldn't help bursting over with intrigue and anticipation at finding out who, if anyone, had in fact killed Lula Landry.

Rowling has done a wonderful thing, she's shown that she is not a one trick pony. She has demonstrated her ability to produce work under a different genre and for it to be critically acclaimed. I truly applaud her for that, I also applaud that even when her pseudonym was so trust crushingly exposed in the press she has continued to use it for the second novel in this series. She could have simply cast it aside and said “well now I know you liked it I don't have to pretend”. I am gut bustingly excited about the release of The Silkworm, the second Cormoran Strike, this month. I cannot wait to dive into another adventure with her detective and for another mystery to unfold.

I know there are fans who say she will never ever write anything as good as Potter, or she should have kept writing stories about the boy wizard - I however feel that Harry's journey was always a finite one and Rowling has moved on. I am just overjoyed she's doing so in a way that continues to engage, challenge, stimulate and reward me as a reader.