The Cuckoo's Calling

This one's a difficult one to recommend to anyone. It's not focused on the thrill aspect of a crime, but rather on deducing who the criminal is. I typically like those much more than the thrillers so for the most part I did enjoy this. However, I couldn't recommend it to hardcore mystery reader's, because the novel does take quite a few leaps of faith with it's logic. I did deduce who the killer was, but there were a lot of things presented as ‘clues' that were definitely a reach. But not enough to completely ruin it for me, still enjoyable.

The novel is also basically just a bunch of interviews in terms of the ‘detective' work. I didn't mind this at all, but I know it won't be some people's cup of tea. Granted I do think the book could be significantly shorter as some of the side stories could be cut out with nothing at all lost. But hey I know a little something about being long winded too. ;)

Something that wasn't my cup of tea though, was the prose. I do think JK Rowling is a great author, but something I noticed in Harry Potter that continues here, is her use of formal language. For example, if I wanted to know what time it was and my character was wearing a watch I might write “he looked at his watch” or something to that effect. In this novel that line would be “he consulted his watch”. It's grammatically correct of course and it can certainly work in many types of novels. Here the issue for me is it stands in stark contrast at times to the dialogue writing which can be very off putting.

To end on a high note though...one of the main aspects of this novel that I really enjoyed is the dynamics between Robin and Strike. I will actually continue this series, entirely because I find those dynamics so interesting and want to see how they continue to develop and change over time. All in all was enjoyable enough that despite it's flaws it was a 3/5 for me.