The Cuckoo's Calling

By: Robert Galbraith

Narrated by: Robert Glenister

Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Published under a pseudonym, J. K. Rowling’s brilliant debut mystery introduces Detective Cormoran Strike as he investigates a supermodel's suicide in “one of the best books of the year” (USA Today).

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, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he’s living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking 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.

Fast-paced and sharply drawn, this dazzling detective novel inspired Strike, the BBC crime drama series that has captivated millions of viewers worldwide.

©2013 Robert Galbraith (P)2013 Hachette Audio

Outstanding!!

Truly amazing! I loved the intricate plot and unexpected ending. A great introduction to Cormorant Strike and I look forward to many more in this series!!

Humanness of characters

Pace was slow so you could follow and ending was a surprise. Characters were well developed.

Cormoran Strike Grabs Your Attention Right Off

This is a new series for this author. Who would think the same author could write Harry Potter and then write something as gritty and grubby as this series. The protagonist makes you want to know more about him right from the start. He is a sympathetic character who is very smart but dumb in romance. Not unusual I guess. Anyway, Cormoran is now living in his office after breaking up with his abusive girlfriend of 12 or so years. He is contacted to look into a suicide which his client believes is murder. The story takes off from there and gives the reader a good story. It is a sophisticated storyline and the author inserts lots of references to let you know that Strike is no dummy. I like the deep voice of the narrator and his accent which adds to the strength of Cormoran. He is a big man, 6'3" and weighing 16 stone (224 pounds). The descriptions of his disability and his unusual hairiness are important to seeing him. I hope there are lots of books to follow.

Clever, clever writing

I normally review SF, although I do read a good bit of detective and spy fiction. (I don't feel I have the breadth to comment on those areas.) But this book is so completely peculiar that I doubt anyone has the right background to provide expert commentary.

My wife insisted I listen to it. I really didn't want to read a Rowling romp. What a moron I am at times. I could not disagree more with those who suggest this is a great "first" effort in the genre. It is a really good book. Period.

This is clever and VERY "meta'" -- brilliantly narrated. It is as though someone had reviewed all detective stories from Chandler on, sat a LONG time digesting the body of work and then written what was supposed to look simple but was really a sly book. The author covers every single base on the "tough but scruffy British police/detective" checklist right out in the open....no pretending it is something else. But each is addressed in new and interesting ways -- and the author supplies all of the mandatory snappy patter. But in the end it becomes just a good story.

It is fun and self-deprecating. It delivers completely I thought.

Cormoran Strike is an interesting surprise!

What a pleasant and interesting surprise The Cuckoo's Calling was! I'm not a mystery reader at all, had never heard of Robert Galbraith, and didn't have much interest in reading about the investigation of a super model's possible suicide, so I honestly would never had picked this up if it hadn't been for the J.K. Rowling kerfuffle. She has introduced a compelling and genuinely human private investigator in the form of Cormoran Strike, his temporary secretary Robin Ellacott, along with a well-plotted mystery. I wanted to keep reading to see whodunit, but also because the book was well-written; I can see shades of the same excellent plotting I admired in Harry Potter. I hope she had fun writing inventive characters' names because I certainly had fun reading them, along with the engaging story. I will avidly look forward to further installments in the Cormoran Strike series!

Didn't love it as much as I wanted to

This is definitely more mystery than mystery thriller, which I'll admit I tend to prefer, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised by the sheer mass of dialogue in this book. That's OK and of course there was lovely character development (I'd expect no less from "Robert Galbraith"), but I sort of think it's "cheating" when the characters know information that the readers don't. I want to have the same chance of solving a mystery as the characters in the book, but if I don't have the same information I can't. I think this probably speaks more to my preferences than it does to quality of the book, so I'll just chalk this one up to good writing that's maybe just not for me.

CuckaLula

A beautiful starlet, Lula Landry, plunges to her death and the assumption is that she jumped, the only problem with that is that there was no viable reasoning behind that action. She was a complicated individual but not necessarily suicidal. After the case is closed for several months John Bristow, Lula's brother, walks into Cormoran Strike's office, a private detective who is down on his luck. Strangely Bristow wants to hire him to investigate Lula's death. Cormoran at first thinks that this guy is just grieving or that maybe his cheese has slid off his cracker, but after hearing him out decides to take the case. He figures, what the heck I need the income and something to keep my mind off my recent breakup.

During the investigation many different theory's are voiced by Lula's friends, foes, family and new found family. This is where the plot really starts to thicken. Lula was adopted as a small child by a very wealthy family and had recently been looking for her blood relations. Lula had her own fortune made from her acting career so she was not too concerned with offending her adopted family or loosing any inheritance.

I liked Cormoran's investigative process and strategies, he keeps his discoveries to himself so it kept me guessing. It was enjoyable to watch his much younger new assistant, Robin, become integral to the case and at the same time melt Cormoran's big ole gruff exterior and heart. If there is another book, they and their growing, platonic relationship would be the reason I would read it. The narrator was a good voice for Cormoran.

this is one of the good ones

Any additional comments?

I hope there are more of these. I read all the HP books; unlike those, this one has some very nice writing, almost as though it were written by someone else.

I was not going to love this book...

I wasn't going to. Not at all. Not another going-to-seed, emotionally and psychically broken, cop/detective/policeman take your pick! Ex-military cop, now PI Cormoran Strike has lost part of a leg in Afghanistan, and his difficulties with it are essential to the character. He's out of shape, dead broke and has just split up--very dramatically-- with Charlotte. And of course Cormoran smokes (but at least he's not an alcoholic). The physical picture painted of our hero is somewhat appalling. A clue; the name Cormoran comes from the Cornish legend of Cormoran the Giant. We hear huge, bulky, hairy, boxer's face. Repeatedly. I'd never heard "pube hair" applied to someone's head of hair before. Gross--I mean, my hair is frizzy, but if anyone had ever called it pube hair I'd have clobbered 'em. In any case...recall the Potter books. This is part of the author's penchant for the grotesque we should be familiar with by now, only this time it's not PG. But Cormoran's personality, with his gentle patient manner, and impressive intellect won me over. And anyway, it turns out that a number of very attractive women are drawn to our hero--this man the author paints as huge, hairy, and even ugly--so, maybe not so ugly, maybe a rough, more hirsute combination of say, a John C Reilly and Sebastien Chabal of rugby fame. (I'm a visual reader, and I LIKE my heroes physically appealing--so, sue me). The author constantly references his huge bulk and hairiness, but eventually we find out he is just 6'3" and while he may be out of shape, carrying some extra pounds, he looks good in an Italian suit, and when he sees himself in a mirror he has hair on his chest and arms, but not all over...so again, the author's love of visual hyperbole.


This plot itself involves celebrity and fame, and those who feed it and from it. Knowing Galbraith was actually Rowling was provocative. I take it she had some bitterness resulting from her own catapult into celebrity to get out of her system, which she does here and then some. We saw the potential for caustic wit in the Potter books; here it is full blown. The author paints a colorful, but often mean and tawdry world of high fashion, drugs, music and hangers on.


While I absolutely loved the Harry Potter movies, the books themselves were a bit over-rated, in my opinion. (I've heard however that the audio versions are outstanding due to narration). Writing for adults seems to enhance the author's facility with character development...allows for deeper digging. The plot is not filled with suspense, there is little to no action, just good ol' plodding detective work, amid the fascinating evolution of a quirky to bizarre cast of characters, which by contrast paint Cormoran and his temporary assistant Robin in a downright normal light.


The mystery unfolds through sheer doggedness on the part of Cormoran--and Robin. The plot is character and dialogue driven, the use of TA Robin eliminating the need for much expository narrative. While we are privy to all of Cormoran's discoveries, the conclusions are available only to the natural detectives among us. We don't spend an inordinate amount of detecting time in his head; we hear instead about his personal issues including the beautiful and of course, damaged, Charlotte--ex-fiancée. That way many of us can be surprised at the outcome, without the device of keeping the audience in the dark.


The final reason I was compelled to love this book was Robert Glenister, whose face and voice I remember from BBC's "Spooks" (MI-5 to American viewers), among other productions. His skill with accents and emotions is outstanding--in short he was perfect for this performance--and performance it was. I am looking forward to The Silkworm--with Glenister. If the author's creative pattern holds, we may be seeing a new one per year. I can hope...

JK Rowling proves she can write like a man

And it isn’t much of a benefit. The book is filled with a lot more crude descriptions of women that tend to be far too prevalent with male writers. I was hoping since this was technically written by a woman that it would not give us such unnecessary descriptions and musings but nope. It was there.
This book also takes a REEEEEEEALLY long time to get going. It works for me as something pleasant in the background while crafting, but for someone that is entirely focused on it you might get a little bored. Robin was great. Easily the best part of the book. Strike was okay but a little too indulgent on male fantasies.