Book Review: The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1), by Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling

Genre: Contemporary Mystery
Date Published: April 2013
Publisher: Mulholland Books
# Of Pages/Listening Time: 455 pages/ 16 hours

Goodreads | Audible

Synopsis: 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.

My Rating:

 ★★★★★

.....For being a highly enjoyable re-read

My Thoughts:

It's always nice to re-read a book and find that you're enjoying it more than the first time around. I'm really pleased that I can declare this book a favorite.

I admit, the first time I read this, it was because I knew J.K. Rowling wrote it. It's a shame this book didn't get much of a chance to thrive under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, because I feel it would have done fairly well on it's own, without needing to ride on the celebrity of its author. I would like to think I would have tried it and considered it to be a great debut novel. Ah well!

I found this to be an excellent mystery novel. For me, a good mystery novel does not need to be a thriller; it shouldn't have to rely on life-threatening cliffhangers or action-packed fight scenes. Agatha Christie is the best mystery writer in the world, and her books were methodical, not suspenseful.

This novel reminded me a lot of the mystery classics we all know and love. A book that relies on the clues, the characters, and "using our little grey cells". It's a book with excellent red herrings, a good motive for murder, and a budding detective-assistant team that the reader can enjoy following. The book is fun because we're following the clues and we get to try and figure it out before we reach the end. This time around, I could still remember who did it, but I still enjoyed following the story, and seeing how the clues all pinpointed towards the murderer. Oftentimes, a mystery novel doesn't do so well on the re-read because you already know who the culprit is, but this one remained intriguing and fun the whole way through (this book was so enjoyable in fact, that I confess, at one point I chose to not clean the house and finish this book instead).

Rowling fans, it's not fantasy. It's doesn't resemble Harry Potter and the Wizarding World in the slightest. It's strictly an adult mystery novel. If you don't like mysteries, you probably won't like this book, but you might still agree that it's well-written.

Mystery fans, you'll really enjoy this one, I think. It's a book that makes you want to be a private detective too, and try to solve the case before Cormoran Strike does; yet you don't feel bad when you don't succeed. It's a great, character-based mystery novel, and worth a try. Enjoy!