The Cuckoo's Calling

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith, 455 pages

Cormoran Strike is your typical down-on-your-luck private eye — he's got just one client, he just broke up with his fiancee, he's deeply in debt, and, because of all that, he's sleeping in the office on a foldaway cot. He's also the illegitimate son of a rock star and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, both of which have given him plenty of mental and physical issues to deal with. But then John Bristow, the brother of a childhood friend, strolls into his office, asking him to investigate the supposed suicide of Lula Landry, Bristow's adopted sister and supermodel. The investigation takes Strike into a world much more suited to his rocker father, filled with drug-addled movie stars, sexy supermodels, and money-hungry filmmakers (and plenty of red herrings, since this is a hard-boiled mystery).

Wow, this Galbraith fellow can really write! Great character development, well-plotted... it's hard to believe this is his first book. Oh who am I kidding? We all know this is J.K. Rowling's pseudonym. You wouldn't know it from the writing style though... no traces of Harry Potter here (unlike Casual Vacancy, which felt from the start like a YA author trying to write a deliberately grown up book, and is likely why I haven't yet finished it). But if you think about how masterfully Rowling wrote Harry Potter, weaving complex plots and keeping millions of readers guessing through seven books, it's not hard to see why she'd do such a great job writing mysteries. Perhaps she just needed a little less pressure and fewer expectations; hiding behind "Robert Galbraith" definitely allowed her to do that. I hope we see more Galbraith books from her in the future. This one was awesome.