Bookish Monday ~ The Cuckoo's Calling

Author: Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Pages: 455 (hardcover)

Published Date: April 30th, 2013
Genre: Mystery, crime, adult
Series: Yes, book 1 of the Cormoran Strike series
Price: $29 CAD
Format: Purchased

This book is a mystery novel focused on to adults by JKR under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith. The story revolves around a girl named Lula Landry, who has been dead for a few months. The police had pushed the case away as suicide as she had mental problems which she faced. Cormoran Strike is an ex-military who is an amputee and by the looks of it is not the richest person. He is working as a private detective now and trying to solve the very little crimes he has to investigate. He also just breaks up with his longtime girlfriend and is forced to live elsewhere.

John Bristow, a lawyer, approaches Cormoran on his supermodel sister who he believes did not suicide but was indeed murdered. This case leads Cormoran to a widely different world in which he has to question other models, designers etc.

Did Lula Landry suicide or was she murdered?

***

I have been wanting to read this novel in the longest time, and just finally got round to doing it. While mystery is not a genre I usually grab for I did enjoy this book. I wanted to know the mystery behind this novel and even though it took me a little bit of pushing to get into the novel I just found time enough to to get it done.

While the characters are not some you would fall head over heels for you might feel a bit of sympathy for them. Cormoran Strike is an ex-military who was well built but lost a leg due to a battle that occurred. He is no longer self conscious about his weight and has let go of his past health. He seems arrogant at first but he is actually a little nice once you get to know him pretty well. The other characters to me were not enthralling and were kind of just there.
They were good characters don't get me wrong, but in a nutshell, would I care if they dropped dead? Probably not.

The other character I had a little bit of liking towards was Cormoran's assistant - Robin. She is an absolutely brilliant assistant to any private detective in my opinion. She is engaged to her fiance - Mathew.
Lula Landry, a model, passed away a while back and the police had pushed the case away as suicide as it seemed that she had only jumped out of the window. She has a brother who was also adopted like she was and he has a suspicion that Lula, even though she suffered from depression and various problems, did not suicide but it was a murder that the police just had to end up pushing away. He approaches Strike in hopes that he can find out if this case was indeed a murder case or not. The story revolves around this situation where everyone is confused as to what really happened, people lying and making up half of the stories, all of this complicating the situation much further.

I personally found the book lacking, like I mentioned before I couldn't care less for the characters. They all seemed bland to me and the way certain characters were described didn't help my love for them to increase.

On the story line as a whole it was pretty good. The book is divided into five parts; I didn't get quite into the book until part 3 was done. That was when it got interesting to me. Wanting to know who the killer is (it was obviously a killer) was grasping just about at this point. I had a feeling who the killer was in the beginning but Robert (JKR) just made a point of making you blame anyone else than the real killer. I doubted Lula's boyfriend, her brother, uncle, and neighbor as well. Obviously the killer was a big time sociopath!

The writing style was good, but not the best for me as it sounded too formal. There was a lot (A LOT) of talking and so little action that I was fairly disappointed for a good portion of the book. But like I said I did enjoy the last 2 parts decently well. There were a couple of things that I was really surprised that had happened and I was happy about those little surprises.  I feel like JKR's adult books has this thing in them where I just cannot get into her writing style.
If you guys know me at all, you know my crazy love towards the Harry Potter series, but this one (like the Casual Vacancy) did not do much for me. (I still liked it).

Would I continue on with the series? Not in the near future as I have tons of books on my TBR and the rest of Cormoran Strike's series has to wait for a long time.

Overall, I did enjoy it but like I said may not read the rest of the series any time soon.

           

Ansu/BookNerdSue

Xoxo