The Cuckoo's Calling

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / General / Galbraith, Robert	4-week checkout	On Hold Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Mystery / General / Galbraith, Robert	4-week checkout	On Hold Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Mystery / Galbraith, Robert	4-week checkout	Due 05-23-2024

Originally published: Great Britain : Sphere, 2013.
"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, thelegendary 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."--Dust jacket.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Read it twice! submitted by evelyn on July 29, 2013, 3:45pm I thought this book was excellent. I had a few theories throughout for how I thought it would end, and I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong about all of them. I am now reading it for a second time to pick up on the clues left throughout. Like a lot of people who may read this one, I'm a bigger J.K. Rowling fan than I am a mystery fan, but I was completely satisfied by this book. She does an amazing job of fulling fleshing out characters in a relatively short book.

great read! submitted by unknown on July 29, 2013, 5:47pm This book is so well written that I suspect that some years down the road we will hear the author's name is a pseudonym of some famous writer. Lots of description made one feel like another occupant in the scene. You could feel the weather, the tension, the pain, the atmosphere in the gatherings. The Audible version had great accents. It is a wonderful mystery with a surprise ending, and I look forward to more by the same author.

Good Mystery, Good Rowling submitted by Jan Wolter on August 1, 2013, 7:09pm So what do you get when J. K. Rowling sits down to write a mystery?

First, it's a classic detective mystery. It fulfills all the expectations of the genre and doesn't try to be anything bigger or better or different. It fits with all the familiar patterns of this kind of book. It also isn't one of those dark mysteries where everyone is scum. The detective and his secretary are unusually appealing characters, I think I may like them better than any Potter characters I have previously encountered. Some of the people they meet are nice too.

If I hadn't known it was Rowling, I would have thought this a promising beginning for yet another of those mystery endless series, so we'd be seeing books labeled "A Cormoran Strike Mystery" for the next twenty or thirty years. Who knows, maybe we will. I'm past trying to predict what Rowling will write next. (Except that I'll bet that someday, years and years from now, she'll return to fantasy (but not to Harry Potter).)

Second, as mysteries go, it's pretty good. It avoids at least two of the major cop-outs of lazy mystery writers. In a lot of mysteries, the "detective" flails around at random, hitting a clue or two by luck, until the villain panics and attacks the detective, thus revealing himself as the villain and absolving the "detective" from any need to do any actual work. Cormoran Strike is not that kind of detective. He actually investigates systematically and plausibly, collecting lots of information by talking to lots of people. The other lazy trick some writers use is maintaining suspense by not giving the reader all the information the detective has, until the final revelation. Rowling lets us know everything that Strike knows. She withholds most of the conclusions he draws until the end, but you have at least a chance of solving this mystery yourself if you read carefully.

Because it is a real investigation, and because she is giving you all the clues (amid plenty of other non-clues), most of the book consists of Mr. Strike interviewing one person after another. This can get a bit draggy, and that's probably why a lot of writers take short cuts to avoid that. Rowling minimizes the problem, but doesn't entirely erase it, by making the people being interviewed diverse and interesting. I can only assume that she is going out of her way to challenge herself as a writer by diving into a new genre and never taking the easy way out. Very cool.

look out submitted by unknown on August 14, 2013, 6:32am Look out male mystery writers --there's a new girl in town. Rowlings has found a great new genre. Hope that she has a series planned for this P.I. and his assistant.

Great Read! submitted by cherylo on June 14, 2014, 10:43am With an excellent, and intricate, plot, plus great characters, The Cukoo's Calling was a wonderful read. I sincerely hope that the hullabaloo about this book does not derail any further books with these characters, because I want to read more about Cormoran Strike and his accidental assistant/partner.

light and enjoyable submitted by cpaskus on June 24, 2014, 11:31am JK Rowling has created an understated but very enjoyable mystery novel. The ending comes as a delightful surprise, and the detective of the story is very well-developed and has a back story that gets more interesting the more details he reveals. That being said, the book wastes a lot of time restating that the detective and his new assistant are JUST FRIENDS and can never be anything more.

Enjoyable submitted by cinderellariley on August 14, 2014, 2:29pm Great quick read. Excellent book

Excellent Mystery submitted by audreyh on June 12, 2015, 2:22pm I really loved reading this book. I may be in the minority on this one, but I'm really enjoying JK Rowling's non-fantasy novels. She continues to improve with time, and her Cormoran Strike books are notable additions to the mystery genre. I love the Harry Potter books, but I'm looking forward to seeing what Rowling does in the future.

Good read submitted by Motomori on August 4, 2015, 11:17am This is one of J.K. Rowling's best works. If you enjoyed this as much as I did, then I suggest you move on to the next book in the series: 'The Silkworm.'

mystery submitted by nirmala on August 27, 2015, 9:17am good story line

Awesome submitted by tmkenn on July 4, 2016, 8:57am A page turner, with adventure at every step. Lovable characters and great thrilling storyline.

Characters submitted by kferguson on August 20, 2016, 7:13pm Quite a cast of characters

Good submitted by ferielp on August 15, 2017, 9:51am Though not as engrossing as Casual Vacancy.

Wonderful read submitted by beckyabondy on June 15, 2018, 3:42pm If you enjoy a good mystery, this is an awesome start to a triology. The main character is enticing and pulls you in. Additionally the twists and the end reveal was very stasifying. Plus it’s fun to see Jk do something different. Loved this book!

Loved it! submitted by bookher on July 12, 2019, 4:11pm I love this JK Rowling trilogy! I just wish she could write a little faster so we can enjoy the next book sooner. Interesting characters and fast-moving plots that suck you in. Great summer reads!

Cuckoo's Calling submitted by kecolyer on August 15, 2019, 10:00am It's not often that a mystery book has me guessing until the very last page. The way Rowling unfolds each new twist and clue makes the book so much more enjoyable. If you can get past the first 50 or so pages, it really becomes a page turner. If you are not much into dialogue, this might not be the book for you. Rowling relies pretty heavily on the interactions between Strike and the people he is questioning. However, even those annoyed by the dialogue will find that the distinct quirks in each character make it worth it.

New calling submitted by caburr47 on August 17, 2019, 10:45pm Rowling’s next foray should be to continue the series. She never has a character that is t well developed or twists that you would expect
- the series was also well done

Very good book, suspenseful! submitted by jhaberich on June 10, 2023, 10:45am Fantastic book. The suspense is there the entire time and there is a great cast of characters. Great start to the series.

Fantastic book submitted by pratibhamahesh on July 22, 2023, 12:48am Rowling has managed to keep the suspense throughout the book! It sure was a page turner for me !!