Muggle Monday: The Cuckoo's Calling Review

It's time for Muggle Monday, in which I highlight a significant piece of news from the Harry Potter franchise. This is somewhat inspired by the Mundane Monday posts by The Mundie Moms.

But let's be real as to why I made up this feature: I just want the opportunity to post something about Harry Potter.


This week, I'm posting my review for The Cuckoo's Calling, J.K. Rowling's second post-Potter book:

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: April 30, 2013
Pages: 449
Source: Bought
Rating: 5 Stars

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 long-time girlfriend and is living in his office.
Then John Landry walks through his door with an amazing story. His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, fell, famously, 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, rockstar boyfriends, desperate designers, and every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.
You may think you know detective novels, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know the world of the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen it investigated by a detective like this one.

In short: The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) is an incredibly effective and ingenious mystery with the highly intricate and complex characterization we've come to expect from Jo.

Quelle surprise - I'm rating Jo's latest book 5 Stars. To be fair though, I don't think it's JUST my bias towards her that has me rating The Cuckoo's Calling so highly. Lots of people loved it back when they thought it was written by a debut author and ex-Royal Military Police investigator, Robert Galbraith. Releasing The Cuckoo's Calling under a pseudonym was a very clever move - and completely understandable. This way, J.K. Rowling was able to determine what people thought of her work based on the merit of her writing rather than her name and reputation. Readers went into it without any expectations or disappointment that they weren't getting the next Harry Potter, like what happened with The Casual Vacancy.

I was super excited when I heard Jo had written a mystery. I've always thought she had a special talent in that area. Many of the books in the Harry Potter series have had mysteries at the story's core. I can recall taking my time with the books upon first read, staying up to all hours of the night, getting my Veronica Mars on, trying to figure out the answers to each of the mysteries in the series for myself - who opened the Chamber of Secrets, who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire, who is the Half-Blood Prince, etc.? And not once did I ever manage to guess the outcome before the reveal at the end. I was always surprised and I was always left in awe at J.K. Rowling's genius.

The Cuckoo's Calling was certainly no exception. I was left utterly surprised at the identity of the murderer of Lula Landry. Over the course of the novel, I suspected almost every character at one point or another. It was written in such a way that many different people could have plausibly been the killer, but only one - the true killer revealed at the end - actually made sense. The clues are complex and the red herrings are numerous. J.K. Rowling has proved unequivocally that she has the talent to write mysteries to run with the best of the mystery writers. I wouldn't have thought there was anything left that could impress me about Jo, but it turns out there was. There really, really was.

And of course, no review of a book by J.K. Rowling would be complete without mentioning the brilliance and intricacy of her characterization, even if it's redundant at this point. She writes characters that are all very flawed and often hard to like in their entirety. But because of this, they are all REAL. They are all genuine and credible in a way only flawed, imperfect characters can be. I took to the gruffness and no-nonsense attitude of Cormoran Strike, the down-and-out private investigator who has just been dumped by the love of his life, immediately. Somehow he commanded both my sympathies for his bleak situation and my extreme respect as a man of morals and a highly skilled detective. Secondary characters are all similarly complex and well defined.

I think I liked The Casual Vacancy a bit more than The Cuckoo's Calling. The Cuckoo's Calling provided an excellent source of entertainment in the form of one impressively plotted mystery, but The Casual Vacancy seared right to the core of my heart with its emotion and insight and left me reeling and meditating for days and days afterwards. I think The Cuckoo's Calling will have a bit less impact on me in the long run, but that certainly doesn't mean it's not a story worth reading as it was perfectly excellent in its own right. I highly recommend The Cuckoo's Calling to fans of mystery stories and of course, to fans of J.K. Rowling's intricate characterization and clever writing. It excites me to no end that The Cuckoo's Calling is only the first in a planned series featuring Cormoran Strike!

Previously, my review of The Casual Vacancy

Other Reviews:
Alison Can Read
Novel Sounds

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