The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1) in Fantasy Buddy Reads

Dec 06, 2015 Ctgt rated it liked it

I was going to avoid this series after the release of this first book and all the hoopla that surrounded the author. Just recently I have been reading some stellar reviews of the next two books in the series so decided to give this one a shot.
I ended up enjoying the book more than I anticipated. As with any detective/PI/mystery series I start there better be something besides the plot to pull me in because frankly, it's very difficult for an author to present a truly unique plot line anymore. Th ...more

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Sep 11, 2019 julia ☆ [owls reads] rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery

A fast read! The narrative is a bit slow with all the tangents about Strike's life, but the mystery is compelling and engaging. I really enjoyed the dialogue and how everything slowly came together about Lula's death. The final twist is a tiny bit predictable; you get an inkling of it pretty early in the novel, so when it finally happens, it's not really a surprise. Still good, though! I also really liked Robin as a character and I'm curious to see how the series is going to progress. ...more

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May 18, 2016 Alan rated it it was ok · review of another edition

The Cuckoo's Calling is the first entry in Galbraith/Rowling's Cormoron Strike novels, and despite the detective's unbelievable name, I very much enjoyed the character. Strike is imperfect and likable, with enough internal conflict to engage the reader.

Though I enjoyed Strike as a character, however, I found the mystery itself lacked finesse, and that the author depended too much on keeping information from the reader in order to propel the narrative. Sometimes this can be done effectively, but The Cuckoo's Calling is the first entry in Galbraith/Rowling's Cormoron Strike novels, and despite the detective's unbelievable name, I very much enjoyed the character. Strike is imperfect and likable, with enough internal conflict to engage the reader.

Though I enjoyed Strike as a character, however, I found the mystery itself lacked finesse, and that the author depended too much on keeping information from the reader in order to propel the narrative. Sometimes this can be done effectively, but in this case it was a simply a matter of Strike realizing something in one chapter, but waiting a hundred pages or so to enlighten the audience. This gave the mystery itself an overly simplistic feel, despite all the clues thrown the reader's way to draw their attention this way and that.

Although the book picks up and engages toward the end, as the novel hurtles toward its conclusion, I also found that there was a lot of extraneous information, and that the end reveal (view spoiler) felt a bit too paint-by-numbers mystery writing for me. During the scene when (view spoiler)

The writing was generally very good, though Galbraith is fond of slipping into third-person omniscient when it feels as though the story should be consistently third-person limited. As I'm a huge fan of deep POV, however, this is probably just my own personal stylistic taste showing through. Robin's POV was enjoyable, but I consistently wondered if it was necessary, given how little attention she receives compared with Strike. It seemed like her reason for having a POV was to provide a false sense of tension by virtue of not knowing what the main character was doing. Robin did feel more fleshed out than some of the other characters, but most of the cast feels sketched, including the victim herself, with whom it feels we're supposed to have developed a deep connection.

Though I've given the novel a bit of a lashing here, I did enjoy parts of it, and especially Strike as a character. I'll probably pick up the follow-up to see how his narrative unfolds, as it may well be that the plotting and mystery in the next book improve. ...more

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