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Rating 🌟🌟🌟. This is my first novel by Robert Galbraith, pseudonym of J.K. Rowling. I originally decided not to read anything by her that was under a male pseudonym. As a feminist, it just didn't make sense for her to choose a male name, IMO, when women authors historically haven't been taken seriously or allowed to publish. This isn't that time period in our history, so why?? Well, I changed my mind apparently. As far as the novel, I read it on Audible, and the narrator was really great. The sto
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TITLE: The Cuckoo's Calling
Date Read: 10/10/13
RATING: 4.5/B+
GENRE/PUB DATE/PUBLISHER/# OF PGS: Crime Fiction/2013/Little, Brown & Co/455 pgs
SERIES/STAND ALONE: #1 Cormoron Strike
TIME/PLACE: Present/London, UK
CHARACTERS: Cormoron Strike/PI, former soldier in Afghanistan
FIRST LINES: Though Robin Ellacott's 25 years of life had seen their moments of drama & incident, she had never before woken up in the certain knowledge that she would remember the coming day for as long as she lived.
COMMENTS: ...more
Date Read: 10/10/13
RATING: 4.5/B+
GENRE/PUB DATE/PUBLISHER/# OF PGS: Crime Fiction/2013/Little, Brown & Co/455 pgs
SERIES/STAND ALONE: #1 Cormoron Strike
TIME/PLACE: Present/London, UK
CHARACTERS: Cormoron Strike/PI, former soldier in Afghanistan
FIRST LINES: Though Robin Ellacott's 25 years of life had seen their moments of drama & incident, she had never before woken up in the certain knowledge that she would remember the coming day for as long as she lived.
COMMENTS: ...more
I've always been a sucker for private detectives with complicated and damaged backstories, so Strike's the perfect sort of guy for my taste. In the pseudonymous Rowling's capable hands, he becomes more than just the engine for a dark mystery - he develops incrementally from floundering ex-soldier to a sort of repurposing as a capable, intelligent guy that displays a level of emotional sensitivity somewhat rare among his fictional brethren. Good thing The Silkworm is already in my to-read stack..
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This is a comfortable read—the reliable tropes of detective fiction are all here and Galbraith/Rowling’s workaday prose is seamless enough not to get in the way of the story. Sometimes that’s all you need. Much of the book is just detective Cormoran Strike talking to one suspect/witness after another and then sitting and thinking about it all, so you could accuse this of being lots of telling and not much showing, but I found it inexplicably compelling anyway. I suppose this is the magic of J.K.
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As a mystery writer the author has a way to go regarding the placement of clues throughout the story so that there are not pages of text at the end explaining how the deceptions were carried out, but the quality of the writing in first rate.
An enjoyable detective story. Strike and Robin are likeable characters and the crime story was plausible and not over-complex. I've dropped a star because I felt there were a few flaws in the author's research.
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The writing is fine, but it didn't really catch my attention. I'll have to give this a try at another time.
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Nov 01, 2013
Vesra (When She Reads)
marked it as to-read
Shelves:
series,
detectives,
e-book,
fiction,
author-g,
mystery-thrillers,
pc-400-499,
book-club,
c-black,
crime
Dec 16, 2013
Tracyene
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Aug 13, 2015
Doina
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Nov 03, 2015
Jen
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Dec 30, 2017
Scott Flicker
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Mar 18, 2018
Paula
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May 24, 2019
Jennifer
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Dec 29, 2019
Ann
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