Bookish Sundays: The Cuckoo's Calling

Title: The Cuckoo's Calling
Author: Robert Galbraith
Synopsis [℅ B&N]: "A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide.

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.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this."

℅ Barnes & Noble

Review: I usually tend to review books in the order that I read them, but this particular novel is fresh behind the eyes and could do with a little talking about.

As another of JK Rowling's attempts to branch away from Harry and Hogwarts, I was a little hesitant to pick Cuckoo up.  Her last novel, Casual Vacancy, was an epic fail (in my opinion, at least).  This one, however, is definitely a go to.  If you're a fan of whodunnit crime fighter private eye types, go ahead and give this a whirl; you won't be disappointed.  Set in England, of course, you may face the occasional lingo or turn of phrase that doesn't quite translate to our American ways, but Rowling does a much better job at using worldwide phrasing this time around.  This isn't your typical love story (although I thought for a minute it would be and was groaning in horror), but does incorporate heroic military types, jaded famous starlets hopped up on drugs, mothers on the edge of death, secretaries hanging onto the coat tails of adventure, and more.  

Alas, our beloved Cuckoo has thrown herself from her balcony…or has she?  Hired private eye, Cormoran Strike, has recently left his fiancee for the last time, and is now living in his office, a fact that both mortifies and intrigues his temporary hired secretary.  As Strike begins to unravel the mystery of why Lula (Cuckoo) either killed herself or was killed by someone else, he meets a very interesting caste of characters.  Thrown into a world of the elite combined with the dredges of humanity, he must figure out who amongst Lula's friends and associates would push her off the edge.  Could it have been the power hungry neighbor?  The coke-head boyfriend?  Perhaps the diabolical uncle or the unsuspecting homeless girl?  Strike's job isn't easy, but he's the best of the best.  Not every single bit will be a page turner, but it will make up for it in the end.

As always, if you happen to read, please let me know what you think!  I enjoy hearing other perspectives.