The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith, AKA J.K. Rowling
is a fine detective novel.
It twists and turns and throws up many false possibilities while hiding the real culprit in plain sight. For once, I didn’t get ahead of
the story with a solution until it was being rolled out for the slower
detectives like myself. While that’s a good thing, I did need the solution of
how Cormoran Strike, the enigmatic Detective with five stars worth of personal
baggage to unpack, solved the crime. Even then, I found some of the most
pivotal clues and found evidence slightly convenient to hand.
This doesn’t address the elephant in the room – that Galbraith
is J.K Rowling’s pen name for this detective series. On its own, The Cuckoo’s
Calling is a high three out of five stars, and I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for
going that fourth star. The rating shouldn’t change because the writer under another
name has written one of the most iconic series in literature and one of my
favourites. I keep feeling the nom de plume is a very clever deceit by Rowling
to avoid any comparison, every shock at the language and seedier sides of life
that come into play within this tale.
I confess I read this because Galbraith was outed as J.K
Rowling and not because I am a fan of the detective genre. My eye for what is
well done and what contrivances should be expected, rejected or accepted are
not as acute as a true detective fan, but I do know a little of world-building
and Galbraith/Rowling brings this in spades. It is a real-world with real
people who have emotional highs and lows and this includes Cormoran, who seems
as flawed as any of us. I enjoyed the stories of its people and while I
probably wouldn’t return for more of the same, Cormoran Strike seems to have a
lot of potential for more.
How do you keep writing, and tell your good stories without people
comparing every word and each twist of the plot to that of Harry Potter?
Perhaps Cormoran Strike could set to work to solve that riddle?
The book has also been made into a series by the BBC - one I plan to try and find.
