{"id":20724,"date":"2013-08-20T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=20724"},"modified":"2013-08-19T13:16:11","modified_gmt":"2013-08-19T18:16:11","slug":"the-cuckoos-calling-by-robert-galbraith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/the-cuckoos-calling-by-robert-galbraith\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cuckoo's<\/a>Back when Deathly Hallows<\/em> was hot off the presses, I remember reading an interview with J.K. Rowling; when asked what she would write next, she answered: mysteries for adults. I\u2019ve been looking forward to The Cuckoo’s Calling<\/strong><\/em><\/a> ever since. After her first post-Potter foray into literary fiction, Jo is back in the realm of genre, and I think it\u2019s where she belongs. Her imagination is so fierce and wild and her observations about the real world are so raw and true that the juxtaposition of them is magical. We all saw it in Harry Potter,\u00a0I missed it in The Casual Vacancy<\/em><\/a>, and now it\u2019s back in The Cuckoo\u2019s Calling<\/em>. This is a phenomenal book: thrilling and elegant and a little cheeky. The characters are vibrant, true, and endlessly entertaining. Even the dead model at the heart of the mystery, Lula \u201cCuckoo\u201d Landry, has a personality, and a life, beyond her infamous lifestyle and her undignified death; the living characters, private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin, are even better.<\/p>\n

Cormoran lost his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, and back home in the UK, he\u2019s facing a life that\u2019s deteriorating rapidly as his debts mount, his relationships waver, and his stream of clients dries up. When Robin appears, the product of an expensive contract with the temp agency that he tried to cancel, Strike is vexed: how can he hide from this clever, intrepid young woman that he\u2019s sleeping on a cot in his office? But Robin and Strike are a great team, as they both tentatively realize: Strike is a gifted detective whose shadowed past has removed him from the military police for complex, unclear reasons, and Robin is a whip-smart HR rep with a natural talent for investigation.<\/p>\n

As Robert Galbraith, Rowling wastes no words. This is a long book, but not an overlong one. There are a lot of characters, a lot of red herrings, and a lot of plot developments, but they layer on top of each other seamlessly and the payoff is extremely satisfying. The scenes are so descriptive, you\u2019re absolutely there \u2013 I was completely drawn into this book. The best part about it was how genuine and true it all was: when Robin and Cormoran use their cell phones and the internet to track down clues, it doesn\u2019t feel forced or fake, it\u2019s completely natural. The same thing happened in The Casual Vacancy<\/em>: whenever technology is used<\/a>, it\u2019s employed seamlessly, artfully, expertly into the plot. I propose that this comes from treating it with the same rules you\u2019d use to write about magic wands. It was painful to set The Cuckoo\u2019s Calling<\/em> down and heartbreaking to reach the end: if Rowling wants to write any more about Cormoran Strike, I\u2019ll be gleefully pre-ordering every new Galbraith title.<\/p>\n

Relevant Fun Fact: the common European cuckoo reproduces by parasitic brooding, where they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and the other birds raise the baby cuckoos \u2013 leaving the adults free to flit off and do whatever birds do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back when Deathly Hallows was hot off the presses, I remember reading an interview with J.K. Rowling; when asked what she would write next, she answered: mysteries for adults. I\u2019ve been looking forward to The Cuckoo’s Calling ever since. After her first post-Potter foray into literary fiction, Jo is back[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,1,8],"tags":[80,333,2384,2383],"class_list":["post-20724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reference","category-staff-picks","tag-england","tag-mystery","tag-private-detective","tag-pseudonyms"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-5og","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20724"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20745,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20724\/revisions\/20745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}