The Cuckoo's Calling
Jul. 7th, 2015 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI finally read The Cuckoo's Calling– let’s say it took me a while to get over The Casual Vacancy, which I didn’t like at all. I enjoyed it. What I ask of murder mysteries is that I enjoy the ride, that I like or admire the investigators and that it's not too relentlessly grim or gory. I play along, but not too hard and not too well at guessing whodunit – I only started guessing right with Christie after reading a ton of her books. Here, I had worked out some of what had happened, but still fell for the red herrings.
The importance of plot and the wide array of characters who crop up make this genre a natural fit for Rowling. Although I don’t think anyone is going to accuse her of being a stylist (and there were passages that I thought were rather purple) you get a vivid picture of London at a particular time, on the brink of the 2010 general election. And she really is a storyteller.
This is the case that brings Robin Ellacott to work in the office of Cormoran Strike, private detective, as a temp. Cormoran is slowly revealed to us, the reason for his weird name, what led to him becoming a private investigator and why he’s at such a low point at the start of the book. Robin is mostly more straightforward, but what’s lovely about her is that in this story she’s finding her metier after drifting, perhaps, under the guidance of her new fiancée. You’re rooting for them to solve the case. Okay, it’s mainly Strike, but Robin is more than a secretary.
And the case is engaging. The police quickly deduced Lula Landry’s death was a suicide, but her adoptive brother John Bristow doesn’t think so. He has a theory that the two men caught on camera running from the scene are more important and brings Strike in to find out what happened. The press think that Lula’s on-off boyfriend, an actor-musician with a drug problem (he might as well have been called Dete Poherty), was the cause, but the more Strike investigates, the more he discounts suicide, and among the lies various witnesses tell them, shows a bit of a gift for getting people to remember pertinent details.
Of course, knowing it was Rowling, I was looking for injokes and similarities (rather than the ‘authoress writing under a male pseudonym under our noses’ initial reaction to the news that she was ‘Robert Galbraith’) to the Harry Potter world. The line that jumped out at me was ‘Ridiculous...You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing, Strike.’ But there’s also the fact that Strike keeps getting death threats on pink notepaper adorned with kittens, Robin's Slytherin dress... I’m sure others have made more connections. The description of paparazzi behaviour and the effects of phone hacking are telling, as is the view of being both not so well off and enormously rich, while the political leanings at view in TCV are present, if to a lesser degree. I will be reading the next book eventually.
The importance of plot and the wide array of characters who crop up make this genre a natural fit for Rowling. Although I don’t think anyone is going to accuse her of being a stylist (and there were passages that I thought were rather purple) you get a vivid picture of London at a particular time, on the brink of the 2010 general election. And she really is a storyteller.
This is the case that brings Robin Ellacott to work in the office of Cormoran Strike, private detective, as a temp. Cormoran is slowly revealed to us, the reason for his weird name, what led to him becoming a private investigator and why he’s at such a low point at the start of the book. Robin is mostly more straightforward, but what’s lovely about her is that in this story she’s finding her metier after drifting, perhaps, under the guidance of her new fiancée. You’re rooting for them to solve the case. Okay, it’s mainly Strike, but Robin is more than a secretary.
And the case is engaging. The police quickly deduced Lula Landry’s death was a suicide, but her adoptive brother John Bristow doesn’t think so. He has a theory that the two men caught on camera running from the scene are more important and brings Strike in to find out what happened. The press think that Lula’s on-off boyfriend, an actor-musician with a drug problem (he might as well have been called Dete Poherty), was the cause, but the more Strike investigates, the more he discounts suicide, and among the lies various witnesses tell them, shows a bit of a gift for getting people to remember pertinent details.
Of course, knowing it was Rowling, I was looking for injokes and similarities (rather than the ‘authoress writing under a male pseudonym under our noses’ initial reaction to the news that she was ‘Robert Galbraith’) to the Harry Potter world. The line that jumped out at me was ‘Ridiculous...You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing, Strike.’ But there’s also the fact that Strike keeps getting death threats on pink notepaper adorned with kittens, Robin's Slytherin dress... I’m sure others have made more connections. The description of paparazzi behaviour and the effects of phone hacking are telling, as is the view of being both not so well off and enormously rich, while the political leanings at view in TCV are present, if to a lesser degree. I will be reading the next book eventually.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-08 06:48 am (UTC)I see that a third book is being published in the autumn.