I came to JK Rowling’s pseudonym Robert Galbraith having read none of Rowling’s work, Harry Potter or after. Reader of Rowling or not, there is no escaping her fame; the extraordinary popularity of the Potter series has made its author a rare publishing phenomenon. It was the rarity and size of this Rowling Effect that drew my attention back to her work, which, following the conclusion of the Potter series, began a more adult phase with the publication of The Casual Vacancy (2012).
The news then came that Rowling had published another new book, The Cuckoo’s Calling, a mystery-thriller, under the name Robert Galbraith. As a longtime fan of mystery and crime novels, it was truly on then. The Cuckoo could consider itself good as read! Happily, a good read it is, too.
II.
Cormoran Strike is a former British Army investigator who has lost most of a leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, and now finds himself struggling to make a living as a private detective. Business is bad. Clients aren’t breaking down his office door, but creditors are threatening to. Strike breaks up with his serious girlfriend, the gorgeous and temperamental Charlotte, and he's forced to move out of her flat. This puts Strike in the humiliating and inconvenient position of having to live in his office.
In walks a plot development, the wealthy lawyer John Bristow. Bristow's sister, the supermodel Lula “Cuckoo” Landry, passed away some months ago, having fallen from a high balcony. The police investigation had concluded that Landry’s death was a suicide, but Bristow is convinced that his sister was murdered. Strike’s reaction is to be hesitant to take a case that the police have already investigated, and closed. Bristow’s offer to double Strike’s going rate does have the detective mull over his bottom line, but it's still not enough for Strike to take the case.
Bristow, however, is a man who won’t be denied. As things get heated in Strike’s office, Rowling writes, “’All I want, Strike,’ said Bristow hoarsely, the color high in his thin face, ’is justice.’ He might have struck a divine tuning fork…calling forth an inaudible but plangent note in Strike’s breast…He stood in desperate need of money, but Bristow had given him another, better reason to jettison his scruples.” <1> The justice that Rowling has in mind through her narrative is the social kind, especially as it relates to the issues of family, class and race in modern English society.
III.
The novel is set in contemporary London, and this gives Rowling a chance to compose some fine descriptive passages of the famous city. “This was the hour when [Strike] found London most lovable; the working day over, her pub windows were warm and jewel-like”; how “her streets thrummed with life…her aged buildings…became strangely reassuring”; and “while the heavens turned indigo above him, Strike found solace in vastness and anonymity”.
But as Strike turns his full attention to investigating the death of Landry, he finds anything but solace. Instead, he uncovers that Landry’s milieu is of the shallow and the corrupt, intersected by grasping lackeys, all documented by a swarm of paparazzi. It is in this company that we find one of Rowling’s most effective characters in the book, the homeless Rochelle Onifade, who's been pulled into Landry’s world by chance. Through the desperation of her need (and greed), Onifade makes the perilous decision to try and blackmail a murderer.
IV.
Strike’s discovery of Landry’s murderer is aided by Robin Ellacott, who begins employ with Strike as a temp. By book’s end, Robin is Strike’s permanent secretary. This is certainly good news for Strike, and as it turns out, for us; Rowling has revealed that she plans to make a series of Strike’s cases. In fact, the next Strike book is due for publication in 2014. On the strength of The Cuckoo’s Calling, I am curious indeed about Rowling's continued story for Strike and Ellacott.
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<1>Galbraith, Robert (JK Rowling). The Cuckoo's Calling. Mulholland Books, Little, Brown & Co. 2013.
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