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A Tale of Two Cities
The Complete Short Stories
Fahrenheit 451
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Navigators of Dune
End of Watch
The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
King Henry VI, Part 3
King Henry VI, Part 2
Henry VI, Part 1
King Henry IV, Part Two
King Henry IV, Part 1
Richard II
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
The Rosie Effect
On the Nature of Things
So Anyway


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Sunday, March 22, 2015

Cuckoos Calling

The Cuckoos Calling
Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling)
Little, Brown And Company
April 29, 2014

The following ISBNs are associated with this title:
ISBN - 10: 0316206857
ISBN - 13: 9780316206853

From the Publisher
The Cuckoo's Calling Trade Paperback 

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, the legendary 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.
Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith

Smell The Book Review
9 out of 10
This novel came as a selection of one of the core members from the Ottawa Book Club. I knew going in to the book that it was published under a pseudonym by J. K. Rowling.

I had long ago promised myself to read any and all selections from anyone in the book club. With this in mind; I don't normally read mysteries, and I didn't like J. K. Rowling as I always found the Harry Potter series a little too cute and formulaic so I was a little resistant. But within a few pages of meeting Cormoran Strike I was hooked! I found the book well written, the flow of the story gripping and enjoyed it so much I purchased both the follow up to this book (Silkworm) and her first book from her post Harry Potter days, The Casual Vacancy.

It's hard to come across any mystery or "WhoDunnit" that doesn't follow a type of formula. I tend to think that every new character is the guilty party until I meet the next character and I shift my blame accordingly. It then, for me, comes down to the characters. As I mentioned earlier, I really liked Cormoran Strike. I like that he wasn't a cutout hero. He is flawed, has an artificial leg, is in too much debt, drinks to much and lives and sleeps in his office after a bad split from a girlfriend. Because of his rough appearance he tends to be underestimated by those he interviews and he uses this to his advantage. But he is also ex-military and when it counts he has keen powers of observation and knows how to ask the right questions and which information is worth recording.

I also found I was interested in Robin, Strike's new office assistant who also has a childish interest and glee in thinking of herself as a classic private detective. Or at least takes joy in working for one.

No spoilers here, but I did not see the ending coming. The book is well written, entertaining and a fun read with some likeable characters.

9 out of 10.

Chris





 



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