BOOK REVIEW : THE CUCKOO's CALLING

The thought of solving crimes has always given me goosebumps, being a detective is so cool. Reading detective novels thus gives the required adrenaline rush since doing actual detective work is out of bounds for now. Since Poe and Doyle a lot of writers have tried to sail in the river of crime fiction genre but only a few of them have got through successfully. As an ardent reader of both of Poe's short stories and Sherlock Holmes my expectations from this genre have been sky high and after them only Agatha Christie has been able to quench my thirst, till now.

Yesterday I completed 'The Cuckoo's Calling' by J.K Rowling writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. I bought the book a week earlier, after J.K Rowling's involvement in the novel was confirmed. As a child I have been a huge fan of Harry Potter series and was eager to read this book. I have not read Rowling's other work 'The Casual Vacancy' so I will not compare Cuckoo's Calling to it.

First of all its a hard boiled detective novel, so one needs to be very thorough in order to appreciate the story, the characters and the pace of the book. The book introduces a private detective Cormoran Strike, the protagonist to the readers who is a var veteran, wounded both physically and psychologically. There has been a death of a famous supermodel, who jumps out from her balcony in the middle of a freezing night. It is believed to be suicide but the model's brother intercepts the death as a killing. This is where Strike comes in.
The investigation process's description is wonderful and sucks the reader in from the very beginning. The character development is excellent and so are their level of details. The ending is unpredictable yet effective.

One falls in love with Strike's character as the story progresses; sympathizing with him, thinking like him and even envying him sometimes. All in all its a very good read, a definite page turner and I recommend it not only to all crime fiction fans but also to normal fiction ones.