[MPOV] The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)

My rating: 3/5

Goodreads rating: 3.87/5
Published: April 4th, 2013
Author: Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Genre: crime fiction

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.

The Cuckoo's Calling reminded me of an old 60's TV series namely The Avengers' John Steed with Mrs. Emma Peel. I've always enjoyed that TV series when I was young hence it's memorable even though I can't recall the episodes now LOL! Mixed with a little bit of Agatha Christie's and here we have Cormoran Strike, a private investigator.

This book is the first of a detective series, about a private investigator who was hired to investigate the death of a supermodel. The circumstances on how she died was baffling as she did not seemed suicidal to jump down a building although the police has concluded it as suicide. Armed with all his tactical knowledge and skills, Cormoran Strike sets off to find out the truth.

I have enjoyed the detailed tell tale of this book, on how the plots twist and turn, building up the excitement. However, after a while, I have slowly felt it was a tad too slow and tend to be a little long-winded. The plot building was being elaborated so much so that I didn't feel the nail biting effect. I just wanted to know who did it in the end. I'm happy that my guess was correct though...

I am a Rowling fan and thoroughly loved the Harry Potter series. However, I'm not really into this Cormoran Strike one, maybe there are many other crime fiction which are much better. Overall, it was entertaining for me to finish it but not enticing enough for me to read the rest of the series. This detective series has also been adapted into TV so likely I'll watch it instead :-)