REVIEW: The Cuckoo's Calling (#1) - Robert Galbraith

The Cuckoo's Calling (#1) - Robert Galbraith
Series: Cormoron Strike
Publisher: Hachette Audio UK
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Robert Glenister
Time: 15hrs 53mins
Rating: ★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

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.

Thoughts

I was really quite impressed with this book, especially as I was listening to the audiobook. I will admit I did watch the TV series so I did know the ending before I read the book (I know blasphemy), but I did still enjoy the narrative.

I found Robert Glenister did a really great job narrating this book, and his character voices were absolutely amazing, and it has made me want to listen to the rest on audiobook as he narrates the next two books in the series.

I found the story to be gripping, as it made you wonder if Lula had committed suicide or if she was murdered. Even though I knew the outcome, the clues were difficult to spot so I really wouldn't have guessed the ending unless I had known beforehand. This is what I like in a crime thriller/ murder mystery, it isn't predictable.

Galbraith's writing flows so easily and everything links so well to each other that you don't get lost in the narrative, you know exactly where they are going. I will admit if you didn't already know this was J.K. Rowling who wrote this under a pseudonym, you really wouldn't have guessed it was her. It just shows this author is very talented and just a fantastic author.

I loved Comoran Strike, I thought he was such a fantastic character, a somewhat antihero, he was gruff, and rude, but he was just a character that you couldn't not love.
I also loved the friendship between Comoran and Robin, and thought they just gelled so well as characters.

Overall a really great book, and I can't wait to read the next in the series.