16 May 2014
I
really enjoyed 'The Cuckoo's Calling' – J. K. Rowling's first foray
into crime fiction, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
Though set in contemporary London, it's quite an old fashioned
private eye novel. The detective, Cormoran Strike, takes his place in
a line descending from Sherlock Holmes through Philip Marlowe and
Dirk Gently. 'The Cuckoo's Calling' is in a very similar vein to Kate
Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels, such as 'Started Early, Took My
Dog' (reviewed here in April 2011). Both detectives have an army
background, a troubled love-life, an assistant who is more capable
than they expect and a strong sense of moral justice. The plot of
'The Cuckoo's Calling' is a little more conventional than Kate
Atkinson's multi-strand narratives, and it's not the most literary
detective novel, but it was a very enjoyable puzzle. Best of all 'The
Cuckoo's Calling' obeys my first two rules of detective fiction –
1. The Reader should not know any more than the detective and 2. The
detective should work out 'who done it' from the clues they unearth,
rather than being handed the solution on a plate by a turn of events.
I look forward to the next Cormoran Strike novel which is due to be
published this summer.
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