Book review: 'The Cuckoo's Calling'
Book: The Cuckoo’s Calling
Author: Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)
Publisher: Hachette India
Pages: 449
Price: Rs599
A supermodel, the “bronze-skinned, colt-limbed, diamond-cut beauty” Lula Landry (who is called Cuckoo by her friends), falls to her death on a cold winter morning in London. The only witness to her fall is her downstairs neighbour Tansy Bestugui, a drug addict. Three months later, after the media flurry has subsided and police investigation concluded, Lula's brother John Bristow hires a private detective to probe his adopted sister’s death.
The detective Bristow hires, going by the delightful name of Cormoran Strike, is quite a character. He is big, hairy and not easy on the eye. An ex-war veteran who lost a leg in a land mine in Afghanistan, Strike wears a prosthetic leg. He is the illegitimate child of a rockstar who wants nothing to do with him. His private eye business isn’t doing very well; he has just one client. After breaking up with his on-again, off-again girlfriend of 15 years, he is sleeping in his office. Then two things crash into his life — Robin Ellacott — a temporary secretary, and Bristow, who wants to get to the bottom of his sister's death that he suspects was murder, not suicide.
After initially dismissing the thought of murder as simply their client’s obsession, Strike and Ellacott start studying Lula's world. The characters who populate that world are well etched by the author, who, as we all know by now (unless you've been living under a rock in the Sahara), is JK Rowling who used the 'liberating' pseudonym of Robert Galbraith for The Cuckoo's Calling.
In typical Rowling style, the characters are well crafted, quirky and accorded the space they deserve in the story. There’s Lula’s junkie boyfriend Evan Duffield, who has a surprisingly soft side; the wonderfully camp fashion designer Guy; Lula’s possessive and terminally ill adoptive mother, Yvette; her brash and arrogant uncle Tony Landry as well as Lula's closest friend, the model Ciara Porter. Even Lula isn't just treated as a corpse.
As the story unfolds, she becomes quite a tangible presence — an adopted child looking for someone to call her own. Although Strike has a famous father, the aging pop star Jonny Rokeby, he finds himself out of place in the vulgar world of the rich and famous.
His discomfort allows the author the chance to indulge in some sardonic social commentary. A passage has Strike describing a boutique in Conduit Street: “...its colourful windows displayed a multitudinous mess of life’s unnecessities... all spread against a pop art backdrop, in a gaudy celebration of consumerism.”
Strike is an old-school detective (think Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes) who believes in using long interviews, taking meticulous notes, and slowly putting together elements of the jigsaw puzzle. He is “used to playing archaeologist amongst the ruins of people’s traumatised memories; he had bullied the terrified, baited the dangerous and laid traps for the cunning.”
Robin is the perfect foil to Strike. She isn’t just a pretty face but is attentive, lively, and as seen during a visit to a boutique, quite the handy companion. The pace is slow and steady — things don’t happen overnight and there are no cliff hangers or twists at the end of each chapter — but you never lose interest. The author paints every scene with as many details as possible, giving the reader a chance to experience London’s very old-world charm.
The Cuckoo's Calling provides a good look at how fame and wealth can change people and destroy trusted relations. There are various references to Princess Diana and the paparazzi and the media's hunger for anything famous, much like the outing of the book's actual author by a London newspaper. It's entirely possible that these references are semi-autobiographical given Rowling's own rise from relative obscurity and poverty to fame and wealth.
At the end of the novel, the author ties up the loose threads pretty neatly. All said, though the novel may not be a fast-paced thriller, it harks back to the much-loved good, old detective novel of the 20th century and makes for a good read indeed.