In April 2013 Robert Galbraith, a first-time crime writer, published The Cuckoo’s Calling. About five hundred copies of the thriller were sold in May and June before Galbraith was 'outed' as the pseudonym for J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame. The book shot onto best seller lists around the world as young adult and adult readers marveled at the mystery’s intrigue as well as the intriguing turn of authorial events. Rowling, who has written seven fantasy novels about Harry Potter, the boy wizard who seeks to stop the dastardly deeds of Dark Wizard, Lord Voldemort, had turned her hand to crime fiction.
Surprising? Not really. In a somewhat different genre, Rowling continues to ponder the well-springs of evil while championing justice and human dignity.
So, after selling more than half a billion volumes of Harry Potter, does Rowling deserve our attention in her new literary adventure? No question about it, she does.
The Cuckoo’s Calling succeeds for two reasons. Rowling is a superb writer who gives us her best efforts in this novel. She understands pacing and avoids the bloated and the vapid. Her characters have effective, believable, occasionally original voice. Her descriptions are crisp and real. And most seductive of all, Rowling has created two interesting characters to place at the center of the book. Cormoran Strike, private investigator, is a twenty-first century detective hero who brings the genre’s typical love life problems to the less than typical persona of a veteran of the Afghan war who has lost his lower right leg. He is smart but barely tested in his post-rehab profession. Oh, and he is the barely acknowledged son of one of rock music’s most famous dudes. Rowling pairs Strike with Robin, a young woman temp sent to run his office. Middle class and newly engaged, Robin has an inner Nancy Drew clamoring to become a Kinsey Millhone. Naïve but quick witted, Robin has wonderful potential as a lady snoop, and is a delightful foil for Strike’s destructive impulses.
When The Cuckoo’s Calling opens Strike is wounded in heart and body, in debt, and working out of an appropriately seedy office. Sunshine appears in the form of a childhood acquaintance who puts Strike on a generous retainer for the purpose of investigating the death of his sister, a supermodel. Call it pandering, call it savvy, Rowling has situated her first crime novel in the world of pop culture. This permits her a light hand and gives us an easy read about London’s world of the rich, the glitzy, and the famous. It is easy to imagine that Rowling draws upon personal experience when she writes about the trouble, pain, and claustrophobia caused by the paparazzi closing in on car doors and house entrances.
The publicity wranglers have announced that Rowling plans a series using these characters. Both Strike and Robin give her considerable range to explore mind and emotion. If the writing stays at the level of The Cuckoo’s Calling, and her plotting works its way out of the formulaic, Rowling will provide readers with some very satisfying hours -- or, as a friend says about her love of crime fiction, some delectable “comfort food of the mind.”
©2013 Jill Norgren for SeniorWomen.com
More Articles
- Magazines and the American Experience: Highlights from the Collection of Steven Lomazow, M.D
- The Scout Report: Penn and Slavery Project, Robots Reading Vogue, Open Book Publishers, Black History in Two Minutes & Maps of Home
- From the Office of the Historian: Office of Art & Archives, Office of the Clerk: The 1954 Shooting Onto the House of Representatives
- Jo Freeman Reviews Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers: Lives in the Law by Jill Norgren
- Jill Norgren Writes: My Choices of Good Reads For The Past Year
- Jo Freeman: Five Days in DC Where the Post-election Protests Were Puny but the Politics Were Not
- 2020 Election Wrap-Up, Women’s Congressional Policy Institute: As of press time,130 women have been elected to serve in the 117th Congress
- Jill Norgren Writes: Did Women in the US Campaign for Elective Office Fully Invested in the Prospect of Winning? “I cannot vote, but I can be voted for”
- Jo Freeman: How to Debate a Bully
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Partial Remarks at the University of Buffalo, August 26, 2019: "If I am notorious, it is because I had the good fortune to be alive and a lawyer in the late 1960s"
