27 October 2013

review by Anne van Oorschot

For our most recent book discussion gathering on October 22^nd, we met at the home of member Coree Forman and enjoyed tea and stroop wafels while talking about The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith. We all liked the book and found it an enjoyable read with good writing and interesting characters, with enough questions about those characters left unanswered to keep them interesting.

While it is inherent for the reader of a detective to try and figure out “who dunnit”, that was difficult with this book as some of the “clue details” were barely mentioned. While we all had glimmerings of who the murderer was, it wasn’t really clear until the very end.

We also talked about why the real author– J.K. Rowling, from Harry Potter fame – would choose to write under a pseudonym: Robert Galbraith? Of course, the fact that one is able to write very successful young-adult fantasy, does not guarantee success as an adult mystery author. We guessed that it might have been liberating for her to send a book out into the world that was not laden down with high expectations just because she was the author.  But whatever her reasons, we all hoped that this crime novel, with quirky main character, private investigator Cormoran Strike, would be the start of a new series.