Read Book Review

The Cuckoo's Calling is a detective crime thriller novel written by Harry Potter fame author J.K. Rowling under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith. The thriller novel hovers around the character of Detective Cormoran Strike, an ex-military man. The novel pivots around the murder mystery of a popular top notch supermodel. The book opens with the death of supermodel Lula Landry by falling off a snow covered MayFair balcony. It is considered as a suicide by all but her brother has his doubts and appoints a detective called Cormoran Strike to investigate on the case. Will Lula's brother's doubts turn into reality? Will Cormoran come out of his mental tribulations and financial crunch? Will he be able to resolve the murder mystery of Lula? Read on to know this exceptional writing of Rowling.

Unlike Harry Potter series, The Cuckoo's Calling is about the mundane existence of an Ex- Military Officer who has lost his leg due a land mine while he in Afghanistan during war. The novel talks about midlife crisis, class envy, social anthropology of the contemporary London and is nowhere close to the fantasy  magic world of Harry Potter. This gives the book a refreshing appeal and makes it a must read for all the Rowling fans as well not-so-much of Rowling fans too.

The Controversy:

Released in April 2013 'The Cuckoo's Calling’ has driven into the sea of controversies and doubts off late mainly over the authors name. It was believed that J.K.Rowling is the author of the crime thriller novel, who is also the author of fame novel The Harry Potter series. In recent past it was revealed by The Sunday Times that author Robert Galbraith of The Cuckoo’s Calling is the pen name of J. K. Rowling. 

The novel and the other work of the author were reviewed from four different vantage points with the help of a   software programme that was made by a British linguistics expert & Pittsburgh's Duquesne University Professor named Patrick Juola, which revealed that Rowling is the author. On this occasion of revelation Rowling commented that “Being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype and expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name."

The book's Jacket cover mentions the writer Robert Galbraith as an Ex- Royal Military Police who was associated with the Special Investigation Branch (SIB). He later left the military in 2003 and started working in a civilian security industry. According to the cover, the central character Detective Cormoran Strike's character is drawn from the fellow military men that Galbraith worked with during the Afghanistan war. This description is much in the line with Lee Child's Jack Reacher. However, by now we all know this was just a fake author background that Rowling created to hide her identity as the author.

The  much  controversial book, The Cuckoo's Calling is now on preoder at infibeam.com, a leading and most preferred online book shopping  destination of  millions of book readers across globe. Infibeam.com houses thousands of books on myriad of genres.

For enquiries visit:

http://www.infibeam.com/Books/cuckoos-calling-robert-galbraith/9781408704004.html

In the mid-1990s, a string of publishers turned down a manuscript written by an author called Joanne Rowling about a boy wizard. It was a decision that would cost them millions in lost revenues.

Now it has emerged that other publishers missed out on a more recent payday after rejecting a detective novel that the bestselling Harry Potter author submitted under a pseudonym.

They learned of their error on Sunday when JK Rowling was unmasked as Robert Galbraith, supposedly a military man and first-time crime writer of The Cuckoo’s Calling.

Kate Mills, fiction editor at Orion Publishing, came forward to admit that she had unwittingly turned down the new Rowling work, and suggested that colleagues at other publishers had done the same.

She told The Independent: “I thought it was well-written but quiet. It didn’t stand out for me and new crime novels are hard to launch right now.” Asked if she regretted revealing she had passed on the book, Ms Mills said: “No, it’s out there. You’ve got to love a book to take it on. It wasn’t for me.”

Celebrated crime writer Val McDermid, who wrote a positive “blurb” for the cover of The Cuckoo’s Calling unaware it was a Rowling work, said: “I have some sympathy with publishers who turned the book down. There are all sorts of reasons why people turn you down and it isn’t always to do with the quality of the book. Sadly in extraordinary circumstances like this you can look a bit of a numpty.”

The crime novel had received positive reviews when it was published in April, yet until the identity of the author was revealed it had sold about 1,500 copies in hardback. By lunchtime Sunday it had topped Amazon UK’s bestseller charts.

Rowling said she had hoped to keep the secret longer “because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without the hype or expectation.”

Clues they were the same person included Ms Rowling and Galbraith sharing an agent and a publisher, and The Sunday Times commissioned computer linguistic experts to compare the texts of her books with The Cuckoo’s Calling.

Her “partner in crime” was David Shelley, group publisher at Little, Brown, the group that also released The Casual Vacancy, her first novel after the Harry Potter series. According to sources close to the author, the book was treated like any other first-time novel, and none of those working on it at Little, Brown, beyond Mr Shelley, knew who had written it.

Ms Mills, who passed up on publishing, pointed out that the comparatively low sales of the book before Ms Rowling was unmasked showed “how very hard it is and that even an author with the success that JK Rowling has had can be in the same position”. She added: “I’m sure, however, that won’t be the case for the paperback.”

The Cuckoo’s Calling follows private investigator Cormoran Strike, who is brought in to investigate when a model falls to her death from a Mayfair balcony. It received praise from crime writers including Ms McDermid, Mark Billingham and Alex Gray.

Ms McDermid said she was “gobsmacked” to find out the truth, bursting out laughing on Saturday when she was told. “It never crossed my mind at all. Nobody had any suspicion. The fake biog is very plausible.”

Ms McDermid had even asked for Robert Galbraith to join her Theakstons Crime New Blood panel, only to be told he would be away on holiday for the summer. 

She said: “It was a really well put together book. There were really good characters at the heart of it, clever plotting, well-constructed and lots of suspense. It seemed to me to be an astonishingly assured debut.

“In some respects she’s done with the crime novel what she did with Harry Potter. She’s pulled together different elements and influences in a genre and made something her own. It has its own distinctive voice.”

The Times called The Cuckoo’s Calling a “scintillating debut” adding: “Galbraith delivers sparkling dialogue and a convincing portrayal of the emptiness of wealth and glamour.”