Proof of Life

The Cuckoo’s Calling is book 1 in the Cormoran Strike series. Written in 2013 by J. K. Rowling under the pen name Robert Galbraith, this is a true mystery novel without any strange embellishments. 550 pages on Kindle.

The protagonist is Cormoran Strike, ex-British Army, Special Investigation Branch (SIB), which is essentially military detectives. That’s a close parallel to Jack Reacher’s Special Investigation’s Unit, which makes me wonder how much influence Lee Child (James Dover Grant) had on Rowling when she invented Cormoran Strike. They’re both big men and ex-military-police, but mercifully that’s where the similarities end. Strike is nothing at all like Reacher (who is, I’ve always thought, a sort of force-of-nature rendition of Street Justice).

Strike, basically, is a hot mess. He’s a private detective in his mid-30’s, gone to seed, missing a leg —war wound — and at the start of the book is homeless because he’s ended a long-term but unstable relationship with his crazy and now very recently ex-girlfriend. Like Reacher, he owns very little, but that’s just because he’s poor. On the other hand, he’s a brilliant detective so, you know, he doesn’t end up drinking himself to death in the gutter.

In the spirit of avoiding spoilers, I can say that someone famous is recently dead. It’s ruled a suicide. A relative will not accept the police verdict, so the relative hires Strike to look into the matter. 

Along the way there’s a very attractive young woman (Robin Ellacott) who shows up as a temporary secretary, but don’t call her that, and who proves extremely helpful in the investigation. I see echos here of Mickey Spillane’s Velda (Mike Hammer’s secretary and love interest), but honestly it’s been so long since I last read any Spillane that I don’t fully remember Velda. I might have to go spelunking in the few physical books that I own to see how close the parallel is.

{{As an aside, I also note that Mike Hammer was also ex-army — WWII, US Army, Pacific theater. But at least he wasn’t some kind of military detective. Now that I think about it, so was Thomas Magnum (Magnum P.I) who was a Navy SEAL and intelligence officer during the Vietnam War. It does make me think that ex-military now private detective is in danger of becoming something of a cliché. At the very least, I’m spotting a formula.}}

So there you go: The Cuckoo’s Calling is a real “who-dun-it” mystery complete with a stubborn and brilliant detective, and his spunky and surprisingly resourceful assistant. The mystery is engaging, plenty of twists and turns, lots of misdirection, and a satisfying conclusion.

Mysteries are, really, the fine-art of fucking with your readers. A skillful novelist carefully guides you into thinking one person “dun it” and then at the last minute yanks your chain and shows you how someone else is the culprit. Rowling certainly does that here. About halfway through the book I know who Rowling wanted me to believe did it, but having never read Rowling as a mystery writer before I wasn’t sure if she was just being obvious or if she was misdirecting me. Turns out, Rowling is a skillful writer who is very good at fucking with her readers. I was surprised by the actual culprit. My one complaint is some of the clues had to do with photographs, which are never fully described. It’s hard to see where its all going if you don’t have all the information.

I knew absolutely nothing about this book going into it other than it was Rowling writing under a pen name, and it’s a mystery. I do know that Rowling is a pretty staunch feminist so I was kind of bracing for the 2013-version of woke. The book even opens with Robin Ellacott and so I was assuming that she would prove to be the protagonist — a brilliant woman in a man’s world, that sort of thing. But it didn’t go down that way, although I wonder if it doesn’t go in that direction with subsequent books. Anyway, I am impressed by Rowling’s ability to write a man. At no time did her depiction of Strike ring false for me. Maybe it’s because us XY’s are just that obvious and predictable, but I thought she did a good job.

Will I read the next book in the series? Yes. Today I took out a library card that allows me to get ebooks, and I wanted to test the system so I checked out The Silkworm. So now here I am, reading away on that one. I’m quite interested to see how things shape up between Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. I’m thinking I’ll have to take a quick detour though Spillane at some point because I really want to see how much of Velda is in Robin. I’m also curious to see if I can hack the way Rowling thinks and so spot the real bad guy before the end of the book.

I recommend this book if you’re looking for an old-school who-dun-it. 

C’ya!

In keeping with my desire to limit my exposure to politics — and, thus, safeguard my sanity because, let’s face it, politics are insane these days — I have decided to read more. Which is new. I used to read endlessly but twenty-five years ago, or thereabouts, I realized I was reading the same story over and over again, thanks to the publishing house’s formula that they seemed to impose on everyone. So I gave it up and instead started looking into politics. And here we are.

Okay, so what are the kids reading these days anyway? So I hopped over to Amazon and took a look at their top sellers. This time around, I decided to look into Fantasy fiction. Which is how I found out about Sarah J. Maas who is by all accounts quite popular. 

Cool.

Maas is also quite prolific, with many books in the Amazon best sellers list. But a quick buzz through her Wikipedia page lead me to her Crescent City series which is billed as “her first adult fantasy series.” Whelp. Okay. I’m an adult. Let’s give it a go.

House of Earth and Blood is the first book in this series. It follows the tired old formula (half elf, half human badass girl). But at least it doesn’t start out with boyfriend angst. It just ends up with it. The writing style is ridiculously easy to follow. I consumed the first 25% of roughly 800 pages in my first sitting, and was a little surprised to find I’d gotten that far. 

Without discussing the plot — after all, a book this popular probably already has a million book reviews in which all the spoilers can be found — I will say that I found the book engaging enough. The plot centers around the aftermath of a tragedy (Maas actually shows us the tragedy, good on her), several mysteries that must be solved, and rising tension that threatens The End Of The World As We Know It(™). Pretty much I just turned off my critical thinking skills and went along for the ride. As a result, I didn’t know what was what until the very end of the book. Hurray! Bad ass girl saved the day. Hurray! All the boys looked like chumps. And so the formula carries on.

As for the fictional world, it’s modern day us with cars and cellphones and apartments and people doing way too many drugs. But then mix in elves and angels and all sorts of other fantasy tropes such as magic, plus an eternal tyranny. In terms of magic plus modern day us, it’s just a riff on what Butcher did with The Dresden Files. But Maas takes this to another level by making the main characters be not human, and the governing bodies to be tyrants.

Given what this book is, my only real complaint is that everyone in this book is an asshole. Well, okay, there’s a couple of background characters who aren’t assholes. Maybe. We really don’t see enough of them to know for sure. But the mainline characters are all shit heads. And by that, I mean, how did these people survive more than a few years after they left home? There were a few times when I almost stopped reading because of it. Seriously, if being abusively rude and obtusively self-destructive is what this fictional civilization is all about, it’s a wonder that the demons didn’t take over thousands of years ago. 

There’s also a couple of sex scenes. If that kind of thing bothers you, avoid this book. If that kind of thing attracts you, know that there’s really only two in 800 pages. As for me, I just rolled my eyes and skimmed through to find where the plot picks up again. The problem here is that the sex exists because of the formula (it’s ADULT fiction). But the sex doesn’t actually move the plot forward. Wasted pages. Maas could just as easily have moved the camera to wind-fluttered curtains, in the fashion of 1950’s movies, and the story would not have been impacted by it one way or the other.

On the other hand, there were plenty of plot twists along the way. I knew from the get-go that the bad-ass half-elven overly-emotional asshole girl was going to be the chosen one to save the world. What I didn’t see coming was that she was also the instrument of its near destruction. Of course, she was the instrument of the world’s near destruction only because she was the unwitting victim of an asshole male. So, yep, formula. Kind of tired, but with plot twists.

Am I going to read book 2 (House of Sky and Breath)? I don’t know. $10 on Kindle. Nnnnggghhh…. When my wife gets back into town, I think I’ll look into library cards + Kindle. If I can get the book from the library … maybe I’ll give it a whirl. In the mean time, there’s lots of other genres to see what’s best selling these days. 

Anything to avoid politics. At least, until the formula bores me and I get driven back into that snake pit.

C’ya!