A short and long review of 'The Cuckoo's Calling' by Robert Galbraith

The short review:

The Cuckoo's Calling is a generic private detective mystery. The mystery, involving the suicide of a model, is unremarkable and the killer's identity is obvious well before it is revealed.  The plot trudges along and is exhausting at times (must we really know about EVERY day?). The writing in general is good and kept me engaged enough that I finished the book. I am curious about the forthcoming sequels; maybe she will have honed some of her mystery writing skills.  C+

The long review (SPOILERS AHEAD!):

I realize that the above review is practically blasephemous.  Robert Galbraith, as everyone now knows, is J.K. Rowling, the writer and creator of the Harry Potter series.  The Harry Potter series is important to the world and to my life in particular, making J.K. Rowling something of a hero of mine.  She is a great writer, who is capable of creating interesting, complex characters and intricate plots (mysteries included).  So I am baffled as to why Cuckoo was so mediocre.  Let me outline a few of the things I didn't like.

The cast of characters:

Let's say you are going to write a mystery about the murder of a model. Who would your characters be? well, the model, of course.  She must be beautiful and young.  But what else? Probably broken in some way, sweet but damaged. And who would surround her, be her friends/family/suspects? Well, a designer,  probably flamboyant, who loved the model as his muse.  Probably a handful of other models, beautiful, vacuous and viciously competitive and jealous. Maybe also throw in some sycophantic hangers-on, and some shady family that came out of the woodwork when our model became famous.  All those people are there.

And let's take a look at our private detective.  Cormoran Strike (great name!), an ex-military, bastard son of a rock star with a prosthetic leg.  He is overweight and loves a pint (or seven) at the local pub. Strike's a great detective, but his business and social life are a mess. He has a go-getter of a temporary assistant who accurately  predicts his needs; he begrudgingly likes her.

None of these characters sound new or interesting to me, for several reasons. First, the use of fame and celebrity. This is the cheapest and laziest way to make a character interesting.  Famous characters automatically come preloaded with personality quirks and a subset of supporting people that the writer hardly has to develop.  The famous person is usually a megalomaniac drug addict or well-meaning but clueless and oblivious to the devious characters that surround them. The papparazzi is an easy way to fill plot problems; like, 'oh, well the PAPPARAZZI took this picture and that's how we found out (insert revelation here)!' And also Strike's deadbeat, rock star father is a convenient plot solution, as it becomes a conversation starter with several of the FAMOUS people he needs to question.  Why can't he just use his brains and skills as an investigator? Why can't his father be....anything else? does he even need a father? Unless the rock star dad will be used as a central plot in a sequel, which just further proves my point.

Ironically, the character that bothered me most was also the least seen: Cormoran's ex-girfriend, whose name...escapes me right now. She is appears only briefly, but many pages are devoted to Cormoran wallowing in misery over their break-up.  She is beautiful and comes from a wealthy family.  Beyond that, however, she seems like the worst person ever, making it hard to empathize with Cormoran at all. I just didn't believe it, that they would be together, much less for several years. 

The meandering

I will be quick: I feel it is unnecessary to describe the events of every. Single. Day. I realize that the story takes place within a short amount of time and I also realize that a lot needs to happen within that timeframe. But all the waking up, and meals, and weekends and then...Monday! OH. MY. GOD. I found  myself skimming over paragraphs--pages, even--to get back to anything plot-related.

Cuckoo feels like an exercise to me, and Rowling dutifully checked all the boxes on a 'How to Write a Crime Novel' checklist. I just hope that now that she knows she can do it, she will mix up the ingredients a bit and create the intricate plots and character development of which I know she is capable.

Quotes about secrets

'tell your friend a lie. If he keeps it a secret, tell him the truth.' --Portuguese Proverb

'I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.' --Rainer Maria Rilke

'three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.' --Benjamin Franklin

'A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.' --Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

'To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.' --Henry Ward Beecher

'I shall know you, secrets

by the litter you have left

and by your bloody footprints'

--Lola Ridge, Secrets

'Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.' --James Joyce, Ulysses

'A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city at night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret, that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referrable to this.' --Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

'I carry the box with your remains upstairs every night and wish you were still lying in bed next to me.' --Post Secret

More books!

I'm back with more recommendations from our book club meeting. Enjoy!

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? 

 (via Google Books)

*I really enjoyed this book, but did not care for the ending. A movie is being made, and Flynn has changed the ending for the movie! But will it be better?

Nearly two thousand years ago, nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert. According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffman’s novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path. 

The lives of these four complex and fiercely independent women intersect in the desperate days of the siege. All are dovekeepers, and all are also keeping secrets—about who they are, where they come from, who fathered them, and whom they love. (Via Google Books)

Life can turn on a dime—or stumble into the extraordinary, as it does for Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in a Maine town. While grading essays by his GED students, Jake reads a gruesome, enthralling piece penned by janitor Harry Dunning: fifty years ago, Harry somehow survived his father’s sledgehammer slaughter of his entire family. Jake is blown away . . . but an even more bizarre secret comes to light when Jake’s friend Al, owner of the local diner, enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination. How? By stepping through a portal in the diner’s storeroom, and into the era of Ike and Elvis, of big American cars, sock hops, and cigarette smoke. . . . Finding himself in warmhearted Jodie, Texas, Jake begins a new life. But all turns in the road lead to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald. The course of history is about to be rewritten . . .. (via Google Books)

*I really, really loved this book. King has mellowed with age; he is less interested in scaring his readers and more interested in telling a great story.  Whether you learned about the Kennedy assassination in school or remember where you were when it happened, you will find this a fascinating read.

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its climax, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

     Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy. (via Google Books)

*The less you know about this book, the better. I loved it!

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

    A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition. (via Google Books)

*These two books have similar titles and subject matter, and I didn't know which was recommended at book club so I'm including both. I enjoyed Devil in the White City by Larson.

Paul Schumann, a German American living in New York City in 1936, is a mobster hitman known as much for his brilliant tactics as for taking only "righteous" assignments. But then Paul gets caught. And the arresting officer offers him a stark choice: prison or covert government service. Paul is asked to pose as a journalist covering the summer Olympics taking place in Berlin. He's to hunt down and kill Reinhard Ernst -- the ruthless architect of Hitler's clandestine rearmament. If successful, Paul will be pardoned and given the financial means to go legit; if he refuses the job, his fate will be Sing Sing and the electric chair. Paul travels to Germany, takes a room in a boardinghouse near the Tiergarten -- the huge park in central Berlin but also, literally, the "Garden of Beasts" -- and begins his hunt. (via Google Books)

In this truly inspirational memoir, Anita Moorjani relates how, after fighting cancer for almost four years, her body--overwhelmed by the malignant cells spreading throughout her system--began shutting down. As her organs failed, she entered into an extraordinary near-death experience where she realized her inherent worth. and the actual cause of her disease. Upon regaining consciousness, Anita found that her condition had improved so rapidly that she was able to be released from the hospital within weeks, without a trace of cancer in her body. Within these pages, Anita recounts stories of her childhood in Hong Kong, her challenge to establish her career and find true love, as well as how she eventually ended up in that hospital bed where she defied all medical knowledge. In Dying to Be Me, Anita freely shares all she has learned about illness, healing, fear, "being love," and the true magnificence of each and every human being. This is a book that definitely makes the case that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. and that we are all One. (Via Google Books)

Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist with a Minnesota pharmaceutical company, is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have all but disappeared in the Amazon while working on what is destined to be an extremely valuable new drug, the development of which has already cost the company a fortune. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding her former mentor.

Once found, Dr. Swenson, now in her seventies, is as ruthless and uncompromising as she ever was back in the days of Grand Rounds at Johns Hopkins. With a combination of science and subterfuge, she dominates her research team and the natives she is studying with the force of an imperial ruler. But while she is as threatening as anything the jungle has to offer, the greatest sacrifices to be made are the ones Dr. Swenson asks of herself, and will ultimately ask of Marina, who finds she may still be unable to live up to her teacher's expectations. (Via Google Books)

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

(Via Google Books)

Book recommendations from our meeting this year.

We had another wonderful book club meeting discussing Kate Morton's 'The Secret Keeper'.  I have compiled a list off all the books that were recommended during our meeting. I plan to post only a few at a time, so as not to overwhelm everyone, so be sure to check back occasionally when you're looking for something to read.

When Louise Bessire was living in Boston, she dreamed of another way of life, far from the phony smiles and small-talk of corporate dinners. Now she's got what she wanted--though not exactly in the way she hoped. Blindsided by her husband's affair, Louise has used her divorce settlement to buy Blueberry Bay, a picturesque bed and breakfast in Ogunquit. And with a celebrity wedding taking place on the premises this summer, business is looking up. (Via Amazon)

This is the first book in The Walk series, a story about the physical and spiritual journey of Alan Christoffersen.

What would you do if you lost everything—your job, your home, and the love of your life—all at the same time? When it happens to Seattle ad executive Alan Christoffersen, he’s tempted by his darkest thoughts. A bottle of pills in his hand and nothing left to live for, he plans to end his misery. Instead, he decides to take a walk. But not any ordinary walk. Taking with him only the barest of essentials, Al leaves behind all that he’s known and heads for the farthest point on his map: Key West, Florida. The people he encounters along the way, and the lessons they share with him, will save his life—and inspire yours. (Via www.richardpaulevans.com)

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is historical fiction. It is a bestselling novel by Jamie Ford about the love and friendship of a Chinese boy and a Japanese girl during the Japanese internment in World War II. 1940s. (Wikipedia)

With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187–424—one of the millions of people who disappear “down the rabbit hole” of the American penal system. From her first strip search to her final release, Kerman learns to navigate this strange world with its strictly enforced codes of behavior and arbitrary rules. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of acceptance. Heartbreaking, hilarious, and at times enraging, Kerman’s story offers a rare look into the lives of women in prison—why it is we lock so many away and what happens to them when they’re there.

Turn of Mind is a debut novel by Alice LaPlante billed as a "literary thriller": that it sure is. The main character here is Dr. Jennifer White. She's 64 years old and retired from her practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Chicago. Her old friend down the block, a woman named Amanda with whom she's shared good times as well as a lot of emotional friction, has just been found dead in her house, murdered. What's especially gruesome about Amanda's murder is the fact that four of her fingers were surgically removed after she was killed. Did I mention that Dr. Jennifer White's specialty as a surgeon was hands? And that the two women were heard arguing the night of the murder? The solution to this crime should be simple to grasp, so to speak, except for one problem. Dr. White has been diagnosed with dementia. She simply can't remember whether or not she murdered her friend. Most days she doesn't even remember that her friend is dead. (Via NPR).

This book has been on my 'to-read' list for a while and I can't wait to pick it up.

The circus arrives at night, without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within nocturnal black and white striped tents awaits a unique experience, a feast for the senses, where one can get lost in a maze of clouds, meander through a lush garden made of ice, stand awestruck as a tattooed contortionist folds herself into a small glass box, and gaze in wonderment at an illusionist performing impossible feats of magic. 
Welcome to Le Cirque des Reves. Beyond the smoke and mirrors, however, a fierce competition is underway - a contest between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood to compete in "a game," in which each must use their powers of illusion to best the other. Unbeknownst to them, this game is a duel to the death, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. (via google books)

*Anne Marie's review*: I wanted to love this book so much. The title! The cover art! The description! Unfortunately, my expectations were sky high and this fell short.  Still a fun read, but I was disappointed.

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence--creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world. (Via Google books)

*Anne Marie's review*: this book was excellent! such a wonderfully creative, quirky departure from the typical fiction I usually read. I hope Semple has more novels up her sleeve.

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby. (Via Amazon)