After Rowling was outted for writing her
new novel under a pseudonym, her novel jumped to #1 on the Amazon charts. If
you’re into crime novels and want something that isn’t as demanding as John
Grisham, this is what you’re looking for. Written in Rowling’s undemanding style,
it reads nicely and does not feel like a chore to read (as Dan Brown’s novels
do).
Set in the streets of London, we follow
private detective and ex-army member Cormoran Strike as he limps around the
city on his prosthetic leg (blown off while on duty in Afghanistan) to find out
who killed the glamorous supermodel, Lula Landry. He is hired by Landry’s
(Cuckoo, to her friends) adoptive brother, John Bristow, after he is
dissatisfied with the Met Police report to suggest that she had committed
suicide.
Suffering from a breakup from his own
glamorous girlfriend, he spends a lot of time looking into the broken lives of
psychologically disturbed characters, from the lawyer, to the rapper, to other
coke-head social elites who are all interlinked in some way with Lula.
The most endearing character in the novel
to me is Strike’s temporary secretary who is an aspiring detective herself. Her
resourcefulness proves to be an asset to the investigation and we are pleased
to find (spoiler alert) her staying on to work with him by the end of the
novel, to the disdain of her rather annoying fiancé.
Verdict:
Takes time to pick up the pace but you get
into it from the onset. It is not overly demanding and you will never believe
who the killer is (had my bets on the rapper). Classic whodunit with characters
that are open for development in the next instalment of the Strike series,
promised to be published in the summer of 2014.
7/10.
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