A Review: The Cuckoo Calling, by Robert Galbraith

It has been a while since I've last updated, and I would like to apologise. A move to a new place isn't easy and it took a while to settle down. But change is scary and new jobs carry with them a kind of uncertainty that takes time to figure out, after the initial euphoria of graduating and landing a job settles down.  In short, I felt a bit similar to Robin, a lead character in Robert Galbraith's first mystery novel, The Cuckoo Calling.

 When Robin goes to work temporarily for a private detective, she discovers many things, about the detective, the work they do, and her own abilities. Her boss, Cormoran Strike, was an ex-army intelligence officer , a beefy man who was trying to establish himself as a detective.

So when the brother of an old friend of Cormoran Strike's turns up, requesting an investigation into the alleged suicide of his celebrity sister, Strike and Robin are thrown into the mayhem of the celebrity world, of inheritance, family and motive, to try and solve the crime at hand when few cooperate and everyone has something to hide.

We are introduced to a detective with no abnormal observation powers or Sherlock Holmes-ian attitude, but a sharp man working hard at his job. He has hangups and stories, and none of the mysterious aura. As the story progresses, we know more of the person solving it.  Robin is no Dr Watson, but Della Street of Perry Mason's make, and with a story of her own . They are real rounded characters who enrich the story from a human angle. Who is the murdered girl, really? And why did things turn out the way they did?

Galbraith's writing is mature, for a first time writer, too mature perhaps. The descriptions are lucid, imagery like a painting , of industrial , grey, multicultural and many-faceted London. The city is written about with a lot of love. The people woven into the story are flesh and blood as well, we may encounter them at some point, and they are each specimens on their own. A lot of research seems to have gone into it, and if I dare say, one of the few murder mysteries lovingly written.

It is a refreshing departure from the caper stories that come out these days. I was left wondering not only about the story, but also of the choices and fates of the lead characters themselves. Things follow to a logical conclusion, but not in the deductive manner of Poirot, or Holmes, We can't really solve the mystery alongside Strike, but have to wait for the literature to yield the answer.

A Dickensian detective story overall. And it left me with the hope that perhaps, good literature isn't dead after all.

A Review: The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith

The Silkworm is the second book written by Robert Galbraith, the first being The Cuckoo Calling, in which we are introduced to ex-army Intelligence veteran, Cormoran Strike, private detective, and his pretty assistant, Robin. They operate a private detective agency in cold, grey smoggy London, where business has taken a lucrative turn owing to Strike's recent success in a very public, tricky case.

When Leonora Quine, the wife of absentee eccentric gothic gore writer Owen Quine , reaches out to Strike, to find her abconding husband, Strike begins to trace Quine's footsteps. Central to this is unravelling the mysteries of a book that Quine recently wrote,  Bombyx Mori , which has angered and alienated fellow writers, publishers and loved ones, the pages of which contain clues to his disappearance. When his body is discovered in an empty house, mutilated,  Strike must unravel the clues he is presented with, both literary and physical, to find his killer.
him, asking him to find her missing husband, Strike and Robin enter the literary world, to try and track him down. Central to his disappearance is the last book he wrote and aimed to publish,

We move through Strike's headspace, London through his eyes, however grimy, made picturesque through the author's writing. Elaborate sentence construction, vivid descriptions and plenty of attention paid to the protagonists' personal lives gives us  a different detective . Cormoran Strike is not Sherlock Holmes, and he certainly isn't Hercule Poirot. He is a normal man with a past, a present and preoccupations, who happens to solve puzzles and play private eye for a living. He worries about crime, loves football, alternately drinks tea and coffee, broods over an ex,visits his sister and worries about the bills.

In a highly descriptive book, focusing on the investigation itself wasn't easy, the book , while a literary treat to read and sink into, lacked the necessary brevity of a mystery novel. Most mystery novels become exciting because the readers get to think alongside the action in the book , and the suspense heightens when you reach the solution, and see what the detective has to say. Things are not so clear in Silkworm, for Galbraith scatters evidence mired in long literature, and perhaps only a highly alert reader would have the whole story fall into place alongside reading.

In that sense, the writing here is really mature, and Galbraith writes like a pro. (She's a pro, really, Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for a very well known writer. Go check. ). Even if it weren't revealed, the writing style hasn't been very different from that person's other best sellers, though it may have worked in other genres, it might still need to evolve to suit mysteries.

Galbraith's writing is reminiscent of a Dickensian approach, and the emotional graph of the toll a mystery takes on the people involved, is reflected too, for which the writer has my respect. Galbraith has successfully avoided the racy pattern of the current generation of mystery and thriller writers, or the unwitting protagonist model (I've honestly wondered why Dan Brown's Robert Langdon never wonders why these weird adventures happen only to him, but that's for later) . The characters are cmfortable with social media and use it to their advantage.  Characters are actually quite solid. We can actually imagine living through the controversies, the pain and uncertainities accompanying them, and I should say, one can really admire Strike's will to act decisively , regardless of the many things dragging him down, both in the case and personally.

The characters grow on you and maybe, once we read the book, we feel as if we've made new friends. It is a good read, best read slowly , paying careful attention, on a cold Sunday morning with a hot cup of tea.