#thecuckooscalling

Note on the text: I used The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (a pseudonym for JK Rowling) as published in 2014 by Muholland Books.

This was a really great story, a mystery that started off really slowly but wound up being great. Comoran Strike, based off of this book, has the ability to stand up there with the best of the best in this genre. What I really loved about this book is the way in which she slowly built up these characters and then integrated them and their personalities into the storyline as opposed to manufacturing their personalities to fit into a storyline.

When I first started reading the book, I was worried because it seemed like she was doing the latter. There was no subtlety to her writing, to the way in which she was describing her characters. Everything about them in the beginning was about as subtle as a sledgehammer, their characteristics stood out like the brightness of the sun, and it was annoying. I remember saying to myself “how could the writer of one of the greatest fantasy series ever, one with a lot of depth, write something that is so lacking in any kind of nuance or subtlety”? Shame on me for doubting her. Because what she was actually doing was planting seeds about her characters in the mind of her readers that would only amount to anything as the story went on. What initially looked like a painter who was just using bright and flashy colors to draw attention to herself, now having seen the whole canvass I can see more clearly what she was trying to do and I have to admit that it worked beautifully.

Let’s start with Comoran himself. Rowling spends much of the book emphasizing all the ways, both physically and psychologically, Comoran’s amputated leg affects him, such as when she writes about how the “friction between the end of his amputated leg and the prosthesis was becoming more painful with each step towards Kensington Gore”, or when he worries about needing to go back to the doctor and how he may at some point never be able to walk normally again (212). By placing the idea of this physical limitation so clearly in our head at the onset, it makes what happens that much more terrifying and thrilling. When later in the story he trips and further damages his leg while pursuing the suspect, we are genuinely terrified that he might not be able to survive this encounter. We are, without Rowling needing to pound us over the head about it, genuinely worried about his survival.

Rowling is doing a similar thing when she talks about his love life early on, specifically when it comes to his ex Charlotte. It’s very obvious that he was in love with Charlotte and is devastated by their breakup. The night he first met Charlotte and she chose him over the more handsome Ross

was the most glorious moment of Strike’s nineteen years: he had publicly carried off Helen of Troy right [from] under Menelaus’ noise. . . . [It was] only later [that] he realized that what had seemed like chance, or fate, had been entirely engineered by her. . . . That she had, to punish Ross, deliberately entered the wrong room and waited for a man, any man, to approach her; that he, Strike, had been a mere instrument to torture Ross; that she had slept with him in the early hours of the following morning in a spirit of vengefulness and rage that he had [only] mistaken for passion (219).

By the time we meet Comoran it has been fifteen years since that that first night and we find out that she has just left him for the final time to go back and marry Ross, a fact which leaves Comoran utterly gutted. Comoran knows what it is like to lose someone that you loved so completely that life without them seems impossible.

There’s a similar pattern when we look at his backstory as a whole. His mom was a groupie who died under suspicious circumstances only nobody took her death seriously because they all assumed that she was a junkie who simply got what was coming to her:

Strike alone [asked] whether his mom had taken to shooting up; he alone had seen a distinction between her predilection for cannabis and a sudden liking for heroin; he alone had unanswered questions and saw suspicious circumstances. But he [was just a twenty year old student] and nobody listened (377).

He cares a lot about people, especially people in need, which means that he’s not beyond being manipulated by a good sob story. That although he might present a tough exterior, he is actually much more vulnerable than he seems to be. Which again becomes more problematic as the story goes on and it becomes clearer that people might be preying on his sympathies.

Same thing applies to the villain of the story John Bristow. What I love about this character is the way in which Rowling places all the breadcrumbs which lead to him being revealed as the villain because again it all ties back to certain character traits that she establishes in the beginning. It’s clear from the very beginning of the book that no one in his family respects or loves John. There’s a lot of infighting in his family and he knows that he is the least loved of all his siblings, and he uses that to prey on the sympathies of both Comoran and the reader. Both Comoran and the reader feel bad for him and want to defend him, and it’s all so chaotic and ugly at first that there’s no reason to not believe him and side with him against his family and everyone else. It all seems a little mellow dramatic at first but then slowly crescendos into a really intriguing way to explain his motive for murdering his siblings:

Did you start to imagine how wonderful it would be if Lula. . . died? You must have known your sick mother would be a much softer touch, especially once you were her only remaining child. And that in itself must have felt great, didn’t it? The idea of being the only child at long last? And never losing out again to a better looking, more lovable sibling?. . . .

No matter how much you’ve fawned over your mother and played the devoted son, you’ve never come first with her, have you? She always loved Charlie the most, didn’t she? Everyone did, even Uncle Tony. And the moment Charlie had gone, when you might have expected to be the center of attention at last, what happens? Lula arrives, and everyone starts worrying about Lula, looking after Lula. Your mother hasn’t even got a picture of you by her deathbed. Just Charlie and Lula. Just the two she loved (436).