The Cuckoo's Calling, by Robert Galbraith, a.k.a. J.K. Rowling

(hb; 2013: first book in the Cormoran Strike series)


From the inside flap:

"After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator.  Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling.  He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and living in his office.

"Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier.  The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that.  The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man."


Review:

Cuckoo's Calling is a solid detective novel with cinematic sensibilities - it emphasizes noiresque undercurrents and glitz in equal measure.  The element that kept me reading this novel, though, was its fully engaging, complex characters; its 'mystery' element was an okay-whatever affair for me, because I figured out who did what to whom early on (this isn't a knock on Rowling or her writing, but rather a symptom of me reading too many mysteries in as many years).

Solid, genre-familiar read, worth checking out from the library.

Followed by a future sequel whose title I don't know yet.

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

(hb; 2007)

First, the plot: Harry, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger seek the remainder of the seven Horcruxes -- the physically manifested pieces of Voldermort's soul, separated and hidden by Voldemort, so as to keep them safe -- so that they might destroy them, and, along with them, Voldemort.

Meanwhile, Voldemort has quietly taken over everything. Pius Thicknesse, one of his minions, runs the Ministry of Magic; the media is monitored and manipulated by Voldemort's forces; Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore's murderer, is Head Wizard of Hogwarts; Muggles (aka, Mudbloods) are being killed by Voldemort's wizards, via what Muggles call "accidents".

Now for the review.

It's a wonderful read. The middle section lags, when Harry, Ron & Hermione, lost, squabbling and seemingly directionless, seek the Horcruxes, even as Voldemort's Death Eaters hound them.

The writing, overall, is excellent, if a bit loquacious at times, as it consistently has been since the fourth book (Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire). The Battle of Hogwarts is appropriately cataclysmic and rousing (especially when Mrs. Weasley comes to the aid of her daughter, Ginny, who's being menaced by Bellatrix Lestrange -- wow, talk about fierce).

The body count, like the denouement, isn't shocking; nor is it too predictable. Rowling has sewed up the Harry Potter saga in a satisfying, character-true manner, with little, if any, room left for more (worthwhile) sequels.

By all means, check it out.