Book Club Update: The Cuckoo's Calling

It's been a long time since I actually started and finished a book for book club. My UMW book club is actually not that great about finishing books in time for the date we choose to "discuss" them. Actually I think we're at a stand still at the moment because we didn't even pick a new book at our last gathering. haha.

Anyways, with that said, long ago we chose Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (AKA J.K. Rowling) as our next read. It's a 400+ page book so needless to say I did not get it read in time, but I was loving the book. So slowly I kept at it and finally finished the book last month. Here's the rundown:

Synopsis: A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide. 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 is 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.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

My thoughts: I am always intrigued by a good murder mystery, or in this case suicide or murder? mystery. This one did not disappoint. I will say though, I thought the book was way too long. I think it could have been at least a hundred pages shorter. I think some of the detail is maybe setting up for sequels, but it was just long! Overall though, the story line did keep me guessing.
 
Book club thoughts: I think we were all in shock and don't quite understand the choice of ending. It was shocking, but really just didn't make sense (not that we didn't understand what happened, but didn't understand the choice). I don't want to give it away so I'll leave it there, but it's an interesting ending to say the least. I think we all enjoyed it though.

Genre: Mystery/Fiction
Rating: 4/5 stars