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, thelegendary 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.

Review

"Combines a complex and compelling sleuth and an equally well-formed and unlikely assistant with a baffling crime...A stellar debut." ( Publishers Weekly, starred review)

"Instantly absorbing, featuring a detective facing crumbling circumstances with resolve instead of clichéd self-destruction and a lovable sidekick with contagious enthusiasm for detection. Strike bears little resemblance to Jackson Brodie, but Kate Atkinson's fans will appreciate his reliance on deduction and observation along with Galbraith's skilled storytelling." ( Booklist )

"Plenty of twists...Totally engrossing...Galbraith's take on contemporary celebrity obsession makes for a grand beach read." ( Library Journal, starred review (Mystery Debut of the Month))

"THE CUCKOO'S CALLING reminds me why I fell in love with crime fiction in the first place." ( Val McDermid, bestselling author of *The Vanishing Point*)

"Cormoran Strike is an amazing creation and I can't wait for his next outing. Strike is so instantly compelling that it's hard to believe this is a debut novel. I hope there are plenty more Cormoran Strike adventures to come. A beautifully written debut novel introducing one of the most unique and compelling detectives I've come across in years." ( Mark Billingham, author of *The Demands*)

"Robert Galbraith's debut is as hardbitten and hard-driving as its battered hero. CUCKOO'S CALLING scales the glittering heights of society even as it plumbs the dark depths of the human heart. A riveting read from an author to watch." ( Mike Cooper, Shamus Award-winning author of *Clawback*)

"The private eye novel is not dead. It was merely waiting for Robert Galbraith to give it a firm squeeze, goosing it back to bold, new life. Hardboiled crime fans are going to go cuckoo for this one. I haven't had this much with a detective novel in years." ( Duane Swierczynski, Shamus and Anthony Award-winning author of FUN & GAMES)

"A remarkably assured debut. Robert Galbraith's portrayal of celebrity-obsessed modern London is at once beautifully written and utterly engrossing, his characters so real you could eat dinner with them, his ever-coiling plot guaranteed to keep you up past your bedtime. I couldn't put it down. " ( Owen Laukkanen, author of *The Professionals*)

About the Author

After several years with the Royal Military Police, Robert Galbraith was attached to the SIB (Special Investigative Branch), the plain-clothes branch of the RMP. He left the military in 2003 and has been working since then in the civilian security industry. The idea for Cormoran Strike grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who returned to the civilian world. 'Robert Galbraith' is a pseudonym.