The Cuckoo's Calling

An accomplished piece that thoroughly deserves its retrospective success

In a rare feat, Galbraith combines a complex and compelling sleuth and an equally well-formed and unlikely assistant with a baffling crime in his stellar debut . . . Readers will hope to see a lot more of this memorable sleuthing team

Rowling is a formidable storyteller . . . the plot is tightly moulded and told

Rowling moves through the polished world of fashion designers and rock stars with the same aplomb as she did when writing about wizards and witches

One of the great pleasures of The Cuckoo's Calling, as with most detective stories, is observing the gumshoe's Aha! moments, without being told what they are ... Money and general fabulousness does for The Cuckoo's Calling what magic did for Harry Potter, creating an extravagant, alien, fascinating world for its characters to explore ... The Cuckoo's Calling is fun

Everytime I put this book down, I looked forward to reading more. Galbraith writes at a gentle pace, the pages rich with description and with characters that leap out of them. I loved it. He is a major new talent

One of the most unique and compelling detectives I've come across in years

The Cuckoo's Calling reminds me why I fell in love with crime fiction in the first place

Utterly compelling . . . a team made in heaven and I can't wait for the next in the series

The appeal of The Cuckoo's Calling doesn't depend at all on Rowling's prior status. All credit to her: she has created a really good series here. Strike will be back

I wasn't disappointed. Whether she's writing about Dementors or detectives, Rowling is a pro

It's terrific ... A brilliant achievement, mordantly funny and monumentally absorbing ... A masterful novel, the kind of big, noisy, busy, beautiful book in which it is so easy and so pleasurable to become enmeshed

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 fun with a detective novel in years

It's probably best, for the moment, to forget Robert Galbraith's real identity; this is a very good book in its own right

This debut is instantly absorbing, featuring a detective facing crumbling circumstances with resolve instead of clichéd self-destruction and a lovable sidekick with contagious enthusiasm for detection . . . Kate Atkinson's fans will appreciate his reliance on deduction and observation along with Galbraith's skilled storytelling

The most engaging British detective to emerge so far this year . . . An astonishingly mature debut from Galbraith, it marks the start of a fine crime career

Robert Galbraith has written a highly entertaining book ... Even better, he has introduced an appealing protagonist in Strike, who's sure to be the star of many sequels to come

Rowling switches genres seamlessly ... A gritty, absorbing tale

Cleverly plotted ... Rowling serves up a sushi platter of red herring, sprinkling clues along the way, before Strike draws a confession out of the killer in a climax straight out of Agatha Christie

One of the best crime novels I have ever read

Beautifully written with a terrific plot ... It's a terrific read, gripping, original and funny ... Please, please give us more of Robert Galbraith and Cormoran Strike

It should come as no surprise that her first foray into crime fiction is so accomplished . . . a brilliant depiction of London life . . . at heart it's an engrossing and well-crafted who-dunnit. Unsurprisingly excellent

Rowling's descriptions of contemporary London are excellent

Galbraith demonstrates superb flair as a mystery writer

A gripping, finely crafted and atmospheric mystery, and its charismatic hero, ex-solder-turned-private-eye Cormoran Strike, is a brilliant creation

The plot could have come from an Agatha Christie novel and yet The Cuckoo's Calling is absolutely of today, colourfully written and great fun

The master is back. In The Cuckoo's Calling, a detective novel that Rowling published under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, she returns to the strengths that made Harry Potter - the beautiful sense of pacing, the deep but illusionless love for her characters - without sacrificing the expanded range of The Casual Vacancy. In doing so, she's written one of the books of the year

A scintillating debut novel . . . Galbraith delivers sparkling dialogue and a convincing portrayal of the emptiness of wealth and glamour

Laden with plenty of twists and distractions, this debut ensures that readers will be puzzled and totally engrossed for quite a spell

A sharply contemporary novel full of old-fashioned virtues . . . wonderfully fresh and funny. I hope this is the inauguration of a series that lasts long enough to make Harry Potter look like a flash in the pan

The work of a master storyteller . . . This is a sharply contemporary novel full of old-fashioned virtues

Just once in a while a private detective emerges who captures the public imagination in a flash. And here is one who might well do that . . . There is no sign that this is Galbraith's first novel, only that he has a delightful touch for evoking London and capturing a new hero. An auspicious debut

Her crime debut beguilingly shows that she can renounce magic and yet be magical

The detective and his temp-agency assistant are both full and original characters and their debut case is a good, solid mystery