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| http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Cuckoo_s_Calling.html?id=evuwdDLfAyYC |
This is not a fantasy book, but a detective novel about an ex-SIB (Special Investigation Branch), celebrity-son Cormoran Strike and his unlikely sidekick, Robin Ellacott, investigating the suicide of supermodel Lula Landry. Unfortunately, I wasn't superbly impressed after reading the first half of the book. I didn't expect Strike to be Agatha Christie's Poirot nor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, but the book still didn't grip me enough to set me on the edge of my seat, perhaps until the last few chapters of the book, when the mystery started to unravel...
My own impression is that there is a general lack of logic being offered to the reader that tantalizes him/her to make his/her own deductions with regards to the resolution of the mystery; the author leaves enough bread crumbs to lure and pique the reader's interest. In my opinion, this author-reader intellectual pull-and-tug is what makes an appealing detective novel, or at least to people who enjoys this genre. However, J. K. Rowling's style of storytelling that glued me to the first Harry Potter magic did come through, especially in the last few chapters where the focus is on unfolding what actually happened.
Nonetheless, it wasn't a bad read, so I put a reservation on the sequel - "The Silkworm".
Side: I stumbled upon this website about "forensic stylometry", which puts authorial detective work down to a science (it's almost exactly written like a scientific article!)
