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''The Cuckoo's Calling'' is a 2013 detective mystery by Robert Galbraith, and the first [[Literature/CormoranStrikeNovels Cormoran Strike Novel]]. It was revealed that [[MustacheDePlume "Robert Galbraith"]] was actually Creator/JKRowling. [[Franchise/HarryPotter Yes, that J. K. Rowling]].

The beautiful model Lula Landry [[DrivenToSuicide jumps from a balcony]] in a case that temporarily dominated the UsefulNotes/BritishNewspapers. [[TimeSkip Three months later]], we meet Cormoran Strike, a ShellShockedVeteran turned [[HardboiledDetective private eye]] who is dead broke and suffering through a messy breakup. Robin Ellacott, a new temp, has just arrived at his doorstep when Strike gets a new client: John Bristow, adopted brother of his former childhood friend Charlie and of Lula Landry. John remains unconvinced that a woman with such a bright future ahead of her would take her own life, and, with no one else to turn to, John implores Strike to help him find out what really happened.

Adapted into the first season of the TV series ''Series/{{Strike|2017}}''.
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!!This book contains examples of:

* TwentyMinutesIntoThePast: The novel was published in 2013 but is set in April-May 2010, with events from the leadup to the 2010 general election mentioned in passing.
* AbusiveParents: Guy's father used to beat him for drawing dresses.
* AccidentalMisnaming: Throughout the book, many people get Rochelle's name wrong, including the minister at her own funeral. This is {{Subverted}} in at least one case: [[spoiler:John Bristow got her name wrong on purpose in an effort to make it harder for Cormoran to track her down.]]
** Since Cormoran is an uncommon name, several people assume Strike's first name is actually Cameron. This becomes a RunningGag throughout the series.
* AlliterativeTitle: ''The Cuckoo's Calling''
* AnimalMotifs: Lula Landry with the titular cuckoo — a bird that is abandoned by its parents in another bird's nest, where it will often grow large and strong at the expense of its siblings and even its new caregivers.
* BeAsUnhelpfulAsPossible: Freddie Bestigui, with good reason.
* BigFancyHouse: The Bristows lived in one, which gave young Cormoran the completely baseless impression that they're well-adjusted.
* BigScrewedUpFamily: The Bristow/Landry family.
* BigSecret: All the major red herrings have one. [[spoiler:Except Duffield, who is just much more of a softie than his drug-addled rocker lifestyle would have you think.]]
* {{Blackmail}}: Several cases:
** Tansy is expecting a very substantial divorce settlement from her husband in exchange for [[spoiler:not revealing the true location of where she overheard Lula Landry and her killer — as that will cause his domestic abuse to come to light]].
** [[spoiler:Rochelle]] is blackmailing [[spoiler:John]] regarding the existence and whereabouts of [[spoiler:Lula's will]].
** [[spoiler:John blackmails Tony into giving him an alibi the day Lula died by threatening to out his affair with Ursula May to her husband.]]
* BlindingCameraFlash: Strike escorts Ciara into a club through a gauntlet of paparazzi — "Strike's retinas were in sudden, dazzling whiteout." After they make it through the door of the club, Ciara compliments him on his sense of direction.
* BuyThemOff: [[spoiler:Freddie to the many women he's wronged; John to Rochelle.]]
* CainAndAbel: [[spoiler:John actually kills ''both'' of his favoured siblings.]] Magazines apparently take note.
* CampGay: Guy Somé the clothes designer, who swivels his hips when he walks, wears a tight, spangly t-shirt, and speaks with a camp voice. He does however catch Strike by surprise with the strength of his handshake.
* CampStraight: Strike's POV narration considers Evan Duffield, noting that most womanizers are vaguely effiminate, and wondering whether womanizers get that way from spending a lot of time with women or if they do it to get them to let their guard down. Evan is portrayed as rather "camp", wearing tight pants and swiveling his hips almost as much as the CampGay Guy Somé does.
* CassandraTruth: The main reason that Lula Landry's death was ruled a suicide was because Tansy's statement was deemed by police to be entirely false. Strike's investigations reveal that [[spoiler:she was telling the truth about overhearing Lula arguing with a man before she fell — but lied about ''where'' she heard it due to her husband's bullying her into silence]].
** Lula Landry's biological mother is convinced that Lula would never have become a supermodel if she inherited her father's ears. Robin and Comoran initially wonder if she really does know who Lula’s father is but when they are looking at a picture of her [[spoiler:half-brother]], it's noted that his handsomeness is offset by his almost comically large ears.
** [[spoiler:Lula's mother was also telling the truth about her father being a student she was in an actual relationship with, when Strike and Robin had wondered if it might have been a random sexual encounter.]]
** [[spoiler:Tony Landry correctly deduced that Charlie's death was not an accident, and that John was the one who pushed him. However, the Bristows refused to believe him and cut all contact in the wake of his accusations.]]
** [[spoiler:Even Freddie, who knew that she was out on the balcony where he'd locked her in her underwear, and not inside, seems surprised to realize that his wife really did overhear the murder.]]
* ChekhovsGun:
** The personalised hoodies which Guy gifts Deeby Macc, as one of them winds up being a vital piece of evidence that ties the killer to the crime scene.
** Strike is receiving weekly death threats from a former client, usually threatening him with a knife. The murderer makes use of this by attempting to kill Strike in this way, hoping that the former client will be blamed for this. [[spoiler:And [[BatmanGambit was intentionally tricked into doing so by Strike, in order to further incriminate himself.]]]]
** Makeup artist Bryony Radford mentions that she has dyslexia, which caused her to dial the wrong number in Ursula's phone contacts and find out that she was cheating on her husband. [[spoiler: She saw the will that Lula wrote out to her half-brother Jonah, but read the name as that of her adoptive brother John.]]
* ClusterFBomb: J. K. Rowling's post-''Potter'' career is filled with these. Pretty much every character swears at some point, but probably the biggest culprit of all is [[GayBestFriend Guy Somé]].
* TheConfidant: Rochelle Onifade is the only person Lula guarantees will never blab about her to the press. [[spoiler:Nonetheless, she's kind of a gold-digging scumbag, and the trope is ultimately subverted when she's shown to indeed be selling Lula's secrets — just not to the press.]]
* ConvictedByPublicOpinion: Evan Duffield, before Lula's death is ruled a suicide. A major theme of the book is that public opinion can turn on a dime.
* CountryMatters: As with the ClusterFBomb, Jo is also fond of the word "cunt". It should be noted that in the British English in which the book is written, this is much less offensive.
* CrashIntoHello: How Robin meets Strike. He hastily prevents her from plunging head-first into the stairwell... by grabbing her boob. The romantic elements between them never actually rise above subtext, although Strike frequently notices her body.
* DefectiveDetective: Strike is a war-wounded amputee with a tempestuous on-and-off relationship, death threats from a former client, and debt up to his eyeballs. Although what sets him apart is that [[{{Downplayed}} he is surprisingly free of internal strife and self-destructive personality demons]]. All of his problems are external, not internal. He [[FreudianExcuseDenial specifically rejects the idea]] that his mother's untimely death, which he remains convinced was a murder, was his motivation for becoming a detective, as he was fascinated by detective work for years before her death occurred.
* DetectivePatsy: A classic example in [[spoiler:John Bristow]].
* {{Deuteragonist}}: Robin, who becomes Cormoran's GirlFriday and provides invaluable assistance in solving the mystery.
* DisposableFiance: Matthew is presented as one, but as of the end of the novel, he's still with Robin — if unhappy about her career path.
* DistantPrologue: There's a three-month time gap between the prologue, which features the police at the Lula Landry death scene, and the story proper that starts when both Robin and John Bristow show up at Strike's office within minutes of each other.
* DrinkBasedCharacterization: Whether he's interrogating witnesses, setting up information swaps with the police, or simply relaxing, Strike will order a pint of Doom Bar, a Cornish ale that reminds him of home.
* DrowningMySorrows: Strike gets ''very'' drunk at a bar after finding out that Charlotte has gotten engaged to her old boyfriend.
* EarlyBirdCameo: Early in the novel Strike calls "a friend" who gives him a tip, which Strike uses to get a copy of the Landry file from Eric Wardle. This friend, obviously a criminal sort, is introduced in book #3 as Shanker, and is an important character in later novels.
* EdgyBackwardsChairSitting: Guy Somé has models for an ad posing "like Christine Keeler on a back-to-front chair".
* EnfantTerrible: [[spoiler:John, who murdered his brother]] when he was very young.
* ExactWords: Strike interviews Tansy Bestigui, who has been tabbed by the police and press as an attention-seeking liar ''and'' is going through a messy divorce, so she demands that Strike not write down any notes. He agrees... and instead surreptitiously switches on his phone's sound recorder.
* FallGuy: [[spoiler:This was intended to be Lula's half-brother, Jonah, but Strike seemed very close to homing in on Tony, which the killer would probably have been satisfied with.]]
* FreudianExcuseDenial: Cormoran has always maintained that his mother, believed to have died of a drug overdose, was murdered by her boyfriend at the time, and his sister Lucy believes that Cormoran's entire career as a private detective has been a way of coping with this belief. In fact, he was obsessed with detective work long before their mother's death.
* GayBestFriend: Guy Somé for Lula, though he's devoid of most of the stereotypes.
* GirlFriday: Robin, definitely. Cormoran thought about cracking a Batman and Robin joke when they first met, but didn't think it was very respectful.
* GoldDigger: Several characters of both genders are accused of this, romantically and otherwise. Most definitively, Tansy and Ursula.
* HypercompetentSidekick: Robin, though Cormoran is no PointyHairedBoss. Arguably also Cormoran to the Met. Police; he uses some inside contacts to get at police records about active cases, but he always tries to engineer things so as to make the police look good, since the last thing he wants as a P.I. is to become famous. By the sixth volume, some coppers informally acknowledge that they really ought to be bribing ''him''.
* IfItBleedsItLeads: Lula Landry's suicide is a media ''gold mine'', and only becomes more so upon proper examination.
* IneffectualDeathThreats: Robin is concerned about the death threat letters that Strike keeps receiving, but he tells her to just put them in the nutter file. A number of these are from the same client, a guy who was convinced that his wife was cheating on him, but Strike discovered that she wasn't. He refused to believe it and when Strike sacked him as a client, began sending him a series of increasingly elaborate death threat letters, each with more fantastical and unbelievable threats than the last.
* InformedFlaw: Virtually everyone describes Ciara Porter as a combination of DumbBlonde and AlphaBitch. When Strike meets her, she's a bit fluffy, but is otherwise [[NiceGirl perfectly pleasant and one of the few people to be completely honest with him]]. [[HiddenDepths She even quotes some Oscar Wilde and mentions she has a place to read English at Cambridge.]] [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools This is very likely intentional,]] showing how the media tends to feed on itself and perpetuate its own rumor mill.
* IntroDump: Robin and Cormoran read an article about Lula Landry's funeral, one which introduces (as mourners) almost every character in the Landry case, except John Bristow, already introduced when he hired Strike.
* JanitorImpersonationInfiltration: [[spoiler:Considered and rejected; the security guy was real, but unwittingly let the killer overhear the key code.]]
* JerkassHasAPoint:
** The casually racist and generally hateful Tony Landry felt that his sister Yvette Bristow was "morbidly maternal" in her desire for children, an unfit mother whose misfortune in tragically losing two children was her own fault and who should never have adopted Lula at all. [[spoiler:He happens to know that John killed his brother Charlie, and the family dismissed his insistence on this point as well as his concerns about their decision to adopt again, bringing a little girl into such a household.]]
** Anyone who describes Rochelle as a GoldDigger in her friendship with Lula isn't really wrong, as [[spoiler:she knew Lula was murdered (though she guessed wrong as to the actual killer) and was willing to hide her knowledge in order to blackmail John Bristow by threatening to disclose her knowledge of Lula's will. However, her treatment is nonetheless sympathetic as Lula was using her in turn, having cultivated a friendship with her as a pretext for buying her a phone which she could then use herself, and hurt her in their last interaction by catching up with her just to use the phone and then ditching her immediately.]]
* KavorkaMan: Cormoran Strike looks like a boxer who’s had his nose broken too many times, is incredibly hairy, lost half his leg and, at the time of the story, is overweight. And yet, his on-again, off-again girlfriend Charlotte is described as supermodel gorgeous, and over the course of the story, [[spoiler:he has sex with an actual supermodel ''without even trying'']].
** Interestingly, a conversation with Lady Bristow implies that at least part of his plain looks, as well as the sexual magnetism are inherited from [[LamarckWasRight Jonny Rokeby]].
* LonelyFuneral: [[spoiler:Rochelle]] gets one, which is thoroughly lampshades.
--> ...seven mourners and a minister who did not know her name.
* LonelyRichKid: Lula, who comes from a rich family and gets a lot richer when she starts modeling, but has few friends she can trust. And her family is a horror show.
* LovableAlphaBitch: Lula may have let fame go to her head, but witnesses tend to remember her as kinder than your typical troubled starlet. The same is true of her best friend, Ciara Porter.
* MamasBoy: John Bristow. Distressing his dying mother is a sure way to send him into barely-concealed hysterics.
* MeaningfulName: "Cormoran" is a giant in Cornish folklore, especially ''Jack the Giant-Killer''. "Strike" is appropriate for one who had a fighting career. "Robin", as noted by several reviews, is [[{{Franchise/Batman}} an apt name for a sidekick]].
* MiseryPoker: Yvette Bristow is a consummate player.
* MyBelovedSmother: Lady Bristow spoils and smothers her children. Subverted for [[spoiler:John -- the fact that his mother ''didn't'' smother him, [[TheUnfavourite compared to Charlie and Lula]], is implied to be a major factor behind his insanity]].
* NakedPeopleTrappedOutside: [[spoiler: Freddie locks Tansy outside on their balcony in only her underwear on the night Lula dies, which is where she overhears Lula's confrontation with her killer.]] Tansy being caught in a contradiction after she lies about where she heard said confrontation [[spoiler: in order to keep Freddie's domestic abuse quiet]], coupled with her shivering being attributed to her being high on something, lead to her whole testimony being ignored by the police.
* NeverSuicide: Well, duh. However, it's played with in the sense that Strike does consider suicide to be the most reasonable explanation until evidence proves otherwise.
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler: No one suspected Lula was killed and all accepted the police's findings of a suicide. Had John never hired Strike, he would have gotten away with murder and probably would have gotten off scot-free for killing Rochelle too]].
* NoodleIncident: An "incident" is what causes Robin to drop out of university, missing out on a psychology degree. The specifics of what happened aren't revealed until book #3, ''Literature/CareerOfEvil''.
* NotTheFirstVictim: Strike knows the Bristow family because, when he was a boy, he was friends with John's brother Charlie Bristow. He eventually figures out that [[spoiler:John killed Charlie, in much the same way that he'd kill his other adopted sibling Lula many years later]].
* OnceMoreWithClarity: When [[spoiler:John Bristow]] first meets Strike, he breaks into hysterical tears when recalling [[spoiler:the day Lula was first brought into the family]]. At the time, the reader assumes that the tears are due to [[spoiler:remembering his dead sister]]. Much later, during TheSummation, Strike brings up those hysterics again — only this time he muses that they stemmed from [[spoiler:John remembering the day that he once again was sidelined by his family in favour of his sibling]].
* OnlySaneMan: [[spoiler:Lula's half-brother]] turns out to be the only one related to her who isn't messed up in some way. [[spoiler:Cormoran speculates that this is why she called him to visit her the night she died. She'd just learned that her adopted brother might be a murderer and wanted to be with the last relative she could trust.]]
* {{Paparazzi}}: A looming presence throughout, taking on all sorts of plot and thematic functions.
* ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish: The passcode to Bristow's safe is, naturally, [[spoiler:the date he murdered Charlie]]. Strike alludes to this, saying it would be the first code he'd try.
* ThePerfectCrime: It ''would'' have been, if not for the killer's ComplexityAddiction. [[spoiler: John Bristow's murder of his brother Charlie as a child was considered an accident. Lula's murder was deemed a suicide. Rochelle Onifade's murder considered an accidental overdose by a long-term drug addict. And it all would have ''stayed that way'', if John Bristow hadn't hired Cormoran to track down John's rival for Lula's fortune. Tony Bristow suspected Charlie's death was no accident, but he never would have said anything due to a combination of family loyalty, no proof, and John having dirt on Tony.]]
* PretentiousPronunciation: The narration usually notes whether Guy Somé's first name is being pronounced like the English "gai" or French "ghee". Strike deliberately switches back and forth depending on the social class of the person he's questioning.
* PrivateDetective: Strike, natch. Robin thinks this is the coolest thing ever.
* {{Profiling}}: John Bristow puts a special emphasis on a black man filmed acting suspiciously around the scene and time of his sister's suspicious suicide, nicknamed The Runner. His uncle Tony, who has had a great influence on the boy, is a total bigot. [[spoiler:But actually, Bristow knows perfectly well who The Runner is — the guy with a legitimate claim to Lula Landry's inheritance — and is trying to frame him.]]
* RelationshipRevolvingDoor: We meet Cormoran for the first time immediately following his most recent breakup with his longtime on-again-off-again girlfriend, which he's determined will be his last.
* ReplacementGoldfish: Lula is said to be a replacement for Charlie.
* RichBitch: Naturally, a common presence in Lula's social circles.
* TheSchlubPubSeductionDeduction: The plain Cormoran met his volatile and beautiful ex-girlfriend Charlotte when he daringly chatted her up at a student party, after which she publicly dumped her fellow BlueBlood Jago Ross for him. She later admitted that she initially slept with him to get back at Ross for a perceived transgression, having stepped into the wrong party intending to commence OperationJealousy with the first man who approached her. Although she wound up being genuinely attracted to Cormoran and being romantically involved with him for many years, he contemplates the fact that her initial manipulation of him said a lot about where things were headed. [[AvertedTrope Averted]] with Cormoran and [[spoiler:supermodel Ciara Porter]].
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: A mild example — Bristow persuades aloof celebrity witnesses to talk to Strike with copious bribes/tip-offs that Strike is the son of a rock star.
* SesquipedalianSmith: "Cormoran Strike".
* SiblingTriangle: A throwaway gag near the beginning of the novel has Cormoran reveal to his one client that her husband is indeed cheating on her...with her sister. Robin is horrified.
* SitcomArchNemesis: Duffield and Guy get in a lot of (seriously meant) insults about each other.
* SmallRoleBigImpact: Deeby Macc is mentioned a lot, by almost every character and his impending arrival at Lula's building proves instrumental in the way the murder was committed. However, the closest he comes to appearing in the flesh is a Website/YouTube interview that Cormoran and Robin watch.
* SmarterThanYouLook: Ciara, the glamorous, long-legged fashion model, also has a chance to "read English at Oxford" that she is putting off to model. Strike can't conceal his surprise when he hears this. Later in the same conversation she drops an Creator/OscarWilde quote.
* StealthPun: After their CrashIntoHello, wherein Strike saves Robin from toppling backward by grabbing her chest, he states that it'll be easy to remember her name. He had intended to refer to "Batman and Robin" but refrained, not thinking it very respectful. Robin blushes anyway. Why? Presumably because she [[AccidentalInnuendo thinks he means]] that she's a Robin redbreast.[[note]]This may lead to UsefulNotes/SeparatedByACommonLanguage for American readers, since a robin redbreast is only called "robin" in America.[[/note]] On the other hand, it would still be appropriate for a detective; [[GeniusBonus 'Robin Redbreast' was a Regency-era slang term]] for the Bow Street Runners[[note]]Although some believe this was only for the Bow Street Horse Patrol, an off-shoot established to deal with highway robbery[[/note]] who are considered Britain's first police force, due to them wearing red waistcoats as a badge of office - much like how robin redbreasts were called that for their red chests.
* StiffUpperLip: Despite all the difficulties Strike is experiencing, he maintains some degree of discipline in confronting his demons. It's notable that most of his struggles are external, while his internal conflict is somewhat minimal.
* ShellShockedVeteran: Cormoran to a mild degree. He has nightmares of getting his leg blown off in Afghanistan, but he's not impaired in the way that more severe cases sometimes are.
* SpoilerTitle: Cuckoo chicks [[spoiler:kill their adoptive siblings by pushing them out of the nest]]; similarly, [[spoiler:John Bristow pushes both of his siblings to their deaths]].
* StrongFamilyResemblance: Averted with Strike, who looks nothing like his famous father. Played straight for [[spoiler:Lula Landry — who inherited most of her supermodel features from her biological father. Her half-brother also shares these features, as her shocked killer discovers]].
* TheSummation: In [[SignatureStyle traditional Rowling fashion]], [[TalkingIsAFreeAction Cormoran delivers this over the course of pages while alone with the killer, who makes no real attempt to stop him until he's done outlining all his points]]. Though Strike does lampshade that an innocent man would have [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere left in a rage]] long before he was done — it's highly implied that the killer was hearing him out to try and find out what evidence Strike had on them.
** Cormoran actually does this twice, though the first time, he's not actually confronting the killer, but attempting to [[spoiler:get Freddie Bestigui to cooperate as a potential witness]]. [[RedHerring Though at this point, the reader is in the dark about Cormoran's actual plans]].
* SexySweaterGirl: In the first chapter, Robin is described as "curvaceous"; in the third chapter, Strike notices that she is wearing "a snugly, even seductively fitting cream sweater."
* TellMeAboutMyFather: Lula was obsessed with finding her biological parents.
* ThanksForTheMammary: In the first chapter Cormoran comes barreling out of his office and crashes into Robin, who goes careening towards the handrail of the stairs. She nearly falls over the railing to her death, except Cormoran saves her by shooting out a hand and grabbing--her breast. Their relationship is awkward for quite a while after this.
* TheUnfavorite: [[spoiler:John]] feels this way, [[spoiler:which drives him to kill]].
* UpMarketing: Guy Somé's entire fashion business, ranging from the sort of thing you buy at Neiman Marcus to items that are unique. Wearing his product can thus become a plot point.
* WeddingRingRemoval: Duffield says that at their last meeting at the club, an annoyed Lula took off the bangle he'd given her at their "commitment ceremony" and threw it at him.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Lula's two biological maternal half-brothers, who were also taken from their mother by social services. InUniverse she passed up on her mother's desire to track them down as well due to being more interested in her father.
* WhoNamesTheirKidDude: "Cormoran Strike" — justified given his mother's... eccentricities.
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