The call of the cuckoo
The call of the cuckoo (original title: The Cuckoo's Calling ) is a novel by Joanne K. Rowling , which was published on April 30, 2013 under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith . The focus of the plot is the former soldier Cormoran Strike, who lost a leg in the Afghan war and is now investigating a possible murder in the midst of wealthy society as a private detective.
action
The private investigator Cormoran Strike is hired by John Bristow, the adoptive brother of the late supermodel Lula Landry. Strike is supposed to prove that Lula's death was not suicide. Although he is convinced that there is nothing behind the case, Strike accepts the contract - not least because he was childhood friends with John's brother Charlie, who died in a bicycle accident. He also has some debts and has just been thrown out of the apartment by his fiancée, which is why Bristow's generous fee suits him.
At the same time, Strike meets Robin, who was sent to him as a temporary secretary. Financially he cannot afford this employee, but it soon becomes apparent that Robin is competent and useful in solving the case.
During the investigation process, Strike has conversations with Lula Landry's bodyguard, driver, uncle, friends, and her designer. As they share their memories of Lula with him, Strike realizes that the circumstances of her death are not as straightforward as he thought. He is particularly concerned with the testimony of Tansy Bestigui, Lula's neighbor: Tansy stiffly claims to have heard Lula fighting a man and then falling from the balcony. The police determined that there was no way she could have heard this from her home and pushed the statement aside. In fact, at the time of the crime, Tansy was not in the apartment, but on her balcony. Her husband discovered she had sniffed cocaine and locked her out in the cold. For fear of being reported for abuse, he forced Tansy to keep it quiet.
Just hours after Strike met Lula's friend Rochelle Onifade, she was murdered. He is sure that she must have been in contact with Lula's killer. But for now he can't prove anything and has only identified one possible motive for Lula's death: her property, ten million British pounds.
Finally he comes across a promising lead: Lula, who was adopted as a dark-skinned girl into a wealthy white family, had tried to find out who her father was before she died. She found a half-brother she wanted to meet on the night of the murder. However, John learned that Lula had changed her will in favor of the half-brother. He confronted her and wanted to extort her money, but in an affect pushed her from the balcony. Strike also finds out that John was responsible for Charlie's death years earlier. He wanted to use Strike to find and destroy Lula's will. Strike calls John into his office and tells him what he has learned - unfortunately he has not buckled his prosthetic leg and is seriously injured by John when he attacks him with a knife. Nevertheless, he manages to gain the upper hand; he almost kills John, but is held back by Robin, who returns to the office despite Strike's instructions to the contrary.
Robin, who found her dream job as a secretary in a detective agency, is reluctant to quit her temporary job at the detective agency, but Strike, who is keen to continue working with her, agrees to employ her on terms that she suggests and the it has calculated based on the meanwhile precise knowledge of his financial possibilities. The book closes with a doctor's appointment Strike has about his leg.
publication
The Munich-based Blanvalet Verlag acquired the German-language rights for a four-digit amount. According to the editor Anja Franzen, the characters in the book were the most important factor. Only then - in mid-July 2013 - did it become public that Robert Galbraith was using the pseudonym Rowlings, whose book rights are otherwise traded for millions. After this unveiling, sales in Great Britain rose sharply, by then 8,500 copies of the book had been sold, 1,500 of which were hardcover. The German first edition in the translation by Wulf Bergner was now planned with 200,000 copies. It was released on November 30, 2013.
continuation
Rowling has announced that she plans to continue the series under the pseudonym. The second volume with the original title The Silkworm was published on June 19, 2014. The German version was published on November 24, 2014 under the title Der Seidenspinner . A third part was published in the original on October 20, 2015 under the title Career of Evil and under the title The Harvest of Evil on February 26, 2016 in German. On September 18, 2018, the fourth part of the series with the English title Lethal White was published , the German translation announced for December 27, 2018 is entitled White Death .
filming
On December 10, 2014 it was announced that the stories about the detective Cormoran Strike, beginning with The Call of the Cuckoo , would be filmed as a TV series for BBC One . Rowling wrote the script himself and will be involved in this film project. In 2017, the first episodes of the television series Strike were broadcast on BBC One. The call of the cuckoo comprised a total of three episodes, The Seidenspinner two episodes. The two episodes of The Harvest of Evil first aired in 2018. These three stories have now appeared on DVD.
Web links
BBC homepage for the television series.
Individual evidence
- ^ "Harry Potter" author. Joanne K. Rowling wrote crime novels under a pseudonym. on: Spiegel Online . Retrieved July 14, 2013.
- ↑ a b Munich publishing house lands coup with Rowling's pseudonym novel. on: süddeutsche.de , July 21, 2013.
- ^ Richard Brooks: Whodunnit? JK Rowling's secret life as wizard crime writer revealed. In: The Sunday Times . July 14, 2013.
- ↑ Information on Robert Galbraith's official website . Retrieved July 19, 2013: "At the point I was 'outed', Robert had sold 8500 English language copies across all formats (hardback, eBook, library and audiobook) and received two offers from television production companies."
- ↑ JK Rowling surprises the world with pseudonym crime. on: süddeutsche.de. July 14, 2013, accessed July 21, 2013.
- ↑ Robert Galbraith: The call of the cuckoo. In: randomhouse.de. Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, accessed on September 11, 2013 .
- ^ JK Rowling: Latest Announcements. (No longer available online.) In: jkrowling.com. Archived from the original on July 25, 2013 ; Retrieved December 16, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Robert Galbraith: News. June 19, 2014. Retrieved August 29, 2014 .
- ↑ Robert Galbraith: The silk moth. Retrieved June 12, 2014 .
- ↑ Review at Focus.online , accessed on November 26, 2014
- ↑ Robert Galbraith: The Harvest of Evil. Retrieved March 21, 2016 .
- ↑ JK Rowling's crime series is filmed , moviepilot.de, accessed on February 27, 2015
