TWO BY J. K. ROWLING

TWO BY J. K. ROWLING

In a recent New York Times column several writers gave themselves
pseudonyms and wrote a short description of their supposed most recent book. This bagatelle was sparked by "The Cuckoo's Calling," a decidedly un-Harry Potter (thank God) novel, written by Rowling under a pen name
that someone in her agent's? publisher's? attorney's? office revealed. She had not meant that to happen but stepped up and confessed: Robert Galbraith is J. K. Rowling.

"Cuckoo's Calling" is a mystery set in London. Cuckoo, a fabulous model
falls or is thrown from a balcony at her flat on an upmarket Kensington square. Her death, while an apparently straightforward suicide, prompts her rich half-brother to hire Strike, an ex-military cop now fledgling private eye.

Strike is one of those huge men with a war injury, a former athlete
now with one leg. He fights pain and a broken heart. He is the smart bastard son of a rock star, in debt and looking to the new case to bail himself out.  Strike hires a clever temp assistant whose instincts make
her a useful sidekick. In these two -- the shambling detective and the young temp -- Rowling has created characters you must meet again.

Surely, this novel will make the screen in one form or another: film, TV
series, something. Book sales were slow: a first novel by an unknown.
After the real author became known, the publisher (Hachette) has cranked out hundreds of thousands of hardcover and Kindle copies and the book is now a number one best seller. Rowling simply can't help herself.

A previous Rowling novel, "The Casual Vacancy," (Hachette, 2012) might have used a better title. This is the first Rowling departure from Harry Potter, in a setting away from London, a suffocating small town somewhere in the West Country.

It, too, begins with a sudden death, this one of a youngish local council member, of a brain aneurism. His shocking departure has left the council with a vacancy, the casual vacancy of the title. The major characters include young and old. All of them are often repellent and out of control. Everyone has secrets and the harm they do one another fairly makes your hair curl.

The writing wants to flow along, but the stories with so many characters, not one of them very sympathetic, involve keeping a lot of plates spinning. Do we care? I kept reading because of the moments, the occasional look into other lives, among them the best description of a heroin addict and her habitat I have ever come across. Much is bleak, there is little redemption and so the reader is relieved to be done.

Rowling is one of those people who just won't be stopped from writing. Her output is staggering. We know she has finished a sequel to the Strike
novel. If this is what it takes to divorce from Harry Potter, good for her. Wonder if the third ex-Harry book will begin with an unexpected death.