Cuckoo's Calling

by Robert Galbraith (a.k.a. J. K. Rowling)

In this mystery a youmg famous black model falls to hear death from her apartment window.  The coroner rules it a suicide.  However, the brother of the woman engages the services of a down and out Private Investigator because he does not believe it was suicide.

The detective is living out of his office as he has been kicked out by his girlfriend.  He is a war vet and has a prosthetic leg.

He takes on the case, and with help from his temporary assistant, interviews the girls family members (she was adopted), her friends and business acquaintances and he does uncover the truth.

This was a typical detective story, it kept developing the story towards the truth a bit at a time.  I thought the story was okay, the persistence of the detective was engaging.  It did seem to drag on a bit near the end.

As I read reviews of the book people seemed to be pleased with the surprise ending but I have to say that I found the ending entirely unbelievable, and as a result unsatisfactory.

At the end of the story we find out that the model wrote a hand written will on the day she died.  Why would she do this, did she expect something to happen?  She leaves all her money to a brother she has never met (she has identified her biological mother and father and learns that her father had a family including a son).  Why would she leave all her money to someone she has never met?  She had met her mother, a poor sluttish woman and had befriended a young drug addict in Rehab.  I don't understand why she would leave money to a total stranger and nothing to these others.  I know she didn't like her birth mother but thought she might leave something to the other girl.

But the most problematic aspect of the book is that the man who hired the detective is actually the one who killed the girl.  Why would he go to the bother and the expense when it had been deemed a suicide and without a will all the money would have gone to him and his family.  I don't see the point.

I think I had expected something better written, more creative, by Rowling.