My favorite part of cracking open a book by J.K. Rowling is the smell. I don't know if it's the kind of paper, the freshly-printed ink, or even the glue used to bind the pages together. Whatever it is, I love it. All of it. Breathing in a Rowling novel is like breathing in my four year-old self, opening _Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone_ for the first time in 1997. It smells like home. Couple that with the steady, rhythmic flow of Rowling's writing, and I'm in for a good few days of nostalgia-filtered reading. I've learned to take my time with her books, because I know I'll have to wait a while for the next one.

_The Cuckoo's Calling_ was certainly not a disappointment. While it does fall into genre fiction, (getting away from the beautiful and intense character study that was _The Casual Vacancy_), Rowling really hits her stride about a hundred pages into the novel. Her characters feel wonderfully fleshed-out. Cormoran Strike, the bastard son of a rock star, failing private detective, former soldier and bipedal human being, is more than a little jaded. Robin, his female foil, is fresh-faced and eager -- with her new fiancee and temp job in Strike's office. The two form a very functional and emotionally-satisfying team as they work to solve the possible-murder, possible-suicide of famous supermodel Lula Landry.

I cannot wait for Robert Glabraith to make another appearance on my bookshelf with the next installment of the series. Cormoran Strike is a character I wouldn't mind revisiting again and again and again...