Which fictional detective did J.K. Rowling create in The Cuckoo’s Calling?

J.K. Rowling created the fictional detective Cormoran Strike in The Cuckoo’s Calling.

Cormoran Strike is a private investigator and former Royal Military Police investigator. He has a prosthetic lower leg after losing part of his leg in Afghanistan, and he operates a struggling detective agency in London. The first novel begins when model Lula Landry dies in what police have judged to be a suicide, but her brother hires Strike to investigate.

Robin Ellacott becomes Strike’s temporary secretary at the beginning of the series. Their professional partnership develops across the novels, while the stories combine individual cases with longer-running character arcs. Rowling writes the series under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

Strike is not a police detective in the traditional sense. He works as a private investigator, which gives the books a different structure from police-procedural mysteries. The Cormoran Strike novels include The Silkworm, Career of Evil, Lethal White, Troubled Blood and The Ink Black Heart.