"After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier....

Unable to reacclimate after returning from Afghanistan, combat veteran Thad Broom becomes estranged from his haunted mother and finds support from a fellow drug-using friend before the death of their drug dealer leaves them with a fortune in cash and drugs.