I feel like this might be intended to be humorous

[walkitout]

I'm trying to read _Cuckoo's Calling_ (which I suspect is a pun, but I'm not sure), and the protagonist is named Cormoran (sic) Strike.

That's a whole lot of bird, already. Not only is that a whole lot of bird in that sense, but a temp - NAMED ROBIN - has shown up at Strike's agency (and he cannot really afford the temp, either) and he nearly knocked her down the stairs by opening the door into the stairway vigorously as she was trying to open it from the other side. He saved her by grabbing her ... breast.

A whole lot of bird. Only 20 pages in. I'm starting to wonder about this.

ETA: Robin's fiance is named Matthew. As in, Matthew 10:29? (And last night I realized there are bird references in famous noir titles like _The Maltese Falcon_.)

Comments

Re: alcohol poisoning?

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

It's been a while since I read it, but I recall his drinking way, way more than three beers. Okay, I checked, and while it only actually mentions his buying three beers, that sounds to me as though he was just getting started: "It took him barely an hour of steady, solitary, determined beer consumption to become properly drunk." If you're sitting there doing essentially nothing but drinking beer, it's not going to take an hour to drink three of them. Even though it's probably imperial pints, so three of them is almost five servings.

Wait, it also says "“Jus’ celebratin’ my fiancée zengagement,” he said, raising his eleventh pint in an unsteady toast."

So that's eleven imperial pints, which is roughly seventeen units of alcohol. In an hour.

Re: alcohol poisoning?

[walkitout]

Yup -- I totally missed the eleventh pint sentence. Yikes!

Re: alcohol poisoning?

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

He is drinking Doom Bar, which is only 4%, so that takes it down to 14 units. But still, kind of a lot, especially for a one-legged guy with an empty stomach who isn't ordinarily that heavy a drinker.