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So my regular gaming group has recently expressed interest in playing call of Cthulhu, as I have been dying to try this game out I instantly volunteered to be the keeper. I downloaded the Quick start rules to try it out with my group to see if we like it before I spend any money on the actual books, however I have a few question;

1: is the game any good? I haven't played it yet, I've only read reviews and seen it around at my FLGS.

2: How many books are needed to be Keeper? Are there multiple books for the GM and only one for the players like in D&D or is there just 1 book to rule them all?

3: How combat orientated is the game? I know it has weapons and rules for fighting and other such things but how often should I put my group up against fights?

Call of Cthulhu is kind of 'old school' by modern standards, I have to admit.

From my (limited) experience, the main thing is that this is a system that places control very firmly in the Keeper (GMs) hands.

1. A lot of the material for CoC is very interesting. Horror roleplaying is hard, though.

2. For CoC, the Group needs access to the main rulebook. That's it for the core! The player-side rules are pretty slim and not something that needs a lot of in-game reference, so it could be run with one copy of the main rules.

The GM might want several add-on books. Chaosium has published books for various eras, adventures (up to long-ish campaigns like the Mountains of Madness monster adventure), and other books. The Keeper's Companions are useful as they have a lot of scholarly references to help 'sell' various eras: for example, details on what psychotherapy, law enforcement, and common goods prices for the 1920s would be like.

3. By default, fighting a lot of Lovecraftian monsters is a losing proposition. Cthulhu eats 1d6 investigators a turn, and this is not D&D where a character can fight his way otu of a giant creature's stomach. Even being able to fight a big threat is unlikely, as it's mere presence tends to drive most people insane.

On the other hand, they can and do fight cultists, lesser horrors, etc.

CoC is all about mood. Characters are likely to have short, brutal, lives ending in either insanity or death. They are not super heroes.

One of the best third party add-ons for CoC is the Delta Green series, which adds a more modern setting with an X-files-ish government conspiracy aspect. Lots of tweaks to make it more of a longer-term game, and Delta Green agents can occasionally 'win' by calling in an air-strike on the ancient temple that would probably be the tomb for regular CoC investigators.

Another spin-off worth looking into is Charles Stross's Laundry series, which has several novels and a recent BRP-based RPG. The Laundry is, in the setting, a British agency that deals with supernatural threats. This variant adds some interesting rules to reflect the Laundry's complex bureaucracy (It's a government agency) and some neat rules for 'missons' (The party gets some points to spend as a 'mission budget' on everything from occult tools to SAS teams).

To be honest, if you prefer modern-day gaming over 1920s or other historical periods, I'd recommend checking out the Laundry as it's got a lot of the CoC BRP 'Core' but with a bit more structure and add-ons to make it a bit more 'mission' oriented. Also, the Laundry setting adds a bit of dry humor to the setting that can actually make horror work better.

I'm going to agree with Balance and emphasis the following:
1) You can get by perfectly well with the main rulebook
2) As the Keeper, you're going to do the lionshare of the work, even more so than with other systems. You have to craft a fantastic story that your players will feel compelled to interact with. As Balance said: Horror roleplaying is hard.

BRP (the system Call of Cthulhu uses) is very freeform. The advantage is it's very open for tinkering.

Assuming your players are on the same page (a big assumption...) you could run CoC as more 'heroic' by making spells and such easier to use, or play a very deep role-playing-heavy game where life and death is all decided by what people say. You can do anything with BRP (but, as the other side of that coin, you may have to make up your own rules for a lot of stuff.)

The key to a good game is atmosphere. The people over at yog-sothoth.com are great for advice.
Some advice for you and your players:
If you have a gun, remember to save a bullet for yourself.
Have the players create several investigators and have them on stand-by for when one dies the next one jumps right in, with a reasonable story.
There are plenty of adventures/campaigns already published, and a few in the main book, so you don't need to make your own...trust me, it isn't easy to make your own.
Be prepared for every possible thing your players can do...and don't be surprised when they don't do any of them.
Handouts are your friend.
Don't worry if they spend lots of time, maybe even a session, going over notes and clues, that's part of the game too.

I played CoC for a while and trust me when I say do not try to make your own campaign on your first time being a Keeper. Hell, lots of the published campaigns don't even get it right and some of the people have been doing it a while. Find a couple of adventures that won't take more then 1-3 sessions and run them through it. If they like it then get the main book, an adventure and a 1920's catalog. If you want more modern then Delta Green is definitely the way to go...honestly, get it anyway, it's a good read.

Like it was suggested, there is a lot that goes in to running a game for a Keeper. So make time to prepare notes and handouts for the players. Also be prepared that even though you felt like all options were laid out for them, they will find some way to come up with a new one.

Remind them, and yourself, it is OK they died...that's what can happen.

I was a Keeper for many, many years. The advice previously given is very solid.

One of the old books had a great and pithy bit of advice -- "Wandering monsters are the bane of this game." All encounters and events should be crafted for specific effect. And stepping back a bit from that, adventures (at least the multi-session ones) require a certain amount of complexity in the way you layer clues, etc. Handouts are indeed an important part of it all. I agree with the advice that you should stick with shorter, premade adventures for while until you and your players get the feel for it.

Normally, I gave beginning players and groups advice about the game. For instance, it's best to have a team of semi-specialists than characters with their skills spread out all over. This seems like very basic RPG advice, but in my experience beginning CoC players dump too many points into combat skills, even with professor-type characters that have no business being within a half-mile of combat.

Don't be afraid to set some real-world atmosphere too. Sometimes we played in a dark basement at a table lit by an oil lamp, and I think it really helped set the mood.

The description of combat in CoC is accurate. I think I'd add that as a Keeper, you can't be afraid to kill characters, especially if they do something dumb. This is an extreme example, but one group I GMed lost every character before they even encountered anything Mythos-related. This after I gave them about three opportunities to avoid a scrap they had no business being involved in. When your GM says more than once "I really don't think you want to do this," and you do it anyway, you deserve what you get.

Players with a D&D background, etc. are definitely going to have an adjustment period. But if they're good players, they'll adjust. Really, all it takes is to approach your character and situation like it exists in the real world. If IRL you knew there were horrible beasties living in a certain cave (and you needed to take them out), would you go crawling through it to fight them at close quarters or just dynamite the thing, hope you got them and call it a day?

IIRC, one of the old books also gave the advice that scenarios should be hard enough that one character dies. That DOESN'T mean you have a quota, nor that you need to even average one death per adventure. It's just saying that the game should be at a certain level of difficulty and have real threats that endanger the characters. This plays right back into atmosphere...if they just cruise through without a scratch, it isn't very scary horror gaming, is it? CoC should be a game with a "whew" at the end for the survivors.