J.K. Rowling Outed as Robert Galbraith, Debut Crime Novelist of The Cuckoo's Calling

Posted on July 14, 2013

J.K. Rowling has been outed as "Robert Galbraith" a debut author whose first hardboiled detective novel got rave reviews. The Sunday Times (UK) started getting suspicious that a debut author could write such a masterfully executed book with complex subplots. It dug a bit deeper and found that the mysterious Galbraith shared a publisher, and editor and an agent with J.K. Rowling.

CNN reports that Rowling fessed up in a statement: "I hoped to keep this secret a little longer, because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience!It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback from publishers and readers under a different name.

"The upside of being rumbled is that I can publicly thank my editor David Shelley, who has been a true partner in crime, all those people at Little, Brown who have been working so hard on The Cuckoo's Calling without realizing that I wrote it, and the writers and reviewers, both in the newspapers and online, who have been so generous to the novel.

"And to those who have asked for a sequel, Robert fully intends to keep writing the series, although he will probably continue to turn down personal appearances."

The Cuckoo's Calling is published by Mulholland Books, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. The novel is a detective story in the vein of P.D. James. The detective is called in to investigate the death of a supermodel. The world of celebrity worship in London provides the backdrop for the mystery. In his author bio Galbraith is described as a former member of the Special Investigative Branch of the Royal Military Police. The official bio says, "He left the military in 2003 and has been working since then in the civilian security industry. The idea for (protagonist) Cormoran Strike grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who returned to the civilian world. 'Robert Galbraith' is a pseudonym."

How absolutely hilarious. Isn't Rowling the sneaky one? She must have been delighted by all the glowing reviews that she knows she earned on her own -- without any help from Harry Potter. The Cuckoo's Calling is now #1 on Amazon.com. The book has seen more than a 500,000% jump in sales after Rowling's confession.