JK Rowling Revealed as Mystery Author

British cover art for The Cuckoo’s Calling.

Heads up, Rowling fans! There’s a new J.K. Rowling book out there, and has been for months. This weekend it was revealed that Rowling wrote a new mystery novel under a different name. The Cuckoo’s Calling was published back in April under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The novel, a mystery about an Afghanistan war vet and his office temp trying to solve the death of a supermodel, received great reviews, including a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly describing it as a “stellar debut.” Despite being critically acclaimed, it did not sell many copies, though that will probably soon change.

The writing of the book, apparently, was so suspiciously good that people suspected it was written by an already established author (note that the name Robert Galbraith roughly translates to “Famous Stranger”). After an anonymous tip said that the book was Rowling’s, The Sunday Times hired a linguistic expert to analyze Rowling’s writing and compare it to The Cuckoo’s Calling. After that, Rowling herself released a statement confirming the truth, a statement you can read on her official website:

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.

Reportedly a new edition of the book will be released with an acknowledgement that Rowling is Galbraith and a sequel is one the way. Though no doubt that said sequel will be released with much more fanfare and to larger sales.

What do you think? Excited that there’s a new Rowling book you can go out and read right now? Disappointed that you didn’t know until just now? Let us know in the comments below!

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