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JK Rowling publishes crime novel under false name JK Rowling publishes crime novel under false name
(about 4 hours later)
The Harry Potter author JK Rowling has secretly written a crime novel under a false name. JK Rowling has spoken of the "liberating experience" of adopting a nom de plume after it was revealed that the Harry Potter creator was behind a critically acclaimed crime novel published under the name Robert Galbraith.
The Sunday Times reported the writer won plaudits for The Cuckoo's Calling, about a war veteran turned private investigator called Cormoran Strike. The Cuckoo's Calling, billed as the debut novel of Galbraith, a pseudonym for a man with a background in the army and the civilian security industry, won praise from crime writers and critics who hailed the author as a new force in the genre.
Rowling used the name Robert Galbraith for the book, which was published in April, and was only rumbled after the newspaper investigated how a first-time novelist could produce such an assured debut work. Writing in the Guardian last week, Val McDermid, the acknowledged queen of the pyschological thriller, described the book as embracing "the best of traditional mystery fiction, private-eye pace and the kind of writing that reminds me why I love this genre".
She said: "I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. However, it appears that for some it was a bit too accomplished for a debut novel, which led the Sunday Times to investigate and reveal the writer's true identity as Britain's best-selling author of all time.
"It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name." Rowling expressed regret that she had been found out. "I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience," she said. "It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name."
According to the Sunday Times, The Cuckoo's Calling has sold 1,500 copies in hardback so far. The book, about a war veteran turned private investigator called Cormoran Strike, and described by the publisher as based on Galbraith's "own experiences and those of his military colleagues", has sold 1,500 copies in hardback since it was released in April.
The book was published by Sphere, part of Little, Brown, which published her last novel, The Casual Vacancy. Also showering praise on the book was another crime writer, Mark Billingham, who described Strike as "one of the most compelling detectives I've come across in years".
It had long been suspected that Rowling was working on a crime novel. When it was announced that the editor of her first book for adults would be David Shelley, who counts McDermid and Billingham among his authors and comes from a background steeped in crime and thriller writing, the Guardian books writer Alison Flood was so sure it would be a crime novel that she wrote: "Bet you a Harry Potter proof that I'm right."
In the event Rowling's first published book for adults was The Casual Vacancy, based on a parish council dispute in the parochial town of Pagford, which was released to much hype in October last year. It soared to the top of the fiction charts but attracted mixed reviews.
A clue to why Rowling decided to adopt a pseudonym for The Cuckoo's Calling might be gleaned from the reception to her first post-Potter novel. Jonathan Ruppin of Foyles said at the time: "No doubt there will be reviewers who have already decided to pour vitriol upon [The Casual Vacancy] no matter its merits."
Rowling's sales from the Harry Potter series amount to more than £237m.
The second Cormoran Strike book is to be published next year, although this time it can expect a great deal more fanfare.