The buzz about Robert Galbraith’s first book, “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” has been pretty exceptional: “(It) combines a complex and compelling sleuth and an equally well-formed and unlikely assistant with a baffling crime… A stellar debut,” said the critic from Publisher’s Weekly.
Trick is, the crime novel wasn’t a debut. Rather, it was penned by J.K. Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” series.
“I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience,” Rowling told The Sunday Times after her authorship was revealed. “It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”
This isn’t exactly the first time Rowling has gone by an alternative name. Born Joanne Rowling, the acclaimed author was encouraged to go by an androgynous name because her publisher feared young boys wouldn’t want to read a book by a female.
By changing her name yet again, Rowling joins a club of established writers who opt to go by pseudonyms: Stephen King, John Banville, Anne Rice and more… Unfortunately for Rowling, Galbraith took his last breath when her identity was revealed. (The cause of death was probably the same as Stephen King’s alter ego, Richard Bachman, who King said died of “cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia.”)
