J.K. Rowling: Secret Crime Novelist?
"Even Hermoine might have been fooled by this one. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was unmasked Sunday as the author of The Cuckoo’s Calling, a detective novel published in April. Writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, the book had received rave reviews, but the Sunday Times launched an investigation into how a “first-time author with a background in the civilian security industry could write such an assured debut novel.” The paper noticed similarities between the novel and Rowling’s other work—and that the publisher, Little, Brown, had also published Rowling’s first adult work. Her publicist confirmed her identity on Sunday to the rest of us Muggles." From The Huffington Post.
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What J. K. Rowling did was nothing new in English literature. During the 1920s and 30s in Britain a series of romantic novels by a writer calling herself "Mary Westmacott" were pubished in Great Britain with great success. When the true identity of the novelist was uncovered, it became understandable why she used an alias. It would, after all, be a challenge to sell romances said to be written by Agatha Christie. Mrs. Christie, by the way, was inspired to use "Westmacott" by Arthur Conan Doyle, who once wrote a series of short stories with a problem solving female by that name as the main character.
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