JK Rowling was revealed as a secret author of a The Cuckoo's Calling, a crime novel under the guise of male debut writer Robert Galbraith.
In top-secret fashion, she published the novel under the name Robert Galbraith.
The critics were praised Robert Galbraith’s detective story The Cuckoo’s Calling and marked him out as a writer to watch.
The book reminded the crime writer Val McDermid of “why I fell in love with crime fiction in the first place”. On the novel’s back cover, Mark Billingham, another crime writer, described its central character, Cormoran Strike, a private eye, as “one of the most unique and compelling detectives I’ve come across in years”.
The publisher’s website also described that Galbraith was a pseudonym for a former Royal Military Police investigator who had left in 2003 to work in the civilian security industry.
As it turned out, none of the information was true. J.K.Rowling turned out to be the real Author who has previously published eight novels (seven in the Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy published in September 2012).
"He left the military in 2003 and has been working since then in the civilian security industry," the publisher's website said. "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."
The Sunday Times was curious to find out who this mystery novelist really was with the help of a hint that "he" used an agent, editor and publisher who had worked with Rowling.
“I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer, because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience,” she said in a statement. “It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”
While the novel received had already received decent praise before the secret was out, the disclosure that Rowling was the author skyrocketed the book's sales.
The novel that originally only sold 1,500 copies in Britain shot to No. 1 on both the U.S. and British Amazon best-seller lists since the news broke of the true author.
Crime writer Peter James told the Sunday Times: "I thought it was by a very mature writer, and not a first-timer."
Kate Mills, fiction editor at Orion Books, admitted she had turned down the crime novel, describing it as "well-written but quiet".
"So, I can now say that I turned down JK Rowling. I did read and say no to Cuckoo's Calling. Anyone else going to confess?" she tweeted.
Waterstones booksellers said: "This is the best act of literary deception since Stephen King was outed as Richard Bachman back in the 1980s."
Its Oxford Street branch even tweeted: "SPECIAL OFFER: For today only, ALL of our books were written by JK Rowling!"
Others also posted on Twitter to react to the news.
Comedian Michael Moran wrote: "Idea for publishers: 1: Reveal that ALL books were written by JK Rowling. 2: Sales of all books soar by 150,000%. 3: Industry saved."
"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,” said Rowling.
"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,” she added.
The second book in the crime series is planned to be published next summer, but it will continue to remain under the authorship of Galbraith, not Rowling.
In previous interviews, Rowling has expressed that she would prefer to write novels after Harry Potter under a pseudonym.
Rowling is a self-established fan of the pen name. Her other novels’ cover name J.K. Rowling is also a pseudonym, standing for "Joanne Kathleen."