Robert Galbraith Books in Order

Robert Galbraith is the pen name J.K. Rowling uses for her crime fiction. The name first appeared on the cover of The Cuckoo's Calling in April 2013, attached to a biography claiming Galbraith was a former Royal Military Police investigator who had left the armed forces in 2003 to work in civilian security.

The debut novel received warm reviews. Publishers Weekly called it a "stellar debut," praising its complex protagonist and baffling crime. Crime writers like Val McDermid publicly admired the assured voice of this apparent newcomer. The book sold around 1,500 copies.

Then, on July 14, 2013, everything changed.

A Twitter tip led The Sunday Times to investigate. Using computer analysis software, academics compared the text of The Cuckoo's Calling to works by other authors, including J.K. Rowling. The stylistic fingerprints matched. When the paper contacted Rowling's agent, they confirmed the truth: Robert Galbraith was Rowling all along.

Within hours, the book jumped from 4,709th place on Amazon to number one. Sales increased by over 150,000 percent overnight.

The leak traced back to a lawyer at the firm handling Rowling's affairs. He had mentioned it to his wife, who told a friend, who tweeted about it. The law firm later apologized and made a substantial charitable donation to the Soldiers' Charity.

Rowling had hoped to keep the secret longer. She had wanted to experience what it was like to start over, to receive feedback without the weight of the Harry Potter phenomenon. She later said that being Robert Galbraith had been "such a liberating experience" and that it was "pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name."

The name itself has a simple origin.

Robert comes from Robert F. Kennedy, one of Rowling's personal heroes, and also because she simply likes the name. Galbraith is stranger. As a child, she had inexplicably wanted to be called Ella Galbraith. She doesn't know where she first heard the surname or why it stuck with her. She considered using "L.A. Galbraith" for the crime series but decided against initials for obvious reasons.

There's an amusing footnote: she only remembered after publication that there was a famous economist named J.K. Galbraith. She worried people might notice the connection and work out the truth. They didn't.

Rowling also wanted to take her writing persona as far away from herself as possible. When she revealed herself to her editor, David Shelley, who had enjoyed the book without knowing who wrote it, one of the first things he said was that he never would have guessed a woman wrote it. She took this as a compliment, joking that she had successfully channeled her "inner bloke."

The Cormoran Strike series now includes eight novels and has been adapted into a BBC television series starring Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger. Rowling continues to publish the books under the Galbraith name, keeping a clear distinction from her other work.

She has said she plans to write at least ten books in the series. Each novel is a thick, character-driven mystery that feels more indebted to Agatha Christie and P.D. James than to modern action-packed thrillers. They follow their detective and his partner, Robin Ellacott, solving cases the old-fashioned way: through interviews, surveillance, and persistence.

The identity reveal might have been premature, but it proved something Rowling wanted to know. The book was good enough to be published and praised on its own merit. Everything that came after was just the strange, inevitable consequence of being one of the most famous authors in the world.