Alright. Sit tight for this one, because it gets a little wild. The Cuckoo’s Calling is a detective novel written by someone named Roger Galbraith—a first time writer nobody had ever heard of. Before Friday, it’d sold just over a thousand copies—which, in the publishing industry, is about the same as not selling any copies at all. However, the Sunday Times got their hands on a copy and gave it a stellar review, with one employee tweeting they couldn’t believe it was the work of a novice. Then things got weird: the employee got an anonymous tweet back that said The Cuckoo’s Calling had actually been written by Harry Potter author and noted gazillionaire, J.K. Rowling. The employee asked this person how they knew. They responded [sic] “I just now,” and deleted their account.
Sunday Times arts editor, Richard Brooks, decided to look into the case. He discovered The Cuckoo’s Calling had been edited and published by the people who worked on Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy. He also started reading the book, and determined that it was just too good to be the work of a first-timer. Before he asked Rowling’s people directly, he sent a copy of Vacancy, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and The Cuckoo’s Calling off to a few linguistic experts, who confirmed that the three books were pretty similar.
From there, Brooks emailed Camp Rowling and asked them straight-out if she had written The Cuckoo’s Calling. Rowling, for her part, said that ” she’d hoped to keep this secret a little longer” …
