The good news is there will be many more novels from J.K. Rowling, real name Joanne Rowling, who had officially retired after the last of the modern era’s most famous series — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — and a first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy.
The bad news for Harry Potter fans is the iconic teenaged hero may not spring back to life although such magic cannot possibly be beyond him. The worst news is that there must be a few publishers out there who must be kicking themselves for turning down the manuscript from an avowed former military police investigator writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
This curious affair of one of the world’s best-selling authors adapting a pseudonym just to liberate herself from the burden of “Potter” expectation has ended with a huge increase in sales just on Amazon.com. Mulholland Books must now be regretting not giving away the game sooner instead of waiting for a newspaper to force the author to emerge from her invisible cloak.
The most famous bard of them all said, “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose; By any other name would smell as sweet”; he must be chuckling in his grave. The moral of the story is you really can’t keep a good author down. The Cuckoo’s Calling will be climbing the list now, again not such a bad thing in an increasingly digital world that may have been losing touch with the power and allure of the written word.