Robert Galbraith is J.K. Rowling’s pen name. J.K. Rowling is the well-known author of the Harry Potter fantasy novel series. Rowling is also a notable film producer and screenwriter. Joanne “Jo” Rowling was born in Yate, Gloucestershire, on July 31, 1965.
Robert Galbraith primarily writes crime fiction. Robert Galbraith is best known for the book series “The Cormoran Strike.”
Rowling had created a complex backstory for Galbraith. He was a member of the Royal Military Police and had left in 2003 to work in private security.
The author’s ploy lasted about two months before being exposed by the arts editor of The Sunday Times. He sent tests of Galbraith’s and Rowling’s work to be examined. When Brooks got word that the writing styles were similar, he disclosed Rowling’s secret. The sales of Galbraith’s ‘debut’ novel skyrocketed.
The Cuckoo’s Calling was Robert Galbraith’s first book written under the pen name. It featured the story of Cormoran Strike, a private investigator. Cormoran is hired in The Cuckoo’s Calling by the brother of a supermodel that died in what was ruled a suicide. The strike must investigate the case to see whether his client’s sister was murdered.
Robert Galbraith Books in order
Cormoran Strike
- The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013)
- The Silkworm (2014)
- Career of Evil (2015)
- Lethal White (2018)
- Troubled Blood (2020)
Similar authors
- The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins follows a divorced woman. She becomes intertwined in a missing person inquiry that guarantees to shake her world.
- Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad follows three missing children. When the police come, only one of the kids is clutching a tree trunk in terror. With blood-splattered sneakers, he is unable to remember any details of what had happened.
See also: Liane Moriarty Books in Order.
Most recommended books
- Troubled Blood (Cormoran Strike, #5) (4.36 Goodreads score)
- Lethal White (Cormoran Strike, #4) (4.22 Goodreads score)
- Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike, #3) (4.20 Goodreads score)
- The Cuckoo’s Calling, Vol. 2 (4.13 Goodreads score)
- The Cuckoo’s Calling, Vol. 1 (4.09 Goodreads score)
Awards
Career of Evil won the Best Audiobook Award in 2016 in the category of Best Mystery Novel.
Upcoming releases
The Ink Black Heart, Robert Galbraith’s next book, will be published on August 30th, 2022. It’s the latest installment in the Cormoran Strike Series.
Book summaries
The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013)
After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he’s living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry — known to her friends as the Cuckoo — famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man. You may think you know detectives, but you’ve never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you’ve never seen them under an investigation like this.
The Silkworm (2014)
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days – as he has done before — and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, he discovers that Quine’s disappearance is no coincidence. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published, it would ruin lives – meaning that almost everyone in his life would have motives to silence him. When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, Strike must race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any he has encountered before . . .
Career of Evil (2015)
When Robin Ellacott opens an unexpected delivery, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg. Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but just as alarmed. He suspects that four people from his past could be responsible – and any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality. With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike has essentially ruled out, he and Robin take matters into their own hands and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them . . .
Lethal White (2018)
When a troubled young man named Billy asks Cormoran Strike to help him investigate a crime he witnessed as a child, the private eye is left deeply troubled. While Billy is obviously mentally distressed and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic. Trying to get to the bottom of Billy’s story, Strike and Robin Ellacott – once his assistant, now a partner in the agency – set off on a twisting trail that leads them through the backstreets of London, into a secretive inner sanctum within Parliament, and to a beautiful but sinister manor house deep in the countryside. And during this labyrinthine investigation, Strike’s own life is far from straightforward. His newfound fame as a private eye means he can no longer operate behind the scenes as he once did. Plus, his relationship with his former assistant is more fraught than it ever has been; Robin is now invaluable to Strike in the business, but their personal relationship is much, much trickier than that.
Troubled Blood (2020)
Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough—who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974. Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike. As Strike and Robin investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer, and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly . . .
