If you’re a best-selling author, everything you do gets scrutinized.  If you’re a best-selling author that single-handedly re-ignited a passion for reading in young people the world over, you can’t take a breath that someone, somewhere doesn’t want to know about. So it is for JK Rowling. Most writers wait their whole lives to be a best-selling author. When your first attempt becomes the most popular series in history, you might want some anonymity after that.

‘The Cuckoo’s Calling‘, a crime fiction offering from publisher Little, Brown, is being followed up by ‘The Silkworm‘ to be published on June 19. The book sees the return of PI Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott. The synopsis released by the publisher is this: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, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives: meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.