The first time JK Rowling was mistaken for a male author, she barely had to try at all. One wonders how her time spent in the publishing industry contributed not only to her choice of a male nom de plume but to the attitudes espoused in the early works of ‘Robert Galbraith’. There is an element, at least in the first two Galbraith books, that greatly assists in masking the author’s gender: the simmering undercurrent of the protagonist’s sexism.