JK Rowling says villain who wears women's clothes is based on real cases

The author’s new Robert Galbraith novel, Troubled Blood, has faced accusations of transphobia

JK Rowling has said that the character of Dennis Creed, the serial killer in her new novel who has provoked accusations of transphobia because he dresses up in a woman’s coat and wig, is loosely based on two real-life murderers.

Troubled Blood, in which private detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott investigate the case of a female GP who disappeared decades earlier, was published earlier this week by Rowling, writing as Robert Galbraith. A review in the Telegraph prompted widespread attacks on the author, including a Twitter hashtag #RIPJKRowling, after it described one of the possible suspects in the disappearance of the GP, Dennis Creed, as a “transvestite serial killer”, asking “what critics of Rowling’s stance on trans issues will make of a book whose moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress”. Others hit back, with Nick Cohen suggesting the Telegraph review misrepresented a novel in which “transvestism barely features”.

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