The men and women pouring out their loathing of Rowling online could not have read the unreleased book: not that their ignorance bothered them in slightest, as no mob on the rampage in history has ever stopped to read a novel.

One person had read it, however, a reviewer for the Daily Telegraph. And it was his assertion that set off the hate fest. The meat of the book, he declared is 'the investigation into a cold case: the disappearance of GP Margot Bamborough in 1974, thought to have been a victim of Dennis Creed, a transvestite serial killer. One wonders 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'.

That slippery 'seems' should have put readers on their guard. The moral of the book is not 'never trust a man in a dress'. Transvestism barely features. When it does, nothing is made of the fact that the killer wears a wig and a woman’s coat (not a dress) as a disguise when approaching one of his victims. Maybe this tiny detail is enough for the wilfully ignorant to damn Rowling as a 'witch' – I’m not making it up, for this is how Everton goalkeeper turned Twitter celebrity Neville Southall described her. But no one else should be satisfied.

In contrast to her opposition to Scottish nationalism, which to my mind makes a clumsy appearance in the novel, Rowling makes no attempt to nudge the reader towards today’s arguments about women-only spaces and the safeguards or lack of them governing the clinics that offer hormone suppressing drugs or surgery. Nothing flows from Creed’s disguise. It leads to no wider conclusions.

In one respect, however, her critics are right to scream 'witch'. Rowling’s writing is becoming ever-more feminist; ever-more conscious of women’s physical and emotional abuse. The novel’s descriptions of how men condescend to Robin Ellacott, how they send her lewd pictures, grab her, talk over her, and refuse to accept her opinions because they are from a woman form one of the novels most convincing themes.

In this sense, if nothing else, Rowling’s latest work honestly mirrors her online life. She knows, as her characters know, that women who speak out of turn find themselves alone in a free-fire zone.