The Silkworm: Chapters 28-29: "Her practical thoughts for his comfort"

Despite my feelings about Robin risking missing the funeral, Chapter 28 is a personal favorite of mine for a number of reasons. 

• First, it is the first time Robin (and we readers) see Strike using crutches, and the vulnerable state that leaves him in. Hearing about the inconveniences and indignities this entails (having to search for a safety pin for his pants leg, sliding down the stairs on his butt like a child) helps us appreciate how important the prothesis is for his life and his work. 
• Second, this is perhaps Robin's best opportunity to shine since she modeled the green dress at Vashti's. She shows her house-elf like efficiency, getting a practical four-wheel drive car for the journey, packing coffee and shortbread for the journey and navigating the snowy highway in a way that almost immediately appears to neutralize Strike's conditioned aversion to any non-professional drivers (especially women ones). This is before she shows off her advanced driving skills and saves them from a near-certain pileup with the jack-knifing center. 
• Third, we see Strike letting his guard down around Robin for the first time in a while---  and no eleven pints of Doom Bar to facilitate the sharing. As he puts it: "His antipathy to discussing his leg had been dissolved by warm coffee, their discussion and her practical thoughts for his comfort."

The Silkworm Chapters 25-27: Cane, cane, go away, come again another day.

Chapter 25 finds the Denmark Street Duo heading out on an investigative journey in the snow, first to Talgarth Road, where they are refused entrance to the house and resort to skulking around in the neighbors' yards, then intending to check out four key suspects' houses: Daniel Chard's, Jerry Waldegrave's, Kathryn Kent's and Liz Tassel's.  Unfortunately, Strike's leg is acting up:

He was feeling the need for a stick ever more strongly. On his release from hospital Charlotte had given him an elegant antique Malacca cane that she had claimed belonged to a great-grandfather. The handsome old stick had been too short for Strike, causing him to list to the right as he walked. When she had packaged up his things to remove from her flat, the cane had not been among them. 

Once his leg gives out completely on the West Brompton bridge, Robin also recognizes he needs help:

"Haven't you got a stick or something?"

Wish I had."

"We can get one. Chemists sometimes sell them. We'll find one." Then, after another momentary hesitation, she said:

"Lean on me."

"I'm too heavy."

"To balance. Use me like a stick. Do it."

Notice here that Robin's suggestion is that Strike buy a stick, but Strike buys it himself. When Strike gets in a cab (sans Robin!) to continue his mission in Chapter 26, he heads to:

The home of Elizabeth Tassel, took note of the route he traveled and would have arrived in a mere four minutes had he not spotted a Boots. He asked the driver to pull up and wait, and reemerged from the chemists shortly afterwards, walking much more easily with the aid of an adjustable stick. 

Interestingly, both sticks reappear, as so many elements do, in the even numbered books. However, in later mentions, there is an important change that may or may not be a simple error. In Lethal White, at the restaurant with Charlotte, she picks up the adjustable stick that has fallen to the floor.

"Where's the cane I gave you? The Malacca one?"

"You kept it."

"Who bought you this one? Robin?"

Amidst all of Charlotte's paranoid and frequently wild accusations, she occasionally made uncannily accurate guesses.

"She did, as a matter of fact."

The Silkworm Chapters 18-24: More Matthew-hating and the Anstis Brats.

Chapters 18-19 give us an echo to Chapter 10: a rw between Robin and the Flobberworm, followed by Robin arriving at the office the next day, still feeling the aftereffects and finding her job far more rewarding than her home life. We will see this pattern repeat itself multiple times, as Robin grows more and more into her true self, culminating with her finally leaving Matthew in Lethal White.  

We see Matthew speaking with his habitually hypochondriac mother, and rolling his eyes at her complaints, completely unaware that perhaps for the only time, he should be taking her seriously. Being his usual hypocritical Flobberwormy self, he dare to be offended at Robin's caring more about the fact that her boss has just found a missing man murdered than the mother whose concerns he himself was dismissing; and a major fight erupts resulting in Robin, for first time (as far as we know) refusing to share a bed with him and refusing to back down, even to the extend of getting herself out of the flat the next morning, before he can renew contact with her. 

While Robin may be feeling "a familiar frustration and anger towards the men in her life... Matthew for failing to see why her job mattered to her so much; Strike, for failing to recognize her potential" we see an early indicator that Strike and the job will ultimately win:

But he had called her when he had found the body... She had managed to slip in a question----"Who else have you told?"--- and he had answered, without any sign that he knew what it would mean to her. "No one only you."

Despite Robin's early start, Strike beats her to the office in the morning, with "a suspicion that he had not confided to Anstis driving him to finish the book as a matter of urgency." Apparently Strike is already convinced there is a clue to the murder in the book. 

The Silkworm: 10-17: From "It isn't the Mango Tree, but..." to "Oh yes, turns out he would go there..."

Dear readers:  I've been derelict in my blogging for the last couple of weeks thanks to unusually high work demands and a nasty respiratory infection that knocked me out for a couple of weeks.  But I'm back and planning double-length posts until I catch up. Fortunately, The Silkworm is the shortest of the Strike volumes I plan to re-read in anticipation of The Hallmarked Man. So hopefully, I'll be back on schedule soon. 

Chapter 10 starts with Robin arriving at the office still suffering the after-effects of a massive row with the Flobberworm. Looking back on this argument in retrospect makes us think worse, if possible, of dear old Matt. First, he gets mad over Robin inviting Strike to the wedding when, as becomes clear later, his own boss Jemima will be invites. Second, he has a lot of nerve snorting when Robin brings up Sarah Shadlock and the hots she had for Matthew, given that Matthew did actually cheat with Sarah during the worst period in Robin's life. For me, the absence of Matthew is one major reason the later books are more fun to re-read than the earlier one. 

We see another great example of Robin's initiative when she shows Strike Kathryn Kent's blog, which gives them "loads" of information about Kent's affair with Owen Quine, aka, "The Famous Writer," as well as a few messages from the hot-tempered Pippa. During this read-through, I was struck by the similarities between Kath Kent and Matthew, given that they are both "pretenders" of a sort, eager to impress others, and more impressed with themselves than most other people are. Kath, with her "Literary Life" blog, presents herself as a writer of fine fiction that the rest of the world (including the professional publishers) is too ignorant to appreciate. Similarly, Matthew, at the King's Arms, speaks of his professional expertise:

Every sentence was angled, like a mirror, to show himself in the best possible light: his cleverness, his quick thinking, his besting of slower, stupider yet more senior colleagues, his patronage of the dullards working for the firm he was auditing. 

The truth is, from what we see of Kath's blog amateurishly-written blog, and the small sample of The Melina Saga we are given, Liz Tassel's assessment of her writing talent is pretty much on point. Honestly, I've seen Teen Titans fan fiction by 14-year-olds that was better. And, if we believe Tom Turpin's drunken rant in LW, Matthew is not the accountant he is cracked up to be, either. And I can't remember if his team actually wins any of the sporting events he plays in.  I know they lost the charity cricket match. 

The Silkworm: Chapters 7-9: Our first looks at Liz Tassel and Kathryn Kent

"No, or I'd've bloody well asked them, wouldn't I? You're the detective, you find him!" 

Is it just me, or is Leonora a bit rude here, considering Strike was willing to take this case on with no guarantee of payment?

I also found it interesting that Strike chose to get one of Quine's books---  and apparently one of his worst, The Brothers Balzac--- at this stage of the investigation. While he knows that Quine's disappearance is linked to the controversy surrounding his latest manuscript, there is no indication yet that that the contents of Bombyx Mori itself could be a clue, let alone the contents of a book published some twenty years earlier. This seems to be an effort to "get into the head" of the victim---  much like when Strike reviewed Lula Landry's emails in CC, and Robin sampled Margot Bamborough's favorite perfume and music in TB. Except, Strike doesn't even know he is a victim yet

Re-reads are often notable for the new insights you see in the killer interviews and all the clues that jump out at you. l was struck this time by how dark and disgusting Liz Tassel's office was. Between the puking dog, the shabby decor, the abuse of her staff---  they both are literally having to clean up after her very sick dog--and the hacking cough, it should have been clear there was something really off about this organization from the get-go. While Strike sees the pictures and the dog bed as indicating sentimentality in this Dragon Lady, in retrospect, even Old Beau is being mistreated. 

Starting off with The Silkworm, Chapters 1-6: Will Dominic Culpepper return in The Hallmarked Man?

Welcome to part 2 of my even-numbered re-read of the Cormoran Strike series, where I will be looking at Book 2 of the series, The Silkworm.  There are a number of reasons to expect echoes of this book in The Hallmarked Man.  The Silkworm takes place over just a two months in winter 2010, from early November until just before Christmas, when the UK was experiencing record-breaking snows. While we don't know the exact timeline of THM yet, we have been told the storyline will include Strike's birthday (November  23rd) and the Christmas season (JKR/RG's has tweeted that Dean Martin's "Silver Bells" will be featured)-- so at least part of the book will be set during a similar time of year. For the record, there were five named winter storms during the 2016-17 season, although none seemed to have a huge impact on London, so if they disrupt our heroes' plans, it will probably be during their travels. 

The opening chapter of The Silkworm begins with a vignette that seemingly has little to do with the rest of the mystery: Strike meeting News of the World journalist Dominic Culpepper in a breakfast cafe to pass off some incriminating evidence on a wealthy British Lord. This is our first introduction to the public-schoolboy-turned tabloid reporter--- which I would think an odd career choice for an upper-class Brit, who is at least related to titled people, but maybe tabloids aren't considered as trashy there?  Culpepper will turn up again in Book 3 (where he is angered at not getting the inside scoop on the severed leg story, then later publishes Strike's want ad for a new assistant that baits the trap for Donald Laing) and in Book 4 (where he hires Mitch Patterson to dig up dirt on Jasper Chiswell, after Strike turns him down). Then, he goes silent until The Running Grave, where Fergus Robertson first name-drops him as a journalist Strike dislikes. Then, at book's end, we hear that he is a player in the Case of the Arsehole Cricketer, as the married journalist who is allegedly sleeping with the client's ex in exchange for news stories. Given the unusual number of details mentioned for an end-of-the-book case, it seems likely that this case, like that of Miss Jones, will span two books. It could be very interesting to see Strike investigate his old employer. 

A couple of interesting notes on Strike and Culpepper's conversation:

• Strike warns Culpepper that hacking phones is illegal. Barely eight months later, the News of the World will be forced out of business due to a scandal involving illegal phone-hacking. Culpepper will be one of multiple unemployed NotW journalists to get hired by The Sun. 
• Culpepper's parting jab to Strike, asking if he "f*cked" the Lord's PA to get the details of his misbehavior, is a bit rich considering that, by 2016, the married Culpepper appears to be doing just that to the ex-Mrs. Cricketer. If Strike manages to nail Culpepper for that in THM, it will be a nice reflection to The Silkworm. 

The Ink Black Heart comes to a Grand Finale: Final wrap-ups and echoes.

I must say, I love the talk Robin has with Zoe nearly as much as I love the one with Rachel (and I really hope that the two of them eventually met and were able to support each other in the aftermath of the Drek's Game scandal). I would have loved some indicator in the Coda that told us what became of Zoe, because I am genuinely worried about this young lady at the end of the evening. She's lost her boyfriend, which has to hurt despite his criminal predation. She's lost access to Drek's Game, her major source of social support. And she is living in terror of Anomie trying to kill her. Robin, as a good psychology student, should have recognized that Zoe is at risk of another suicide attempt. given her history. This had me speculating: if Robin had thought to ask someone to check on her at the Z, who would she ask?  I can think of three possibilities:

• Mariam: Pro's: Zoe knows her and Mariam clearly has compassion for her, given the immediate job offer.  Cons: She would probably talk Zoe into moving into North Grove immediately, and, while that might be an improvement over her current hovel, I would worry about her staying there unless Nils and Pez are locked into chastity belts, and Bram shipped off to a high security boarding school Also, how would Miriam react to the news that Tim Ashcroft, clearly a pal and a regular North Grove visitor (and volunteer in the special needs classroom!) is a pedophile?
• Ilsa: Pros: Ilsa would be very compassionate to Zoe, especially since she is just coming off a case where she assisted another vulnerable young girl that had been manipulated by online "friends." She could certainly educate Zoe on the legalities of the situation and offer assurances that Zoe can in no way be held responsible.  Cons: Zoe doesn't know her and might not be too keen on opening the hotel room door to anyone, even if Jessica/Buffypaws sent them. 
• Vanessa: Pros: General bad-ass and someone you'd want on your side when dealing with either predatory or generalized arsehole men. Might be able to solve the problem quickly by going and arresting the guy. Cons: Again, Zoe doesn't know her. and she might be a bit to aggressive about her plans for Tim. 

Another thought I had this read-through:  I wonder if Zoe's amazing talent for art could get her a job on the Ink Black Heart movie? I'd rather see her drawn into the fold than Pez.