Tha Hallmarked Man Real-Time Re-Read, Chapters 73-75: Two restaurants and a hotel room

"The dimly lit basement room, which was swathed
in greenery to suggest the rainforest" 

In Chapter 73, Strike surprises Robin by subbing for MIdge and joining her at a restaurant for surveillance. 

At eight o’clock the following evening, Robin, who’d been informed by Two-Times that his wife would be celebrating a female friend’s birthday at Coya, a Latin American restaurant in Mayfair, sat down to watch his so far blameless spouse drinking and eating with seven other women.

 The date is presumably Wednesday, Feb. 8th. Robin is wearing her Ritz outfit (blue dress and opal pendant) but also the matching earrings that RFM gave her for Christmas. This chapter is primarily an information dump, though naturally it is accompanied by Robin's "electric shock in the pit of her stomach" when Strike turns up. 

The Hallmarked Man Real-time Re-read, Chapter 70-72: A new Land Rover and an old friend

The first thing we notice in Chapter 70 is a significant time-jump, after pretty much daily coverage since Chapter 45. It was Thursday, January 19th whe Robin interviewed Fiola; now we've jumped ahead until Tuesday the 24th

On Tuesday morning, Strike sat down to eat breakfast beside an attic window fogged with condensation, and saw that Robin had emailed him overnight. Ever since she’d told him she wasn’t coming to Scotland with him to interview Jade Semple she’d chosen to email when, normally, she’d have phoned.

In addition to still giving Strike the cold shoulder, Robin is only now getting around to emailing the Fiola Fay audio, which seems atypical. She has also discovered that porn producer Craig Wheaton was once a resident of one of Branfoot's homes for boys, though we are not told how she learned this reasonably sensitive bit of information. Strike calls her, but unfortunately, his praise for finding the "link" between Branfoot and de Lion reminds her of his "weak link" line, and she's not ready to forgive that. Strike is trying to pretend things are back to normal but it's not working. 

Will City Walls be to Book Nine What Bridges were to The Hallmarked Man? Connecting the charm bracelet to other clues.

I'm not sure when we've had this many clues to an upcoming Strike book before the title is released.  In addition to multiple twitter hints and headers and the now traditional emojis (much thanks the Strikefans.com for compiling them!) , Galbraith dropped a jackpot shortly before Christmas in the form of a charm bracelet in which all of the charms are promised clues. Many people have talked about this bracelet with far more eloquence and creativity than I could manage, so I will direct you to:

• Nick Jeffery's excellent essay where he identifies all of the charms.
• This mind-blowing blog post by Beatrice Groves on the symbolism of charms, with particular attention to the Psalm book.
• The most recent and very interesting Strike and Ellacott Files podcast. 

What interests me more is looking for possible connections between the clues. Here's something that has jumped out at me recently:  the use of walls and fortresses. As you may recall, bridges abounded in the pre-Hallmarked build-up, and emerged as a central theme in the final story. I am wondering if we might be seeing something similar with walled cites for Book 9. 

The Hallmarked Man Real-Time Re-read, Chapter 69: The road back begins.

The good news is , we hit the low point at the end of Part Five, so things will only go up from here. Although, that is not inherently obvious from the opening lines of Chapter 69. 

So that was that, thought Robin: Strike had lied to her face. He who berated her for not immediately informing him of a minor incident (for the purposes of her present resentment, it suited Robin to minimise the impact on her of the gorilla-faced, dagger-waving stalker) was deliberately concealing a further risk to the agency of scandal and press intrusion (and it suited her to attribute all her rage and hurt to this, rather than investigate the weight in the pit of her stomach, which grew heavier every time she thought of Strike as a father).

The Hallmarked Man Real-time Re-read Chapter 68: The most painful chapter in the book.

"Wooden tables were set outside, 
sheltered by square blue umbrellas."

We are now heading into the last chapter in Part Five, Chapter 68, the disastrous debrief in the Swan Taphouse in Ironbridge. This exchange, I think, was particularly disappointing because the pub was one of the Twitter hints that Galbraith dropped prior to publication. Given that swans have such a connection to romance in the Strike series,  it was not expected to be the site of Strike and Robin's worst fight since Mucky Ricci, and possibly since Noel Brockbank. And, in some ways, this fight was more painful to watch: the two others were both about Robin doing something in the context of a case that she felt was necessary, but which Strike didn't like. Brutal as it was, there was only one real issue to reconcile on to restore the relationship. This time, we see the partners and alleged best friends take multiple, and highly personal shots at each other. 

The Hallmarked Man Real-Time Re-read, Chapters 65-67: Cracking the mandala code?

In Chapter 65, Robin and Strike finally converge on the same place physically (Ironbridge) though, as we shall see, they remain far apart emotionally.  This will lead to the harshest test of their relationship certainly since 2014, when they had a two-week fight over Mucky Ricci and Robin nearly smashed the office door. This might even be the worst things have been between them since 2011, when he sacked her.

The Hallmarked Man Real-Time Re-Read, Chapters 60-64: Why Robin is a pit pony and Valentine Longcaster is Bellatrix Lestrange.

Greetings from snowy (actually, mostly sleety) Virginia, where roads are practically impassible!  Playing catch-up on the re-read. 

Strike and Robin continue their physical and emotional distance from each other in this next section. Strike has only one brief chapter (61) ,so I'll start with that, then address Robin's visit to God's Own Junkyard and its aftermath. 

Two and a half hours after leaving Crieff, Strike broke his journey south in the small Scottish town of Moffat, where a café in the market square supplied him with a coffee and a burger and a welcome chance to rest his right knee.