Prisoner of Azkaban-Ink Black Heart links, Part 1: Interrupted birthdays and well-deserved vacations.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Career of Evil (Books #3 in their respective series) have one very clear over-arching connection: both stories involve a deranged filler out to kill one of our major protagonists. Of course, there are also some contrasts: in PoA, the identity of the "killer" is known (Sirius Black) but the popular belief about him is false (he is not actually a killer, but a wrongly convicted prisoner and he does not want to kill Harry, but rather to save him from the real killer, Peter Pettigrew). No one knows the identity of the man stalking and planning to kill "The Secretary" (Donald Laing) until the book's end, but everyone is 100% about his plans to murder Robin; he, unlike Sirius, is actually responsible for multiple other deaths as well. 

Will Prisoner turn out to also have major connections to The Ink Black Heart, Book 3 on the hypothesized second ring that closes the Cormoran Strike Series?  That remains to be seen.  Here, I am going to examine the "prologues of both books." This means the part literally labelled "Prologue" in TIBH, covering the Ritz and the aftermath of the missed kiss, Strike's New Year's Eve stakeout and taking up with Madeline, and Robin's trip to Zermatt. For Harry Potter, it is the first four, pre-Hogwarts chapters: Harry's birthday, the visit from Aunt Marge, his flight from Privet Drive via the Knight Bus after blowing her up and his subsequent three-week vacation in Diagon Alley. Obviously, I am taking a risk comparing four chapters each to start with, given that PoA has 22 chapters and TIBH 107. But, so far, the strategy of grouping the pre-Hogwarts segment with the pre-main-mystery section has served me pretty well.

Chamber of Secrets-Troubled Blood Links, Part 4: Who are the TB equivalents to Lockhart, Aragog and Riddle?

I'm finishing up the look at Chamber of Secrets-Troubled Blood connections, looking at the last three chapters of CoS (covering Harry and Ron's discovery of where the Chamber is, Ginny's abduction, Lockhart's confrontation and eventual obliviation, Ginny's rescue, the debrief with Dumbledore, the encounter with Malfoy, Dobby being set free, the celebratory feast and the journey home) and Chapters 49-73 of Troubled Blood. 

TB, being much, much longer, naturally, has a lot more happening: 

• Strike's second interview with Janice
• Robin's meeting with Brian Tucker
• the joint interview with the Bayliss sisters
• Strike's Easter journey to Cornwall for the scattering of Joan's ashes
• Charlotte's suicide attempt
• Robin's divorce settlement
• the interview with Betty Fuller
• the disaster with Oakden at the American Bar
• the wonderful Chapters 58-59 with both Strike and Robin's declaration of friendship and Morris's sacking
• Robin's visit to Mucky Ricci and the subsequent row with Strike
• Robin's meeting with Jemma and the resolution of the Shifty case
• the trip to Skegness and meeting with Douthwaite
• the Facetime with Gloria Conti and subsequent resolution of the conflicting clues
• Strike's masterful showdown with Creed, which leads to Louise Tucker's remains
• the discovery of Margot's body at the Athorns and 
• the final confrontation and arrest of Janice. 

The novel then gives us a two-part conclusion, first the detectives' meeting with the Phipps, Kim and Oonaugh Kennedy, then Robin's birthday, with Strike finally putting some sentiment into gifts and taking her to buy her own perfume. 

The major point that struck me as the resolutions of all the mysteries unfold is that, once the truth about characters is revealed, some of the major villains start making pretty strong matches for each other. Take Lockhart, for instance,  When comparing CoS to The Silkworm, it is clear from the beginning that Lockhart is an analog to Michael Fancourt, the "vainglorious" bestselling author. We can even connect their names: Fancourt is described as having a shard of ice in his heart, while Lockhart spends a lot of energy courting his fans. But, once unmasked as a fraud, I thought dear old Gilderoy made a convincing match with a superficially unlikely TB baddie.  Find out who after the jump. 

Chamber of Secrets-Troubled Blood Linkages, Part 3: Floods, hearts and visits to the past.

Todays segment covers three chapters of Chamber of Secrets: "The Very Secret Diary" "Cornelius Fudge" and "Aragog" and Chapters 31-48 of Troubled Blood, which takes us to the end of Part 5, and from Strike's post-Christmas visit to Cornwall to Joan's funeral. My start-and stopping points are a bit arbitrary, but I like that the Harry Potter segment is bracketed by Moaning Myrtle, and the Strike segment by Aunt Joan. 

Chamber of Secrets-Troubled Blood Connections, Part 2: The cauldron runs dry.

One question I am regularly asked when I am documenting book-to-book connections is, "Can't you find connections between any two books if you look hard enough, especially when they are by the same author?" My answer, so far, has been a truthful, "I don't know," because I have never gone done this type of detailed, side-by-side analysis between two books for which I had not expected connections. 

However, I do now have at least preliminary evidence that I am capable of going through at least two sizable chunks of JKR/RG books without *automatically* seeing connecting elements.  It helps that TB, alone among the Strike books, starts in August and runs a full year, so the timeline roughly approximates that of a Hogwarts school year. It also, like many of the Harry Potter books, marks major holidays (Halloween, Christmas, Valentines Day, Easter). Thus, I was able to do the first comparison starting in the summer and finishing with Halloween, and I found quite a few parallels. 

Chamber of Secrets-Troubled Blood links, Part 1: Books of dark magic and mysterious, spooky messages.

Today is the sixth anniversary of the publication of Troubled Blood, so it seemed a good day to start the look at connections between Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Troubled Blood. It also seems as good a time as any to distinguish between the type of connections I am looking for in these re-reads. When we talk about parallels between Harry Potter and Strike, there are a few broad categories.

Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White connections, Part 6: The Trapdoor and the Dell

This is the last in my series of posts on Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White connections. I was pleasantly surprised with how many I found: enough to make me think this isn't completely a pointless exercise and to make me interested enough to continue on to Chamber of Secrets- Troubled Blood links. In the meantime, here's a quick look how the last part of PS ("Through the Trapdoor" and "The Man With Two Faces") compared to the end of LW (Chapter 61, the breakdown on the verge through the epilog. 

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  I had previously compared Aamir's attempt to attack Strike to Neville's attempt to attack Crabbe and Goyle, but it even more closely resembles Neville's failed attempt to fight the Trio in "Through the Trapdoor." Both rather inexpertly put up their fists in a boxer's pose. And, Hermione's expressed regret at putting the Body-bind Curse on Neville ("I'm really, really sorry about this") is like Strike's guilt at knocking Aamir over. ("If it makes you feel any better, I don't feel good about it.")

Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White links, Part 5: From athletics obsessions to hidden notes.

Interestingly, the connecting factors I see in this section (Harry Potter Chapters 11-14, "Quidditch" through :Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback"; Strike chapters 36-55, from the aftermath of Chiswell's murder to Robin's leaving Matthew) are many, but fairly non-specific.  Are they significant enough to count?  You be the judge.