Second look at The Running Grave Preview: Spoilers for the August 9, 2023 release (Ch. 1 and 2).

 As before, there will be spoilers for the 53-page release (now withdrawn) from August 9th.  Spoilers in BLUE. 

The book proper opens with an occasion many Serious Strikers were predicting: the christening of Nick and Ilsa's baby, Benjamin, (or, at least, the post-christening party) with Strike and Robin serving as godparents. I can't think of a funnier first scene that Strike holding a screaming infant while at the same time being pestered by annoying blondes who want to ask questions about his detective career. Chapters 1 & 2 also introduce us to Bijou, the infamous woman in pink, and catch us up on some interesting happenings since the end of IBH: Strike has lost 3 stone (42 pounds, yay Corm!), Robin and Murphy have been dating for eight months, and Strike is jealous as hell.  The agency has a new sub-contractor, Clive Littlejohn, who seems oddly silent and serious. Charlotte is publicly with Landon Dormer, the guy she swore she wasn't sleeping with in IBH, and is "strangely blank and glassy-eyed." Hopefully that means she has a fatal illness of some sort. May her presence in this book be as limited as Matthew's in the last. 

And, hmmmm....  Murphy thinks Robin looks good holding a baby. Is this his way of saying he'd like to have children and, if so, will that rupture the relationship?  

Name Meanings

Belinda: This name turned out to be more interesting than I thought:

Belinda is a feminine given name of unknown origen, apparently coined from Italian bella,  meaning "beautiful"  Alternatively it may be derived from the Old High German name Betlinde, which possibly meant "bright serpent"  or "bright linden tree".

I think the serpent part fits her best! A serpent in a story where the client's name is "Edensor".... hmmm. I certainly will not object if she winds up decapitated by book's end, and, I suspect, neither would Ilsa. She also must be the stupidest woman to come along since Irene Bull if she's openly bragging about trying to pregnancy-trap a married Queen's Counsel. Unfortunately, I think we will see more of her. 

Bijou: "Jewel" She definitely has the sparkly, colorful and attention-seeking aspect down. Is she a continuation of the pattern started by Lorelei of the "jewel-toned" dresses and Madeline the jeweler?  Or will Strike break the pattern this time?  Most importantly, is Rowling trying to make Strike's potential girlfriends more annoying at each successive book?

Watkins: "Son of Walter." For what it's worth, Walter means "commander of the army."  Unless Bijou turns out to have a military father, I'm not sure what to make of this.

I'm not going to look up the names Bijou name-drops, but I did think it was interesting that she mentions an insider trading case of hers involving one Daniel Winterson. Could this be Shifty?

Clive: "Cliff" or "Slope." 

Littlejohn: This would have been a name given to a younger of two men named John, or to a younger child of that name.  John means "God is gracious,"  but the first thing that leapt to my mind was Scheherazade's reference to "Johnny Winkle" in IBH.  Could we have a Peter Pettigrew analog?  If so, don't count on him surviving the book. 

Timeline

We are told it is February 2016, so about a month after the tragic last letter to Will, informing him of his mother's death. For the record, we were told Ilsa was 12 weeks pregnant back in April 2015, at Bob Bob Ricard, which would have had Baby Benjy born about October, making him around four months old now. 

I think we must assume a fairly late date in February. Murphy and Robin went on their first date in mid-July, so she must be counting the month of February in order to make it to eight months. 

The time jump means we can breathe a sigh of relief that the Madeline-pregnancy hypothesis is off the table. If Madeline got pregnant while dating Strike, little Cormy Jr. (or, in accordance with the Leda-the-swan myth, the twins) would have made an appearance by now. The only conceivable (pardon the pun) way that could happen is if Madeline, a la Edith in Downton Abbey, had "gone to Switzerland to improve her French," and successfully hidden herself and the pregnancy from the media and from Charlotte. Not very likely for a woman who has a well-known jewelry business to run and a minor child at home. See here for my explanation about why the pregnancy was a long-shot, at best. 

Harry Potter Echoes

The backyard party in the marquee links to the similar wedding celebration in the Burrow at the beginning of DH. Strike's feeling towards Ryan Murphy are similar to Ron's of Victor Krum. And, if I'm right about Belinda/Bijou's snake-related name, her appearance could be analogous to Nagini's first act in DH. She certainly seems to define "maneater" and she has her hungry eye on Strike. 

Literary Alchemy

With the rainy weather, the big tent (marquees are usually white), the baptism celebration, the specific reference to the water being poured over the baby's head, the flowing champagne....  I think we've got pretty clear albedo indicators. And there are two references to Robin and Strike "renouncing Satan" as part of the ceremony. That's a bit different from the US Protestant baptisms I'm used to, but that has to qualify as a "purifying" act, right?

Ring Structure

The first thing that jumped out at me here was that Book 1 opened with an engagement, Book 4 with a wedding, and now we have a christening to open book 7. Could that mean a funeral will open Book 10? You could also draw the connection of a new ex-Army subcontractor (Barclay, Littlejohn) being hired at the start of books 4 and 7.