For years, I helped compile and archive continuity, factual, anachronistic or logical errors that crop up in the Strike books. I'm going t continue that on this new site for The Running Grave. This is a task that takes a village, so I invite anyone who spies something off to comment, or sent me a private email. Please document your contribution: refer to the previous book or historical event that creates the inconsistency.
Gaffes can be minor, for example, Strike telling his TIBH doctor that his leg was blown off six or seven years ago when it was actually eight, or Robin spying a book in the North Grove bathroom that would not be published for several more years. Sometimes they are major, such as Robin remembering she has only been to two funerals in her life, and forgetting Mrs. Cunliffe's. And sometimes they are oft-repeated, like Strike's referring to his collapsible walking stick as the one Robin bought him when, in The Silkworm, he bought it for himself in a Boots.
Superstrikers also sometimes see the errors corrected in later editions.
So, without further ado, let's start the The Running Grave list. For now, everything will be considered a spoiler and written in BLUE.
- It is also possible that Angel's name was the error, and the leukemia patient is actually her younger sister, eight-year-old Zahara.
I was just thinking of the "little girl" comment. I think she could have used that for two reason.
ReplyDelete1. As she was a little girl when they first met, 11, if I remember correctly, Robin could remember her as little. As I am sure the experience is burned into her mind because of the trauma of it. People often remember the image of the person from when the traumatic event happened, so yes, years have passed, in Robin's mind Angel is still that little girl she rescued.
2. Robin was sacked by Strike because of her interference thus making Brockbank to go underground. Though, I don't think Robin will ever regret saving the girls, she may have a hard time bringing up their names to Strike. But using the words "little girl" could be her way of reminding Strike that Angel was a victim, but not referencing her name. She may not want to bring back the painful memories of being sacked, and bring up her "gross misconduct" to the forefront of Strike's brain.
Interesting thoughts and a plausible idea. But I can't help but think of Robin's tearful "Her name's Zahara!" outburst in CoE, when Strike told her there was nothing she could do for "that kid" and think she'd do exactly the opposite.
DeleteI forgot to change settings, so my original post was Anonymous.
ReplyDeleteVery valid point, but here is my response . Her screaming "Her name's Zahara" was before the fight/confrontation with Alyssa and thus resulting in her being sacked.
But, however I do believe Robin would use Angel's name. She has an excellent memory and is very big hearted and wouldn't demote Angel to "little girl". Just tried to go look up if Strike specifically told Robin which girl it is. But now that I think of it, since they looked for Angel's dad she would have to know, unless Strike said they were trying to find one of the girls' dad? I don't know. I can't get the sample to open back up, my Ravenclaw self is upset because I can't research the exact answer.
It's sometimes hard to know why an error is included. My personal opinion is that writing Jimmie Johnson's name as Jimmy Jones is deliberate; it's evoking Jim Jones and his Jonestown Massacre as a warning about where cults can lead the unwary.
ReplyDeleteI supposed that is possible, but when past books have let flubs like "Ciara Parker" get through, it seems that, per Occam's Razor, a run-of-the-mill error is more likely than a nod-and-wink that only superfans would get. Although, the Jonestown massacre is discussed extensively in one of Prudence's (and presumably Galbraith's) reference books. So, I suppose it could be a pointer to another cult-related killing, especially if PIGS is an intentional nod to the Manson killing (actual cult murder) or the Macdonald Fatal Vision (clue planted by actual killer--- the father---to implicate a "cult of hippies.")
DeleteInterestingly, the PIGS clue comes at the end of Chapter 9. Robin and Murphy go to see "The Father" at the Duke of York" theatre at the start of the same chapter. Could a "Sir Colin Did It!" post be in the making?
English Professor Elizabeth Baird-Hardy brings up the intentional error possibility on her excellent preview review here: https://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/running-graves-extended-excerpt-first-thoughts-of-elizabeth-baird-hardy/
From LudicrousMoniker:
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that Strike and Robin don't know that Shanker is living with Alyssa and her daughters. Although Strike suspected that Shanker and Alyssa were sleeping together at the end of CoE, her name never comes up again and Strike has no idea they are still together. When Strike and Shanker meet in TB, Shanker doesn't mention Alyssa by name; he only mentions Zahara, and that information goes in one ear and out the other of the flu-ridden Strike. I am hoping for and expect a scene in TRG where Strike and Robin put two and two together and I'm sure Robin will be delighted that Shanker is part of that family.
It is certainly possible, and Robin's "little girl" comment would make a lot more sense in that context. Still, it is hard for me to imagine Shanker and Alyssa could be together for 5 years and have Strike not know her name or make the connection to the CoE case that nearly cost him Robin. And wouldn't Strike have needed Angel's and Alyssa's full names, address etc. when tracing the birth father? Surely he would make the connection then, even if he hadn't before. And, if Strike knew, surely he would tell Robin, after everything she risks to save Alyssa's daughter. As you said, she'd be happy to know they have a father figure who's..... well, incurably criminal, but at least he would protect them at all cost and would never let anyone hurt them.
DeleteBy Chapter 33, when Strike is talking with Shanker about the fact that Strike doesn't want kids, Shanker speaks of Alyssa and Angel much more as if Strike knows them, and Strike asks her to give them both his best. Still inconclusive, but still less likely that Strike, with his super memory, would not connect the Alyssa who served as his fake temp and gave him hell for sacking Robin, who, after all, had saved her daughter Angel from a pedophile, to the Alyssa and Angel Shanker is with, now.
DeleteFrom LudicrousMoniker:
ReplyDeleteIf Alyssa had plenty of information about her ex-partner i.e. full name, date of birth, previous known addresses, it would make it straightforward for someone who knows what they're doing i.e. Strike, to locate him. I don't imagine that the full names of his ex-girlfriend and daughter would necessarily be of use in that process. It may be that I am proved wrong in TRG, but that line in TB - 'Everything except 'Hamleys' had been gibberish to Strike' seems to me to be setting this up. We shall see!
That's the fun part, for sure! And what type of authorial imagination does it take to create a situation where a nice middle-class girl like Robin is delighted that young girls found someone like Shanker for a step-daddy? Not to mention wanting him to come to her wedding reception.
DeleteOne major and one minor timeline error so far: the biggest (as I elaborate on far more extensively in Part one of my TRG initial read-through posts: Strike now remembers being 12 years old in the Norfolk commune. Previously, he was 8. He also remembers being 19 when his mother died. Previously, he was 20 (and Lucy was said to be 19).
ReplyDeleteI was delighted to finally have Switch Levay Bloom Whittaker be mentioned again, but there were some errors. Switch was aroud two when his mother died, not one. Leda was 6 months pregnant at Strike's 18th birthday in November 1992, then died midway through Strike's second year of university. If she died in 1994, as reported, it was in late 1994, when Strike was 20 and Switch around 2. And, he was adopted by his great-grandparents, not grandparents.
ReplyDeleteEither the celebrity gossip rags of London make a lot of errors or JKR/RG does. Going back to the Tatler article in The Silkworm, Charlotte Campbell was not an IT Girl, her mother Tula Clermont (not Tara Clairmont) was. And the school she ran away from was Bedales, not Cheltenham Ladies' College.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I assume the newspaper was just being attention-grabbing when it called her Viscountess. If her marriage to the Viscount (future Viscount? Did Jago's father die?) ended in divorce last year, she presumably will not have that title.
DeleteHow can Littlejohn afford a vacation in Greece if he is in so much gambling debt that he's doing dirty work for Mitch Patterson.
ReplyDeleteFrom Ludicrous Moniker: It's a minor one, but in Chapter 41, Robin puts on her tracksuit over her pyjamas and goes out to the woods. When she returns she's caught up in the search for the toddler and then returns to her dormitory, and it says 'Robin grabbed her pyjamas off her bed'.
ReplyDeleteThis might not be an error per se, but it's bugging the heck out out me. Sheila Kennett gives her age as 85 (in 2016), which would make her birth year 1931. She also takes great pleasure in repeatedly telling Robin that she and her husband were hippies. They moved to the farm in 1969, when she would have been about 38. She just "feels" about 10 years too old to me. A typical bohemian type born in 1931 would seem more likely to become a 1950s-era Beatnik than a 1960s hippie. If Sheila were 75, the hippie thing would fit better, I think.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad they updated the locks, but I would have thought that would have happened much sooner. Like, when the Shacklewell Ripper and the Halvening were out to get them?
ReplyDeleteI think I have found a gaffe as damning as John Bristow's stashing Rochelle''s phone in the safe, rather than destroying it. If Papa J knew that Abigail had killed and disposed of Daiyu via pig chow in the woods in 1995, why are there still remnants of the posts and burned rope in the woods, not to mention the murder weapon in a tree whose location is known well enough to appear in children's stories and drawings? Shouldn't Papa J have dispatched a team of brainwashed flunkies to obliterate the evidence? I suppose he could have been worried they would ask questions or talk, but in 20 years, surely he could have found some old geezer like Brian Kennent, whose death was probably not too far off, to do the deed.
ReplyDeleteMaybe batshit insane people just like keeping evidence around.