The Troubled Black Heart: The ties that bind Strike Five and Six together.

Both Ring Composition and the Leapfrog model imply that consecutive books in the Strike seres should have fewer echoes than other pairs in the series.  This is generally true; however, the Blood Book (Strike Five) and the Heart Book (Strike Six) have some very strong connections that are not seen in other consecutive books.

First, Book Six picks up right where Book Five leaves off: at Robin's birthday celebration at the Ritz. We have only seen this once before;  after the cliffhanger ending of Book Three, Book Four pretty much had to pick up at the wedding.  But, Troubled Blood did not explicitly end on a cliffhanger; the author didn't have to show us the drinks at the Ritz in the same way that she had to show the wedding. The inclusion of the Ritz ties Books Five and Six to each other in a more seamless way than any other two adjacent books in the series. Lethal White takes a year-long time-jump after the cliffhanger is resolved. The Ink Black Heart has no such jump, in fact, we are told about plenty of crucial events (Strike's birthday dinner, Robin's trip to Zermatt, New Years Eve at Annabel's) in the time between the Ritz and when the mystery proper starts with Edie's arrival at the agency. 

Second, there are similarities is in the nature of the killers. We have not one but two more-or-less "typical" sadistic misogynists in Troubled Blood: Mucky Ricci and Dennis Creed. Then we have the third, atypical and most "successful" serial killer, Janice Beatty, who seemed to kill both in revenge and for the sheer pleasure of it. The Ink Black Heart's Gus Upcott is also a sociopath with multiple victims, and shares similarities to all three Troubled Blood killers. 

• Certainly Gus shares both Creed's and Ricci's misogyny.
•  Like Creed, Gus hated women but desires to exploit them for his own sexual pleasure. He does this primarily through online sexual harassment when his Kosh lines fail, but his reaction to Robin at the end shows what he really wants. 
• Creed wanted the world to know that he was responsible for the Essex Butcher Shacklewell Ripper killings, though, of course, he never wanted to be identified. In contrast, Janice's many murders remained unconnected and unrecognized as foul play for decades. 
• Gus, cloaked as Anomie online, freely admits to killing Edie in the game and in Youtube commentary. Like Creed, he wants credit for his crime.  
• Gus  is a classic "incel"-- frustrated over the lack of sexual partners he feels he deserves. 
• Janice is a female twist on the incel theme, complaining that she "never got her day in church" because no man wanted to marry her. In her mind, matrimony is a commodity that she is denied, both because people like Margot and Irene are taking more that their fair share of the desirable men, and because men are too short-sighted to appreciate her charms. This is clearly similar to how Gus feels about his lack of success with women.
• Janice's attitude towards Douthewaite, in particular, shows she shares Gus's tendency to interpret any bit of friendliness as a declaration of romantic interest, and feels she's been "led on" if it doesn't materialize. She literally wants to punish Steve for taking up with someone else more than a decade after she last saw him, by killing his love interest. 
• Janice also kills members of her own family, dispatching her common-law husband Eddie (described as "not much of a catch") and making attempts on both her son and granddaughter's lives.  
• Gus kills his father (who is clearly not much of a dad) and attempts to kill his mother and sister. 
• Mucky Ricci had Kara Wolfson gang-raped and murdered to punish her for informing on him to the police. 
• Gus killed Morehouse fearing Morehouse would inform the police about the Halvening infiltration and his suspicions about the knife attacks on Josh and Edie. 
• Finally, Shanker makes it clear Mucky and sons will kill, maim or mutilate anyone who crosses them. 
• Gus does this as well, primarily through his online attacks, but eventually graduates to in-person, as his attack on Oliver Peach and his threats against Strike and Robin show. 

Third, another "glue" that binds Books Five and Six together is the arrival of Pat Chauncey as a much-needed competent office manager. She has all of Robin's house-elvish efficiency, but doesn't aspire to full-time detection. Strike initially dislikes her and even hints about getting rid of her before her probationary period ends. However, she proves herself indispensable, much like Robin does in CC, even to the point of bringing Strike food and presents during his Christmas flu and baking fruitcake to boost team morale. 

But it is the bombing in IBH that establishes how vital a team member she is. While we laughed at her naive "in the post?" query about Morris's dick pic in TB, her quick thinking regarding the bomb that arrives "in the post" in IBH saves both her and Strike's lives. She shows herself as good an observer and witness as Robin, as she recalls the details of the package, address and postmark to the police, despite the recent trauma, just as Robin did with the leg package of CoE. Most importantly, she reveals that her family was touched by the same type of terrorist-related trauma that Strike experienced, with her uncle being killed by an IRA bomb. Her words "in the wrong place at the wrong time" are the same as those Strike used to describe his own bombing. She is clearly irreplaceable to the agency, and Strike tells her so. When Strike receives his second fruitcake at the end of IBH, he completely reverses his TB opening position, saying "I always liked that woman." 

Fourth: There is a type of almost-there-then-hit-the-reset-button vibe within the Five-Six pairing. Both books, as I have written before (in my original 5-6 flip idea, which Rowling herself refuted) have an odd mix of wet nigredo and dry albedo, with IBH absolutely darker and more nigredo-like than TB: which is not what we is expected in an alchemical cycle. 

In addition, Troubled Blood is structured very much like Deathly Hallows, taking place over a full year, with the same irregular pacing and with the same Christmas nigredo, Epiphany-to-Easter albudo and transition to rubedo at an Easter burial. The links are so strong that, in my Double Pentagram model (soon to be discarded in favor of the new ring model I plan to unveil soon) I speculated that Troubled Blood might have originally been conceived as the series finale.* 

I have argued before that, if TB had ended with a real kiss and "I love you" exchange between Robin and Strike at the perfume counter, it could have been a very satisfactory ending to Robin's story**. 

After going through a reverse alchemical transformation in books 1-3, she underwent her true alchemical transformation*** in books 3, 4 and 5, with albedo in Lethal White, (hence all the swans) and rubedo in Troubled Blood (hence all the blood-red nosebleeds, received and inflicted). She's rid of the Flobberworm, has her dream job as a full partner at the agency, **** and is no longer having panic attacks, even when grabbed from behind by a disgusting pervert.*****  If she'd walked off to the Ritz in the glowing sunset with her True Love, instead of her Best Mate, she'd have had her fairy tale ending. 

But, a lot of elements get reset in Book Six, for both partners. 

• Robin's and Strike's romance which appeared ready to blossom, is set back several steps with the missed kiss at the Ritz. 
• We thought that, after Lorelei, Strike had learned not to distract himself from Robin with meaningless long-term relationships, but he takes several steps backwards when he takes up with Madeline. 
• Just when Strike has opened his f*cking eyes, dumped the Madwoman and is ready to admit his love for Robin, she takes a few step backwards by agreeing to date Ryan, who, as we learn in TRG, is a bit more Matthew-like than might first be apparent.
• Strike's leg is injured so badly that it is almost back to the state it was in when newly amputated, with muscle spasms and requiring weeks of rest.
• Strike even muses that, when Robin lands the interview with Rachel and asked to do it alone, that "this was the first time he had seen her as a full partner, an equal." Good thing she didn't know that when she was running the agency for all those weeks you were in Cornwall last year, Diddy. 
• If that's not enough, the office gets blown up and has to be rebuilt, though it looks better afterwards.

These resets, I think, will allow the romance to be stretched out over the now-ten books, where I believe it will culminate in a wedding, with 1) Robin in her Green Dress and 2) a celebratory fruitcake by Pat. 

Appropriately, the new ring model I have sketched out resembles a double-wedding band.  Books Five and Six have their special relationship because they are the points of overlap in the two rings. With that as the preview, look for a full post coming up within the next few days. 

As always, comments, questions and retweets are welcome!

* In 2014, shortly before the publication of The Silkworm, the UK Sunday Times announced that JKR/RG a had "mapped out a series of up to seven crime novels featuring Cormoran Strike, in a repeat of the approach taken to her popular Harry Potter books." The publisher almost instantly denied this report, saying "there were not seven books planned."  For the record, I don't think either the Times, the publisher or JKR/RG were intentionally lying at that point. I think that the simplest explanation was the the series was originally planned to be either five or seven books, depending on both their success and how long the Galbraith disguise held. JKR is meticulous enough in planning that she could have had both 5-book and 7-book bases covered. Once JKR/RG was unmasked, which appears to have happened much earlier than intended, the author likely rethought the plan, secure in the knowledge that she could tell as many Strike and Robin stories as she wanted, and with the realization of how well certain post-2013 events (like the 2014  Cornwall floods, and later, Scottish independence) would fit into the narrative. The map of the earlier, shorter series could well have been expanded to ten. 

I think this is why that Books Five and Six connect to all three of the last Harry Potter books, rather than having the one-to-one correspondence seen with the first four. You can see here and here for examples of  connections, but in a nutshell:

• Troubled Blood: 
• Story set in motion when medium goes into trace and makes a prophecy; death of a surrogate parent; Saul Morris as Umbridge-echo (OotP)
• Blood as a title word;  old handwritten book gives strange but helpful instructions; well-attended funeral with atypical burial with beautiful white container for earthly remains. (HBP)
• Alchemical year-long cycle; showdown with Creed resembles Harry's with Voldemort; Creed is caught with his own mental trick, like Voldy is hit with his own rebounding spell. (DH) 
• Ink Black Heart: 
• Story centers on power of media to defame and harass, and how quickly revered figures can become hated. (OotP)
• No surprise twist about villain: Draco really was a junior Death Eater trying to kill Dumbledore, just like Anomie really killed Edie. (HBP) 
• Good guys versus "pureblood" supremacists (Halvening, Death Eaters); Anomie's faceless cloaked appearance in Drek's Game is like Voldemort's; like Voldy, Anomie brutally slaughters his right-hand man. (DH) 

Will The Running Grave also make multiple Harry Potter connections?  So far, I'm not seeing huge OotP or HBP connections jumping out at me, but I reserve the right to change my mind after re-reading. 

**Strike still has Rokeby/Leda baggage to sort out; that's why we needed more books. 

*** Details of this transformation will also be fleshed out in a future post. 

****I think that if TB had been the last book, Robin would have broken the glass in the door when slamming it after the argument over St. Peter's and Strike would have, eventually, replaced it it with both their names.

***** I hate Morris, can you tell?