Lethal White Chapter 36-42: A return to the opening of Cuckoo's Calling, and the start of a new ring?

Love is good, love can be strong

We gotta get right back to where we started from.

                                                -Maxine Nightingale

After Chiswell's body was found, "Part Two" of the book begins. John Granger noticed at LW's publication that there was no "Part One" at the start of the book. At the time, it was widely assumed that Cormoran Strike would be a 7 book series, like Harry Potter, and that the "Part Two" did not just mean the second half of Book 4, but the turning point to the entire series. However, when the news came that Strike would be a 10-book series instead, that idea seemed less likely.  Instead, I have suggested, per the double wedding band model (see here and here) that this orphan "Part Two" instead marks the beginning of a second 7-part ring. Looking carefully at the first few chapters of Part Two gives me an even stronger sense of "resetting" the story in a way that strongly echoes the first few chapters of The Cuckoo's Calling. 

• Strike's face is bruised and battered, in CC from Charlotte's scratches and hurled ashtray, in LW from his fight with Jimmy Knight. 
• Though not nearly as broke as they were in CC, the agency is in a financially precarious situation, in part because of non-payment by a client. Robin reviews the accounts in Chapter 36 and says, "They'd look a lot healthier if Chiswell had paid his bill."  
• In Chapter 3 of CC, Strike is "chasing" multiple clients for payment and facing a lot of unpaid bills. 
• Strike has just walked away from Charlotte. In CC he left her at her posh flat; in LW he left her at the posh Lancaster House. 
• Robin has witnessed Charlotte leaving a building (the Denmark Street office in CC, Lancaster House in LW, and is wondering what is going on between her and Strike.
• Within a couple of chapters, a wealthy client (John Bristow, Izzy Chiswell) will provide some financial relief in the form of a nice fat check. 
• This client is the relative of a recently deceased famous person, whose death the police are inclined to think is suicide. 
• The client is, instead, convinced it is murder and wants Strike to prove it. 

The Hallmarked Man will be the first real test for predictive power of the Double Wedding Band model, which predicts that, in addition to having connections with the other even-numbered books of the series. as Book # 5 in Ring #2, it will have thematic connections to Book #5 of Ring #1, Troubled Blood. Also, if there are Harry Potter echoes in THM, I predict we will backtrack to Book #5 of that series, Order of the Phoenix.

Are there hints from pre-publication publicity that this will be the case?  Find out after the jump. Spoilers for Twitter Headers and THM cover blurb ahead. 

"Why on Vulcan should that mean it is not real?" A look at mental realities in Harry Potter and Star Trek

 I got to appear on one of my favorite podcasts this week:  Potterversity!  While I've been privileged to be a guest many times over the years, this time was special because I got to revisit my first real fandom:  Star Trek and see it through the lens of Harry Potter. 

Check out the episode here.

It was a follow-up to an earlier Trek-Potter discussion, found here. 

Live long and manage mischief!

Lethal White Chapters 26-35: The hospital, the Yule Ball analog and Robin's first corpse

Chapter 26, where Strike keeps vigil by Jack's hospital bed, is a fan favorite. From Strike's "It's Uncle Cormoran, by the way" to his relief and joy at seeing Robin to the tears he sheds holding her hand to the accidental lip-kiss in the parking lot, there is a lot to love here. 

However, what jumped out at me this time was that Strike, who had groused about his co-workers' family obligations back in Chapter 22, is now ignoring "a dozen missed calls from Robin" and texting Lucy instead, even though he surely knows that Robin would not call repeatedly unless it was something urgent. This time, he is the one who has to put aside his work responsibilities and attend to family matters. And Robin ditches her own "family" event (the Flobberworm's stupid cricket match!) to attend with him. 

They cling to their dead a long time at Rosmersholm.

If you've ever listened to my guest appearance on The Strike and Ellacott files, you'll know this is the epigraph I selected as my favorite. Not only does it convey a central theme from Rosmersholm, it relates to Chapter 27 in multiple ways. The row Robin and Matthew have following her decision to skip his cricket match to support Strike at the hospital shows them clinging to a dead marriage. The Sun's conclusion that "Venetia" is the scandal involving Jasper Chiswell is them clinging to old news; assuming the minister is repeating his infidelity of years ago. But the true "Rosmersholm" counterpart is Chiswell House, and, when Izzy shows up weeping at the tea house, it leads into a bunch of Chiswell dirt beign spilled, from Izzy's resentment of her father's ingratitude and pretty much everything about her stepmother, to Raff's miserable childhood to the creepy Jack O'Kent and Chiswell's supposed insistence that O'Kent was haunting him. (This could be a lie Raff made up, to help the suicide seem more plausible). After her chat with Raff, Robin makes her last clandestine trip to Winn's office to collect the last bug. Once again, Aamir catches her, but this time a cover story about borrowing a fan gets her off. 

Lethal White: Chapters 15-25: Shall I compare thee to a summer's dog?

Chapter 15 is a brief glimpse of Venetia's second day undercover. Robin is  summoned to see Jasper Chiswell in his office, where the Minister is is usual cheerful self. He grouches that Robin hasn't planted the bug yet. Hey Jasper, if you are concerned about her getting the job done, having her walk several buildings over to you for a 30-second conversation before telling her to get back to work may not be the best idea. But, Robin gets to meet Della Winn and be mistaken for an old fencing friend of Freddie Chiswell's, who we will eventually learn is Verity Pulham.  Fun fact: Della suggests "going over the plans for the twelfth" on the ride to Greenwich. These are likely the plans for the Paralympic reception. 

Chapter 16 covers Strike's interview with Jimmy's ex, Dawn. Most of the information Strike gets about Jimmy turns out to be red herrings but she shares Strike's compassion for his brother Billy. The most important thing we learned is that Jimmy spoke of his father as a joiner, not an odd-jobs man, and had a real problem with how Jack O'Kent made his living. 

Lethal White Chapters 7-14: A grey dress, lunch with the minister, the start to Venetia's mission and Strike's evolving view of Lucy.

Chapter 7:  The Housewarming. I hate that Robin wore the grey dress that didn't flatter her to please the Flobberworm. As we recall, she also hated her wedding dress. Between wearing her hair the same way and a dress she doesn't like, she must be having some very bad memories. Plus Sarah Shadlock, ugh.  When Strike and Robin finally get married, I am willing to bet that Robin will ban all roses and all stargazer lilies from the decor.

On the other hand, part of me is happy that she saved the Green Dress for Strike.  But what kind of husband says, "I like you pale?" We are told back in early Cuckoo's Calling that Robin "did not much like her own milkmaid's colouring" and in CoE we learn that one of Matthew's nicknames for her, that he does not use much anymore was "Rosy-Posy" The fact that he now says he likes her pale is another indicator of how much the relationship has changed. 

Commencing Lethal White re-read: Prologue and Chapters 1-6: Swans, Skulls and Roses.

 

I've had several people ask me why Lethal White is my favorite of the Strike series to date.  I will admit I was pre-disposed to like this book when the pre-publication blurb announced the book would be set at the time of the London Olympics.  Picture it:  2014, shortly after the publication of The Silkworm. Robert Galbraith's true identity had been unmasked fairly recently. John Granger at Hogwartsprofessor.com was just floating the Parallel Series idea, based largely on the fact that a mysterious autobiographical book wreaked havoc in both The Silkworm and Chamber of Secrets. But, no one was really wanting to embrace that notion fully for fear of looking foolish. Recognizing that the first two books were set in 2010 and the third likely in 2011, I wrote in a blog post* that, if the Parallel Series Idea was workable model for  the Strike books, then it would make sense to set book 4 at the time of the 2012 London Olympics, to echo the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament.

Of course, as it turned out, not only were the Olympics a crucial setting, but LW turned out to be the volume that turned the Parallel Series Idea into a bona fide theory; one that could not only explain patterns seen in published books but have predictive power for future ones. Indeed, the Cliff Notes summary of both books could read:

During an international sporting event, a nasty-tempered government minister who has responsibility for pulling off a successful event is killed by his semi-estranged son, after getting the kid released from prison early, where he was serving a sentence for a serious crime. At the end, the killer holds a protagonist hostage in a locked room and threatens them, but is thwarted at the last second by a rescuer who crashes through the wooden door. 

See here for an archived post of mine showing how the Parallel Series idea related to Troubled Blood.  See here (p. 14) for Beatrice Grove's essay on connections between The Half-Blood Prince and The Ink Black Heart.  And here for Irvin Khaytman's. 

Spoiler alert:  There are a few references to the cover and publicity blurb that were released in the rest of the posts. If you are trying to avoid that content, you should not continue.