First Hallmark Preview Released: Thoughts (and spoilers!!) on the Apple Books audio

 A five minute audio-preview of The Hallmarked Man was released today, and quickly transcribed on the Strike reddit board.  I know the fandom is mixed, with some (like me!) devouring the previews as soon as they are released and others preferring to wait until publication day to read any text. I have my thoughts on the preview below, so major spoiler warning. 

Wow!  Like all good previews, this excerpt raises more questions than it answers. 

• The opening epigraph is " And all's to do again." from Poem 11 in Last Poems, by A.E. Houseman.  Along with living and writing in the same general time frame, the thing Houseman has most in common with John Oxenham is that both of them wrote poetry that was set to music by others. 
• Houseman's best known work is a collection of poems called A Shropshire Lad. One of the Twitter header clues to this book was an iron bridge in Shropshire, and it looks like our heroes will visit that town in The Hallmarked Man. 
• Strike is in his car (the BMW, so it must have been repaired!), driving to Kent to meet a prospective client and disgruntled because Robin is not with him. Ryan F*cking Murphy (as Strike is now calling him in his head) called to cancel,  saying Robin is sick with a high temperature and sore throat, and thus is not available  to drive them both to the interview in the Land Rover. This is the first time in six years Robin has called out sick. 
• Robin being completely incapacitated by illness is a nice link to what happened to Strike in Troubled Blood. 
• Strike, sadly, is just back from bereavement in Cornwall. Ten days before, while Lucy was helping Ted pack up for the move to a nursing home in London, he suffered another stroke. Strike immediately left for the Truro hospital, and arrived before Ted died, with Lucy and Strike by his side. He and Lucy remained in St. Mawes to arrange and hold the funeral, then to clear out his house, a job Lucy was unwilling to hire out. She packed up a moving van's worth of possessions, while Strike took only a shoebox with Ted's Red Cap, a fishing hat, some pictures and a fishing "priest."  (I had to look that up; it's apparently a small club used to kill fish after they're pulled out of the water. It gets its name from the fact that it gives the fish its "last rites"}. He has only been back in London a short time and has not even unpacked his holdall yet. 
• Ted's death, with Strike holding his hand as he slips away, echoes Joan's in Troubled Blood, as does the heavy rain Strike drives through while we learn about it. 
• Strike is on the way to see Decima (which Glenister pronounces "Des-simma"-- so more like the Latin for ten than the Greek name for Lachesis) Mullins, a prospective client he has instinctively taken a dislike to. She has a posh, upperclass accent and appears to Strike to be "melodramatic and entitled." He is not a happy camper to be driving solo to see her, and his leg is sore from all the packing and moving, 

Ted's death came as a shock to me; I thought he would hang on for at least another book or two. Some random questions I have: 

1. Is this the opening chapter of the book?  It reads very much like it could be. If so, that is a change from the last two, which opened with information about the case (News articles about The Ink Black Heart cartoon; letters from the Edensor family). Will there be a prologue of sorts telling us more about the body in the silver vault before this chapter?
2. How much time has elapsed since the end of The Running Grave? In theory, it could have been days, weeks or months after Strike lobbed his "she knew I was in love with you" hand grenade. My guess is, it is only a few weeks, at most. TRG ended in September 2016; we are told we will celebrate Strike's 42nd birthday, so it's presumably not November yet. It is even possible Ted had his stroke while Robin was away on her weekend with Murphy, then Robin got sick just as Strike returned. If so, I predict some flashbacks to Robin's weekend being spoiled by her over-analyzing Strike's declaration, and resolving to get clarification upon her return (and surely she will realize that, if Strike meant what she thinks he meant, she can't stay with Murphy!) But, if she comes back to find Strike called away to Cornwall, then gets sick as soon as he comes back, those delays might make the conversation harder to have. Ted's death and Robin's illness might prove to be the equivalent to Lethal White's sea-borne bacteria: a crises that causes the status quo to be maintained, when a relationship might otherwise have ended. The hand grenade may fizzle out, at least for now. 
1. It is also possible that the weekend getaway was disrupted by Strike being suddenly called away and Robin having to come back to take charge of the agency. That probably would not have Ryan F*cking feeling particularly positive about her job. 
2. Note: there are already suspicions that Robin asking Ryan to call for her is atypical, and this could indicate something sinister about Ryan and what he has done with her. I think it is wiser to take the story of her illness at face value. 
3. Have Ted's ashes been spread yet? We know the plan Joan had was, when Ted passed, he too would be cremated and join her in the sea. I am very curious as to whether this happened during the ten days we were told Strike spent in Cornwall or if, as with Joan, this is something for which the family will have to reconvene. Dave Polworth presumably was or will have to be enlisted to sail the boat. My guess is, the Jowanet either has been, or will be gifted to him, in gratitude for everything he has done for the family. 
4. 
   Why did Strike save the fishing priest?  We've never been told that Strike likes fishing or does it regularly; if he did, he probably would have taken rods, reels or other fishing tackle from Ted's effects. Having the priest stashed up in his flat in a shoebox has a very Chekov's gun feel to me. I expect to see this weapon used before the end of the book, and not on some unfortunate sea trout. 
1. Or, could Strike have a sentimental attachment because he remembers Ted threatening Shumba with it?
5. Is there anything significant in all those boxes Lucy saved? My thoughts that Ted would reveal something significant before he dies have come to naught and apparently Strike did not find the note Leda left when he was four in the home clean-out. We are told Lucy took an entire moving van of boxes back with her; I'd bet she hasn't gone through every old paper yet. So,  if the Nancarrow home is going to yield up any secret, she will likely be the one who finds it. 
6. Where the hell is Strike's medal?  Since we never have heard of it being in the boxes he took from Charlottes, or in his attic flat, I have always thought that Strike's medal for heroism must be on proud display at Ted and Joan's house. But if it was, surely Strike would have taken it with him. So is it stuffed in a drawer in the attic flat? Does Lucy have it in a shadow box in her sitting room? Or did Charlotte trash it in one of her anti-Army crusades? 
7. How bad is Strike's leg?  Despite the weight loss, he apparently overdid it enough in the house pack-up to re-injure his hamstring.  As I have pointed out before, in every even-numbered book he has buggered his leg enough to have to stop wearing the prosthesis and use crutches.  Will the long drive to and from Kent make things worse? 

All in all, a tantalizing taste of what promises to be a great book!