Troubled Blood Chapters 39-44: Prepare for an emotional roller coaster (and spoilers for The Hallmarked Man preview).

 This post will take us from the Dinner Party From Hell to Joan's deathbed. We'll see Strike in his most obnoxious and his most tender scenes and at his most inconsiderate and most responsible moments. While not all my pre-Hallmarked Man re-read of Troubled Blood posts will include spoilers from the preview (released on audiobook yesterday!) this one will. So, be forewarned and buckle up. 

At the detective agency, Valentine's Day 2014 is sucking as much as Christmas 2013 did. Robin and Strike are both overworked, tired and having horrible mornings on the day of the staff team meeting. Robin's fatigue is causing her to make mistakes like misplacing her wallet, and she has to put up with annoyances like Jonathan's request to bring an extra guest, Morris's over-familiarity and Strike's grumpiness when she is late for their pre-meeting meeting. Granted, Strike has reason to be grumpy this morning, having gotten a call from Ted that started "There's no need to panic," as if there is any line in the English language more likely to induce panic than that one. Joan has taken a turn for the worse, and if Strike wants to see her before she dies, he has to get himself and Lucy to St. Mawes ASAP, in the middle of the historic flood. On top of trying to manage those logistics, he gets a troubling call from Nick requesting to get together for a pint, and informing Strike that the Herberts' Valentine's Day is cancelled. 

I spied another narration error during Strike and Robin's tense conversation.

"You do realize we're now six months in--"

"Yes, I do realize that," said Robin, unable to help herself. "I learned counting in school."

Strike raised his eyebrows.

"Sorry," she muttered. "I'm just tired."

Glenister reads the "sorry" in Strike's voice, when it clearly is said by Robin. It changes the entire dynamic of this chapter and the next four if Strike makes any sort of apology to her for his shortness. While Strike clearly feels guilt about being grumpy, he chooses to express it in ways like asking Robin's opinion in the meeting (which he should be doing anyway, given she's a partner and his second-in-command!) and that just isn't going to cut it, given the way Valentines Day 2014 turns out. 

I'm sure plenty of women in the workplace can relate to Robin in the staff meeting, observing how she is listened to less than the men, how Morris talks over her and how she has to depend on Sam's forthrightness to get credit for her work. And, even the usually decent Barclay joins in misogynistic joking, with lines like "Pork Whisperer." It will be very interesting in THM, if Kim Cochran is hired, to see how the dynamic changes with women in the majority at agency meetings. 

Strike rushes to the office to answer a phone call, thinking it might be Ted with an update on Joan. Instead of, in the words of THM, "the man who'd been his only true father figure," it's his Deadbeat sperm donor, calling Strike for the first time ever with extraordinarily bad timing. Rokeby gives us the tantalizing line, "There's a bunch of stuff you don't know, about your mother and all her f*cking men." but Strike is having none of it. Young Cormoran Blue clearly knew more about his mother's f*cking men (and that's a verb, not an adjective) than any child ever should, and all because of Jonny abandoning him to live in Leda's erratic world. He loudly tells Rokeby to f*ck himself and storms off to the pub with Nick.

Robin returns to her flat and watches the storm clouds gather, with all indicators that this will not be a fun evening, despite Max's generosity in having an extra three guests for dinner. She has no luck locating Paul Satchwell, and Ilsa calls to tell her about the miscarriage, causing Robin to both grieve the loss with her friend and to worry about the state of the Herberts' marriage. Her brother arrives with his two friends who, even before the dinner conversation starts, show signs of being inconsiderate and entitled houseguests. And Strike turns up late and drunk. 

As a committed introvert, I can so easily relate to Robin as the party unfolds, feeling excluded from both conversations at the table and completely alone during what is supposed to be a social occasion. Only Wolfgang seems to appreciate her presence, as she feeds him a bit of the beef. And when they finally do include her, they do so by thrusting her into the middle of an uncomfortable situation, and shining a spotlight on the darkest trauma she has ever experienced. It is little wnder she snaps and lets Strike have it with both barrels in the rainy street. 

The actual "no more fucking flowers" showdown is not nearly as important as its aftermath in Chapters 42 and 43. In 42, Strike reflects on his behavior and acknowledges how much of his response to the students had been backlash against Leda's own beliefs. Though he does not connect them, his misplaced anger at Leda is probably all the more overwhelming as he faces the prospect of losing her antithesis, Joa. We get to see how much his past relationships with women, particularly Charlotte, have damaged him, as he initially assumes that it would be foolish and even unsafe to initiate an apology to Robin, and busies himself with preparing for tomorrow's dangerous journey to Cornwall. He also takes a call from supposed social worker Claire Spencer who fills in some information about the Athorns.

It takes long, self-pitying-bordering-on-suicidal texts from Charlotte to make Strike realize a different approach is needed for Robin. He initially assumes Robin, like Lorelei, is sending him a mini-dissertation on his flaws. When the texted missive turns out to be from Charlotte, he realizes he needs to take the first step in making up to his partner before he sets off to Cornwall. 

Robin, meanwhile, spends the day in her room, working as best she can, given her preoccupation with Strike and their row the previous evening. 

Robin wasn't the least surprised not to have heard from him, but was damned if she's initiate contact. She couldn't in good conscious retract a word of what she'd said after watching him vomit in the gutter, because she was tired of being taken for granted in ways Strike didn't recognize. 

She is dreading the post-dinner conversation with Max, but when she finally has it, it goes beautifully. He opens up to her abut his medical and relationship history and she discloses more about the trauma in her background. Best of all, they share some delicious leftover beef casserole, which Robin was clearly no in the mood the appreciate the night before. Even more surprisingly:

"I enjoyed last night," said Max.

"You can't be serious," said Robin.

"I'm completely serious. It was really useful for building my character. He's got some proper big man, take-no-bullshit energy about him, hasn't he?"

Like many readers, I am sorry we didn't see Robin and Max's friendship develop further in subsequent books, but I am prepared to forgive Mr. Galbraith that omission if we can have a scene someplace where Strike and Robin are watching Max's TV show and his character gets drunk and acts like a complete dick at a dinner party. 

I love two things about Strike's apology. First, he realizes he has to break his previous patterns to make it, and what has worked with Charlotte and other no-strings relationships with women simply will not work for his best friend. Second, I love the fact that Robin, herself, makes no apology for anything she did or said, We know that one of the changes that Matthew couldn't accept as Robin evolved into her authentic self was her ceasing to be the first to back down and apologize in a row. As opposed to her immediate "sorry" when snapping at Strike in the office, this time she is content to let him do all the groveling. You go, girl. 

As if by magic, as soon as all is right with Strike and Robin, Paul Satchwell pops up as a guest artist in an exhibit sponsored by his hometown of Leamington Spa. While this makes for good fiction, it does strike me as highly unrealistic. Are we supposed to believe that Paul Satchwell, who has made a living as an artist for 40+ years, and who is apparently the most famous painter Leamington Spa has ever produced, has never been mentioned on the website of a gallery or an art dealer?  Even one in Cos? Just because Robin is doing her search in the UK doesn't mean google will exclude Greek sites, right? 

Onto Chapter 44, the journey to St. Mawes, where Strike and Lucy manage to put aside their differences and focus on what they need to do. We see Dave Polworth, who can be a total ass so often, be the friend that sticks closer than a brother and arrive, Charon-like, to carry them over the waters to the place "where death lay at the end."  There is a multi-day vigil by Joan's bedside, punctuated by the arrival of Greg and the boys, Polworth, Jack and Strike's respite at the pub, and Shanker's call and warning about Mucky Ricci. Finally, Joan passes early one morning, with Cormoran by her side, after telling him she's proud of him. 

Given the revelation of Ted's death in The Hallmarked Man's audio preview released yesterday, in seems fitting to pause here and reflect on the contrast between Joan's and Ted's deaths. Joan's illness, death, funeral and ashes-scattering was spread over 54 chapters of Troubled Blood. While we saw Ted get sick in TRG, his death and funeral were covered in only a couple of paragraphs. We still don't know if that included the burial at sea. But, recall that we saw a preview of Ted's funeral way back in CoE. 

He was thinking about men like his Uncle Ted, a Cornishman to his bones, who lived and would die in St. Mawes, part of the fabric of the place, remembered as long as there were locals, beaming outof fading phots of the Life Boat on pub walls. When Ted died--and Strike hoped it would be twenty, thirty years hence--they would mourn him as the unknown Barrovian schoolboy was being mourned: with drink, with tears, but in celebration that he had been given to him. 

The death of the protagonist's only father figure appears to link THM both to TB, where the surrogate mother died and Strike acknowledged Ted as his true father and to Order of the Phoenix, where Harry lost the closest thing he had to a father. While I hate to lose Ted, it is exciting to see these connections, predicted by the Double Wedding Band model, come to pass. 

In some ways, it's a blessing that Ted passed before he had to leave his beloved home, and hopefully while there were still some of his Life Guard colleagues around to carry his casket down the church aisle and drink to his memory at the wake. He only got five years, not the twenty to thirty* Strike hoped for him, but we can hope he got the send-off Strike envisioned. 

I had planned to cover one more chapter, but this seems like a fitting stopping point. We'll pick up in Leamington Spa on Thursday. 

*These numbers are a bit odd, in retrospect, unless Ted was visualized as a younger character earlier in the series. He was supposed to be around 80 when he died, meaning he was 75 in CoE. Did Strike realistically think he would live to be 105?  Ted originally being planned as a younger character may explain why he seems a bit old to be deployed as a Red Cap to the Falklands. 

Comments welcome, here or On Substack.