2-4-6-8, What Do We Appreciate? : The Hallmarked Man connections predicted by the Leapfrog effect.

A big feature of the Double Wedding Band model (see here, here and here for background information) is that it incorporates one of the more obvious patterns of the Strike series: the Leapfrog effect, or the tendency of odd numbered books to connect with odd numbers and and evens with evens. The Hallmarked Man continues this pattern  

What I am most excited about is those connections that have, thus so far, turned up in all four the even-numbered books. I'm going to call this the "Truly Appreciated" list, both because I was happy to see them and because I think they should top the list of predictions for book 10. 

• Catullus!  Has any other author managed to work Catullus into four different 21st century mystery novels? I think this passes the specificity test because it isn't just Strike habitually quoting Catullus; other people do, too.  We had:
• Strike quoting Catullus to Michael Fancourt to take him down a peg or two. (The Silkworm).
• Chiswell quoting Catullus to humiliate Aamir and, as is obvious later, as a warning to Raff. (Lethal White)
• Strike explaining to Robin how he taught himself Latin and why he chose to memorize large quotations from Catullus as a teenager. (The Ink Black Heart). 
• And, in The Hallmarked Man, we wound up with three Catullus quotes:
• One from Vile-lentine Longcaster, insulting Robin (who thankfully did not understand what he was saying). 
• Two from Oliver Bramfoot, one of which is the same quotation as Chiswell used in an effort to be impressive. As with Fancourt, Strike surprises him by knowing exactly what he means. 
• Strike or Robin finding the body of a male murder victim, in a secondary residence. Previously we had:
• Quine in his second home.
• Chiswell in his second home.
• Vikas in his university apartment.
• And in THM, Strike finds Todd's body. Todd had fled his own shabby apartment and was staying with his mother. 
• I nominate Jeff Whitaker to play the role of the corpse in Book 10. 
• Strike visiting and showing great compassion to someone involved in the case who is ill or confined. His other visits to sick people (Lady Bristow, but he notes that he "doesn't pity her as she deserved"and Joan, but she's family) and people in jail or psych units (Jordan Reaney and Dennis Creed, but he isn't compassionate to them) are different, so I think this passes the specificity test. Strike seeks out:
• Leonora in jail.
• Billy in the psychiatric unit.
• Josh in the spinal center.
• Rena, who is mentally ill, homeless and hiding under a bridge.
• The client, Decima Mullins was a composite of the other three even-book clients (or would-be clients),
• She eccentric and shabby-looking, but in other ways the mirror opposite of Leonora Quine, who wanted Strike to find the missing father of her child, who she thinks has gone away voluntarily. He turns out to have actually been murdered and mutilated. 
• Decima Mullins wanted them to prove the father of her child had been murdered and mutilated; it turns out he was actually missing, having gone away voluntarily. 
• Like Izzy Chiswell, Decima had a posh accent and was connected to Charlotte's social circle. She had a very tearful meeting with Strike and Robin at the end, and was very unhappy about what Strike and Robin had found. 
• Like Edie Ledwell, Decima was initially mistaken for a "Gateshead." Her shabby appearance belied her actual wealth.
• Leonora and Edie showed up unexpectedly at the office; Izzy and Decima summoned Strike to them. 
• The canes. Strike found himself needing a walking stick when out investigating with Robin in TS. At her suggestion, he buys himself one at a pharmacist's. In both LW and TIBH, he falsely remembers Robin buying it for him. In THM, on Sark, she finally buys him one. 
• What I really want to see in Book 10 is for Strike to hold up both sticks side-by-side, and finally acknowledge correctly where he got each of them. 
• Then, he throws them aside, confident he will no longer need them after investing some of his newfound wealth in a state-of-the- art prosthesis. 
• Of course, the reason the canes come up in the even numbered books is that those are the books where Strike most seriously injures his leg. In Books 2, 4, and 6 he hurts himself so badly he can't wear the prosthesis; on Sark, he acknowledges that his leg is "almost as bad" as it was in TIBH. 
• Gothic elements:  
• We saw Liz Tassel's spooky house by the cemetery, Quine's "Gothic fairy tale" and his "gothic, macabre: death in TS.
• LW had the crumbling country manor with the ghostly presence of Jack O'Kent, the gallows maker.
• TIBH had both the cartoon and murders in Highgate Cemetery. 
• THM had Decima's spooky house and the murders in the dark vault. 

There are other THM connections that link to two other even-numbered books:

• Robin's brother Martin and his hair-trigger temper and aggressive tendencies were first mentioned in The Silkworm, when Robin compared him to Pippa Midgley. 
• We saw it in action in Lethal White, when Martin punched the Flobberworm at the wedding. 
• It came in handy in The Hallmarked Man when Martin drove Wade King away from Robin's apartment. 
• Mentions of Martin in odd-number books are more about his general irresponsibility and recklessness, not about aggression. 
• Neutralizing threats of media exposure by digging up better dirt on your enemy than they have on you. Chiswell hires Strike to do this to Knight and Winn in LW.
•  Strike uses this strategy himself against Charlotte and Jago (TIBH) and against Oliver Branfoot and Kim Cochran (THM). 
• In TS, Robin laughs at Strike's calling Polowrth "chum," saying it sounds public-schoolish; Strike explains it refers to shark bait. 
• In LW, Robin laughs at Torquil's "Steady on, old chap," thinking she never thought she'd hear that phrase outside of a book. 
• In THM, Robin finds it hard to believe Branfoot uses phrases like "top hole" and "spiffing." 
• Culpepper:  We met him in TS. Then, he made trouble for the agency in LW by hiring Mitch Patterson to investigate Chiswell and raking over Strike's like in the tabloids. 
• He makes even worse trouble in THM. 
• Strike consults Richard Anstis about cases in Books 2, 4 and 8. 
• Valentine Longcaster is first mentioned in book 4 and appears in 6 and 8. 
• Agents suspected of being MI5 interview our heroes in books 4, 6 and 8. 

A few reasonably specific connections to one other even-numbered book:

The Silkworm:

• Strike is "touched" by Robin's gift to him of Cornish food. 
• Nina Lascelles turns up at a dinner Strike is gate-crashing, wearing black dress and asking, "What are you doing here?"
• Strike attends a social event at Lucy's that he would much rather avoid. 
• Marguerite turns up and clearly wants him. 
• Killer abused the corpse, cutting it up, mutilating it, staging a ritualistic scene and taking parts away. 
• After finding a body, Strike is taken to Scotland Yard by police angry at him for perceived interference. 
• He is kept waiting and not allowed to smoke/vape. 
• Leonora thinks he's been arrested in TS, he is actually arrested in THM. 
• Mrs. Murphy did not much like Robin, just like Mrs. Cunliffe. Mr. Murphy is overbearing and drinks a lot, just like Mr. Cunliffe. 
• Ryan got angry at Robin for working rather than chatting with his mother, just like Matthew got angry at Robin for working rather than leaving early for his mother's funeral. 
• Two real-life Arsenal football games are watched and described as they actually played out. 
• Both have symbolic value. 
• Strike thinks Arsenal might have won if he hadn't gotten distracted by Bombyx Mori; Arsenal's loss to Liverpool foreshadows that Strike will not out-compete Murphy, yet. 
• Unfortunately for us, it doesn't seem that Arsenal beats Liverpool until July 2020.  They manage to tie in December 2017 and November 2018. 
• Maybe this is a hint that Strike's efforts to out-compete Murphy are futile and he needs a new plan. See here for my look at Strike and Murphy's names and what that could mean. 
• Daniel Chard and Jonny Rokeby both press a button to summon a Filipino servant. 
• Rokeby is much kinder to and appreciative of his, and Tala probably never pushed him down any stairs. 
• Strike's chat with Robin about Murphy echoes his talk with her about Matthew in the Burger King, 
• "If investigating is going to cause trouble between you and Murphy, we'll pass."
• Caught off guard, Robin "I--even if it did, that's not a good reason not to take it," she said, without thinking. 
• This is a good match for "You're getting married to someone who hates you doing it!" 
• "Even if that's-- whether that's true or not," she said unsteadily. "It's up to me what I do with my--- it's not up to Matthew what career I have."
• Strike travels to Scotland by sleeper train and consults Graham Hardacre about the case. 
• Two-times (though he wasn't called that yet) first appeared in TS. This is likely his last appearance in THM. 
• Murphy botches his shooting case much the same way that Anstis botched Leonora's:  by wrongly arresting the partner. 
• We meet the Land Rover for the first time when Linda picks Robin up at the train station, and we say good-bye to it in THM. 

Lethal White:

• A child, who would currently be in their mid-twenties, is believed to have been murdered and buried years ago, at age 5 or 6. Our detectives find out what actually happened and prove the child-murder did not happen. 
• Chiswell and Branfoot are both Catullus-quoting former MP's with cartoonish hairstyles pushed out of office due to scandal. Chiswell has gotten back in; a man at the Goring urges Branfoot to try to get elected again.
• Strike turns up at a post-church service reception (for a wedding in LW, for a funeral in THM) self-conscious about injuries and bandages, including a bruised face and a sliced ear. 
•  Robin struggles with PTSD symptoms, quitting therapy in LW and seeking it again in THM. 
• Strike gets unfairly angry at Robin for not being able to take a last minute assignment due to obligations to the partner that he doesn't like and gives the middle initial of F. 
• There are a lot of minor connections in the cases:
• Mentally ill witness tries to contact Strike by phone, claiming people are after them. 
• Strike can't save the number because someone else calls too quickly. 
• A super-injunction
• Robin spies clues in a photo of a birthday party. 
• Valentine and Sachi, who in LW are both first mentioned as Charlotte's "favorite step-siblings" who go to the racetrack with Strike and Charlotte, reappear in THM and are important to the case. 
• Posh people use initial nicknames for people they don't like: TTS for Kinvara, PP for Robin. 
• Someone says to Robin, of the Land Rover, "You don't see many this age still on the road."  In LW, Robin responds "It's never let me down yet." In THM, she has to say "It's on its last legs," and, sadly, she's right. 
• Linda uses very similar words to Strike in LW and Robin in THM in her "you don't have children, you don't understand' speeches. 
  

The Ink Black Heart: 

• The book ends with Strike heartbroken, with Robin having left to meet Ryan, in TIBH for their first date, and in THM, possibly (hopefully?) for their last. 
• And in both, he has to acknowledge that he brought his misfortune on himself by not being honest about his feelings. 
• Zoe and Rena are both impoverished and frightened young women whom Strike takes to a hotel for their safety. 
• Strike explicitly echoes Robin's own "I don't want to lose you" speech back to her when she needs to stay off the streets for her own safety. 
• Chapter 97, when Strike surprises Robin having pizza in the office, is an inversion of the Whitstable dinner. 
• Then he secretly admired her blue shirt, here she secretly admired his. 
• Strike misunderstood Robin, imagining she was getting a marriage proposal from Hugh Jacks by text; she was actually happy to have secured an interview with Rachel. 
• Here, he assumes she hadn't bothered going home since Murphy wasn't there; in reality, she was avoiding her flat for fear he'd drop by. 
• Robin has dinner with Strike wearing her blue dress and opal necklace, but it's business, not pleasure, and she's annoyed rather than enjoying his company. 
• Phoned-in threats to the office remind Pat of the bombing, and curtail Robin's ability to work. 
• The Miss Jones case carried over from Book 5 to 6. The Mr. A case carried over from Book 7 to 8. 
• Robin grieves the death of an elderly, beloved dog. 
• Max and boyfriend talked of getting a new puppy quickly; Robin's father gets Betty soon after Rowntree's death.