A Collection of Mind-blowing Speculations and Connections: Thoughts on The Hallmarked Man and Sleep Tight, Evangeline (plus one amazing anagram!)

There have been a lot of new bits of information sparking even more new ideas popping up on all sorts of Strike-related social media over that last couple of weeks, from Reddit to Twitter to assorted blogs and podcasts.  I wanted to make some notes here (primarily so I don't forget the original sources) and add my own thoughts to some of them. 

First, I want to list the books I think are most likely to have thematic connections and echoes to Sleep Tight, Evangeline. These volumes are always at the top of my thoughts when I'm thinking about what Book Nine might bring us. 

• For Strike books (in rough order of importance):
• The Ink Black Heart:  Per both the Double Wedding Band and Double Leapfrog Connections, that predicted the many connections between Troubled Blood and The Hallmarked Man.
• The Silkworm: Per the Big Ring Chiasmus model that I think accounts for the many connections between Career of Evil and The Hallmarked Man. 
• Career of Evil: An odd-numbered book, but also part of the Double Leapfrog Pattern (3-6-9 triangulation, as compared to the 2-5-8 we saw last time. 
• The Running Grave: As Book 7, this is the closest book whose connections are predicted by the Leapfrog effect. 
• The other odd-numbered books (Cuckoo's Calling and Troubled Blood). We should be particularly alert of any features in common with all other odd-numbered books. Remember the story components like quoting Catullus, finding a male body in a secondary residence and Strike walking with a cane or crutches that turn up in 2, 4, 6 and 8. 
• For Harry Potter:  
• Since there were so many connections between The Hallmarked Man and Order of the Phoenix, it is reasonable to expect the same between Sleep Tight, Evangeline and The Half-Blood Prince. 
• The first potential connection that occurs to me is the Trojan horse, in combination with all the walled/fortified cities that are popping up in the Twitter clues. This reminds me of Draco Malfoy spending much of HBP trying to devise a way of sneaking Death Eaters into the protected grounds of Hogwarts. 
• This could also potentially link to Strike's "cut through the barbed wire" metaphor that helped solve the crime in TIBH. 

Next, the news broke on Monday that Strike Nine shares a name with a 2014 single by an obscure US garage band; their 2025 album post-dated the 2023 trademarking of the title.  Some have speculated that Galbraith may have composed the title initially and subsequently connected it to the coincidently same-named song, since it is hard to understand how a Midwestern group with a relatively small and local following would have attracted the attention of a famous writer in the UK. This possibility got a significant boost by the observation reported by Reddit users Padfoot1989 and katyaslonenko that "Sleep Tight Evangeline" is an anagram for "The Vengeant Gillespie" Peter Gillespie is the aggressive lawyer that, allegedly without Rokeby's knowledge, pursued Strike relentlessly for the repayment of the business loan back in the early days of the agency. A popular hypothesis--- promoted by The Strike and Ellacott files, among others, is the Gillespie had embezzled Strike's trust fund and was a party to Leda's murder to cover up his crimes. If the anagram is a relevant connection, it may be that the murder of Leda Strike--- which many of us have assumed would be the series finale, could instead be solved, or at least seriously investigated in the next book.  This would be fitting, since one major connection between all odd-numbered books to date is that these are the ones that talk most extensively about Strike's childhood with Leda and the effect her death had on him. Do a word search at the Rowling Library's Strike finder and you'll see that the name Leda appears way more often in odd- than in even-numbered books. And, while we learned more about Leda in book 8, those details involved her childhood and original name, and her affair with Rokeby, not her role as Strike's mother or the effects of her death. 

Another title thought:  Multiple readers immediately connected Evangeline to Longfellow's epic poem, speculating that it could be a story  inspiration or a source of epigrams, rather like Aurora Leigh and the Faerie Queen. However,  @theladybeatric3 on Twitter took it a step farther with a series of tweets on Edgar Allen Poe's rather one-sided "war" with Longfellow, which included Poe's own poem called "Evangeline." In support of the idea that both Evangelines could be relevant, The Lady Beatrice also reminded us of the raven charm on the clues charm bracelet; "The Raven" is Poe's best known work and was foreshadowed in The Running Grave, when a late-night raven crashed into Strike's office window. Lindsay of The Strike & Ellacott files also pointed out that the two angel charms could represent Longfellow's protagonists, Evangeline and Gabriel, which makes perfect sense given their angelic names. Personally, I like the idea of evoking both Longfellow and Poe because a plotline involving writer-on-writer hostility would be a really great echo to The Silkworm. 

Another Beatrice, Dr. Bea Groves of Oxford University, who had already given us a great essay on the charms, followed it up with a look at the blue butterfly emoji and what it could mean as a representation of Psyche and the connection to the Persephone head charm on the bracelet. Psyche's final trial, in the myth, was to journey to the underworld, retrieve a box of Persephone's beauty, and deliver it to Aphrodite. Like Pandora, Psyche could not resist opening it, and was instantly enveloped by a mist that put her into a deep sleep, which required the intervention of her true love and his father to reverse. Could the "sleep tight" refer to this element of the Cupid and Psyche myth? I also love the idea of having the imagery of a beautiful butterfly emerging, reborn, from its cocoon contrast to the cruel boiling of The Silkworm for silk. 

Another look at the charm bracelet was published a couple of weeks ago in two Hogwarts Professor substack podcasts, here and here. These videos are very nice complements to Beatrice Grove's blog post, linked above, and the Strike and Ellacott files special podcast on the topic. I tuned in primarily to hear their special guest, Elizabeth Baird Hardy* and believe me, what she said about the crocodile and the potential connection to Spenser's The Faerie Queen was mind-blowing. 

• As always, the speculation about potential Christian symbolism in all of the charms was thought-provoking; my only quibble with it is that, for the most part, Galbraith's twitter header cues have turned out to be literal story elements first and foremost, with symbolism of secondary importance. 
• There was, after all, a good bit of speculation about potential Christian symbolism in the blue Oranda goldfish Twitter header; but, the fish turned out to be an office pet and a none-too-subtle representation of Strike himself and his tendency to self-sabotage. 
• I particularly liked the discussion about the anchor, and the fact that its appearance is more evocative of the British Navy (Suffolk is one of the Twitter header locales) than a Christian anchor.  
• This fits both the idea of Strike finding himself recruited by the British military** or MI5.
• The connection of the anchor and the Easter Egg could also mean another Easter Day sea outing to scatter Ted's ashes, which would somewhat make up for his rather abrupt death in THM. 
• 
  Also, and perhaps this is me expecting an inappropriate level of scientific accuracy, the reptile charm on the bracelet is clearly an alligator, not a crocodile. Note the U-shape to the snout, not a V. 
• This creates a problem not just for the Faerie Queen connection, but the Crocodile Rock location suggested by the Strike and Ellacott files. 
• I'm not sure where our heroes are going to encounter a literal alligator, or, for that matter, a crocodile, unless they visit the Crocodiles of the World zoo in Oxfordshire. 
• If so, hopefully that's an outing with Jack, Benjy or Annabel, and not an echo to The Running Grave's creative corpse disposal techniques. 
• And, just as I didn't buy the "Charlotte was murdered" hypothesis, I'm finding it hard to swallow any notion of Robin dying in the next book. 
• In fact, if the lyrics of either the "Sleep Tight Evangeline" song or Longfellow's Evangeline are a clue, it suggests just the opposite: a man doomed to expire, while pining for his Lost Love. 

Finally, I want to share a couple of insights from Reddit's Random-Occurance365.  They provided a possible history of Valentine's Day that was very interesting in light of how Strike and Robin wound up "celebrating."

Although it’s not accepted by all historians, some connect Valentine’s Day to the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, a fertility festival honoring the god Lupercus. The festival involved the sacrifice of a goat and dog. According to Wikipedia, “Their [two young priests called Luperci] foreheads were anointed with blood from the sacrificial knife, then wiped clean with wool soaked in milk” (per Wikpedia)

Random pointed out the many similarities with this festival and Valentine's Day; given our heroes' concerns with their own fertility, the dogs being killed in the dogfight, and the cleansing of Strike's eyes with milk after the blood-drawing dog bite. 

On a different post, Random has talked about C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth through the eyes of one of Psyche's sisters.  I've never read the book, but Random's commentary has me wanting to. According to Random, "Lewis twisted the myth to make it a story about the myths we tell ourselves."  I can't think of two protagonists who are better at creating myths for themselves:  Strike about Charlotte and Leda; Robin about first Matthew, then Ryan (and her own feelings towards both. 

So, those are today's quick notes.  Tune in Saturday for spaghetti carbonara on Sark. 

*Elizabeth's book, Appalachia in the Hunger Games: Real-life Roots of District 12 will be published later this year and is a must for any Hunger Games fan.   Click here to pre-order. 

** Hey, if Uncle Ted can find himself in the Falklands cracking Benny jokes two decades after he left the RMP, Strike could certainly come back to active service after 10 years out. 

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