Chamber of Secrets-Troubled Blood Links, Part 4: Who are the TB equivalents to Lockhart, Aragog and Riddle?

I'm finishing up the look at Chamber of Secrets-Troubled Blood connections, looking at the last three chapters of CoS (covering Harry and Ron's discovery of where the Chamber is, Ginny's abduction, Lockhart's confrontation and eventual obliviation, Ginny's rescue, the debrief with Dumbledore, the encounter with Malfoy, Dobby being set free, the celebratory feast and the journey home) and Chapters 49-73 of Troubled Blood. 

TB, being much, much longer, naturally, has a lot more happening: 

• Strike's second interview with Janice
• Robin's meeting with Brian Tucker
• the joint interview with the Bayliss sisters
• Strike's Easter journey to Cornwall for the scattering of Joan's ashes
• Charlotte's suicide attempt
• Robin's divorce settlement
• the interview with Betty Fuller
• the disaster with Oakden at the American Bar
• the wonderful Chapters 58-59 with both Strike and Robin's declaration of friendship and Morris's sacking
• Robin's visit to Mucky Ricci and the subsequent row with Strike
• Robin's meeting with Jemma and the resolution of the Shifty case
• the trip to Skegness and meeting with Douthwaite
• the Facetime with Gloria Conti and subsequent resolution of the conflicting clues
• Strike's masterful showdown with Creed, which leads to Louise Tucker's remains
• the discovery of Margot's body at the Athorns and 
• the final confrontation and arrest of Janice. 

The novel then gives us a two-part conclusion, first the detectives' meeting with the Phipps, Kim and Oonaugh Kennedy, then Robin's birthday, with Strike finally putting some sentiment into gifts and taking her to buy her own perfume. 

The major point that struck me as the resolutions of all the mysteries unfold is that, once the truth about characters is revealed, some of the major villains start making pretty strong matches for each other. Take Lockhart, for instance,  When comparing CoS to The Silkworm, it is clear from the beginning that Lockhart is an analog to Michael Fancourt, the "vainglorious" bestselling author. We can even connect their names: Fancourt is described as having a shard of ice in his heart, while Lockhart spends a lot of energy courting his fans. But, once unmasked as a fraud, I thought dear old Gilderoy made a convincing match with a superficially unlikely TB baddie.  Find out who after the jump. 

Chamber of Secrets-Troubled Blood Linkages, Part 3: Floods, hearts and visits to the past.

Todays segment covers three chapters of Chamber of Secrets: "The Very Secret Diary" "Cornelius Fudge" and "Aragog" and Chapters 31-48 of Troubled Blood, which takes us to the end of Part 5, and from Strike's post-Christmas visit to Cornwall to Joan's funeral. My start-and stopping points are a bit arbitrary, but I like that the Harry Potter segment is bracketed by Moaning Myrtle, and the Strike segment by Aunt Joan. 

Chamber of Secrets-Troubled Blood Connections, Part 2: The cauldron runs dry.

One question I am regularly asked when I am documenting book-to-book connections is, "Can't you find connections between any two books if you look hard enough, especially when they are by the same author?" My answer, so far, has been a truthful, "I don't know," because I have never gone done this type of detailed, side-by-side analysis between two books for which I had not expected connections. 

However, I do now have at least preliminary evidence that I am capable of going through at least two sizable chunks of JKR/RG books without *automatically* seeing connecting elements.  It helps that TB, alone among the Strike books, starts in August and runs a full year, so the timeline roughly approximates that of a Hogwarts school year. It also, like many of the Harry Potter books, marks major holidays (Halloween, Christmas, Valentines Day, Easter). Thus, I was able to do the first comparison starting in the summer and finishing with Halloween, and I found quite a few parallels. 

Chamber of Secrets-Troubled Blood links, Part 1: Books of dark magic and mysterious, spooky messages.

Today is the sixth anniversary of the publication of Troubled Blood, so it seemed a good day to start the look at connections between Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Troubled Blood. It also seems as good a time as any to distinguish between the type of connections I am looking for in these re-reads. When we talk about parallels between Harry Potter and Strike, there are a few broad categories.

Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White connections, Part 6: The Trapdoor and the Dell

This is the last in my series of posts on Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White connections. I was pleasantly surprised with how many I found: enough to make me think this isn't completely a pointless exercise and to make me interested enough to continue on to Chamber of Secrets- Troubled Blood links. In the meantime, here's a quick look how the last part of PS ("Through the Trapdoor" and "The Man With Two Faces") compared to the end of LW (Chapter 61, the breakdown on the verge through the epilog. 

• 
  I had previously compared Aamir's attempt to attack Strike to Neville's attempt to attack Crabbe and Goyle, but it even more closely resembles Neville's failed attempt to fight the Trio in "Through the Trapdoor." Both rather inexpertly put up their fists in a boxer's pose. And, Hermione's expressed regret at putting the Body-bind Curse on Neville ("I'm really, really sorry about this") is like Strike's guilt at knocking Aamir over. ("If it makes you feel any better, I don't feel good about it.")

Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White links, Part 5: From athletics obsessions to hidden notes.

Interestingly, the connecting factors I see in this section (Harry Potter Chapters 11-14, "Quidditch" through :Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback"; Strike chapters 36-55, from the aftermath of Chiswell's murder to Robin's leaving Matthew) are many, but fairly non-specific.  Are they significant enough to count?  You be the judge. 

Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White Connections, Part 4: Rule-breaking, Catullus, asphodel and the ICU

The connections between Philosopher's Stone and Lethal White are becoming more and more tenuous as we move into the story proper: in which a bad-tempered government minister in charge of a major international sporting event gets murdered by the son that he had previously gotten out of prison. It is only natural that the many, many Goblet of Fire parallels start taking precedence.  Still, as I reviewed the part of the story between the Hogwarts/ Parliament arrival and what I consider the turning points of both books (the Great Troll Knock-out, Chiswell's murder), I saw a few points of connection.  

Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White connections, Part 3: The adventure begins with nightmares, open-sky ceilings and lots of corridors.

This section picks up with Chapter 6 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, "The Journey from Platform 9 3/4," and Chapter 12 in Lethal White. In the last installment of this series, I reviewed the similarities between Harry's trip to Diagon Alley and Strike's visit to Pratt's. What struck me in this section is how similar Harry's first view of Hogwarts is to Robin's first visit to the House of Commons.

It starts with a bit of domestic tension for both our protagonists. The Dursleys, of course, are furious that Harry is going to Hogwarts; Matthew is equally angry that Robin is going undercover in Parliament, considering it tantamount to treason. Both Harry and Robin wind up isolating themselves in their bedrooms as they prepare, Robin by practicing her disguise and reviewing Chiswell family trivia with Strike, and Harry by perusing his books. Both approach the big day with a combination of excitement and nerves. Robin has two panic attacks on her first day; Harry also gets a little panicky, first when he can't find Platform 9 3/4; second when he is thinking he would have to do magic for the Sorting. And, just as Robin awoke with a nightmare on her first day at Parliament, Harry awoke with a nightmare on his first night at Hogwarts. 

Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White connections, Part 2: Moving forward, looking back and why Sam Barclay is Hedwig.

One challenge in working through Harry Potter and the Philosopher's  (or Sorcerer's) Stone and Lethal White for start-of-ring connections is trying to figure out where to divide the book sections.  For the first post, it was logical to do the opening chapters, but that 1-to-1 obviously cannot continue, given how much longer LW is than PS. Just taking a guess, I'm going to next look through the part of the story that occurs after the time-jump, but before the major adventure (Hogwarts/Robin's undercover mission) begins. For Harry, this is Chapters 2-5: the zoo trip with the vanishing glass, the letters from no one, the Dursley's flight to the Hut-on-the Rock, Hagrid's rescue of Harry on his 11th birthday and the subsequent trip to Diagon Alley to prepare him for Hogwarts. For Strike and Robin, this is Chapters 1-11: beginning  with Strike's hiring of Barclay and going through Billy's arrival at the office, Robin's ending of her therapy and move to the new house, Strike's visit to the CORE meeting, Robin's housewarming party, Robin's return to the office and the unexpected calls from Billy and Chiswell, Strike's lunch with Chiswell in Pratt's, followed by his meeting with Robin, overnight with Lorelei and his delivery of listening devices to Chiswell's London House. 

A Return to Blogging with a New Test of the Double Wedding Band Model: Looking for connections between Philosopher's Stone and Lethal White.

 Greetings to my readers and other Strike/Potter fans! I am back from the longest blogging break I've taken in a while. I am happy to announce that I return with the new title of Granny to CJ, the, in my unashamedly biased opinion, the most perfect and beautiful granddaughter ever born. Since I have chosen to keep her full name private, and respect her parents' wishes not to display her face on social media, you'll simply have to take my word for it that she is absolutely and completely adorable. 

During my break, I've been mulling over what to blog about as we continue to wait for Sleep Tight, Evangeline. I finally drew inspiration from:

• first, the new series of Three Broomsticks podcasts I've been doing: looking at connections between the Strike books and the corresponding Potter books, so starting with Philosopher's Stone and Cuckoo's Calling and
• second, the Double Wedding Band model for the Strike series, which hypothesizes that tha last seven books of the series will form a ring structure, much as the first seven did, and as the seven Harry Potter books did. See here, here and here for more information. 

As I have noted before, one of the strongest arguments in favor of DWB is the fact that it predicted connections between THM and Order of the Phoenix, of which there were many. This gives me hope that the final three books of the Strike series will connect to the final three Potter books both alchemically and thematically.

But, what of the earlier books of the putative second ring? That's what I have decided to explore for the next few months.