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.